24 Steps to a Successful Startup

We say the delta v experience is like eating broccoli. Maybe students founders don't like broccoli; perhaps they are not sure. But, as we work through the program, they will learn how to steam broccoli and roast it and sauté it and puree it. They'll know all of the ins-and-outs of broccoli – and come up with a winning recipe.

Last week, I had the opportunity to give a keynote talk at the Open Innovations virtual forum in Skolkovo. My friend & DE coach Marius Ursache also talked about using DE in deep tech.

I’ve been a huge fan of Bill Aulet’s Disciplined Entrepreneurship since I was first introduced to his process by Cathy Pucher, Executive Director of the Zahn Innovation Center at San Diego State University nearly five years ago now. I subsequently adopted it as the base framework for our postgraduate entrepreneurship education programs in TechInnovation and AgInnovation at the National University of Ireland Galway, in a small but fast-growing city called Galway on the Wild Atlantic Way of…

In the five years since DE Toolbox launched, more than 20,000 founders, students, educators, accelerators, and mentors have used it with their teams or companies.

To make the LTV calculation easier for my students and me, I converted the Step 17 worksheet into an Excel spreadsheet. Using the spreadsheet has several advantages: it's faster, you can change the inputs and it allows you to see the key drivers for your LTV.

To get this new material, go on this web site to the “Resources” section and sign up for access. For those of you who already have access to the Dropbox folder for entrepreneurship educators, you should have already gotten an email about this.

One of my proudest projects from the past few years is the Trust Center Antifragile Entrepreneurship Speaker Series, which is now available to watch for free in its entirety. These 8 sessions were designed like a course to help the viewer understand what it takes to become more antifragile in concrete ways within the context we are living in right now.

We held a series of three webinars targeted at Irish entrepreneurs during the early states of the COVID-19 lockdown. With almost 2,000 registrants its popularity exceeded expectations. The overwhelming priority at the beginning of the pandemic was public health but, at some stage, this will abate and the next challenge will be rebuilding the economy. Entrepreneurs and innovators will play a vital role. So, what did we hear from the community and what help could we offer?

In the early stages of my entrepreneurial journey, I used to think that getting a product to market as quickly as possible, even without knowing my customers first, was the path to success. Inundated as we are with such popular wisdom, we sometimes take blitzscaling too literally, jumping into a market’s deep end without even looking to see what’s down below.

The company is you, and you better take it very personally. You should not be looking to maximize how much money you make this year you should be trying to build as many skills ad you can because they will pay off for the rest of your lives.