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President's Dream Colloquium on Entrepreneurship
Early Stage Finance, an Entrepreneur's Perspective
Watch the Recorded Web Stream
Recorded on February 21, 2014
Talk Highlights
Click for timestamps ↓- 9:28 - The three questions to ask yourself before looking for money: How good is the idea? How ready am I to launch a business? How do I improve my chances of success?
- 14:20 – Ask yourself: How good is the idea? Get customer validation on the market, and don’t confuse marketing with market research!
- 18:30 – Don’t rely on being bought out. Your competitors are always closer than you think; don’t benchmark your future idea with what competitors are delivering today.
- 21:30 – There is no substitute for experience i.e. pattern recognition, or the blending of experience with native intelligence, which can also be achieved by mentorship.
- 25:45 – Improve your chances and reduce risk via the lean start-up model using experimentation and validation over static planning processes.
- 33:05 – The four different start-up business phases: Test idea (or hypothesis) through the business model canvas, get customer validation, customer creation by developing minimum viable product, and company building.
- 41:00 – The first place to start funding is yourself! How to finance the four different phases of the business, from savings and friends & family, to incubators and angels, and government support and, finally, Venture Capital.
- 57:00 – Personal stories on valuation and financing.
Lecture Topics
About the Speaker
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Andrew Harries Founding President and CEO, Zeugma Systems Co-founder, Sierra Wireless, Inc. |
Andrew Harries was a co-founder of Sierra Wireless, a NASDAQ-listed wireless devices and applications vendor and served as Sierra’s Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing, Operations and corporate development from 1993-2004.
Mr. Harries also was the co-founder of Zeugma Systems Inc. where he served as the President and CEO until Tellabs acquired substantially all of the company in November 2010.