High-Impact Entrepreneurship

Endeavor is proud to make public the following transcript and video from a presentation at the 2011 Endeavor Entrepreneur Summit in San Francisco. The event, which assembled over 450 entrepreneurs and global business leaders, featured dozens of entrepreneurship-related presentations by top CEOs and industry experts.

Overview:The cleantech revolution has unleashed what some have called the largest market opportunity in the history of the planet. As experts in the cleantech space, Mike Ahearn (Chairman, First Solar) and George Bilicic (Head of Energy, Power, and Infrastructure, Lazard) discuss the magnitude of this opportunity, what it means for entrepreneurs (particularly those in emerging markets), and what entrepreneurs should keep in mind when starting cleantech businesses.

Bios:

Mike Ahearn
Managing Partner, True North Venture Partners, L.P.

Michael J. Ahearn currently serves as Managing Partner of True North Venture Partners, L.P., a venture capital company that invests in early stage innovative businesses addressing some of the world’s most challenging problems in areas such as energy, water, agriculture and waste. Mr. Ahearn also serves as Chairman of the Board, First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR); Member, Board of Trustees, Thunderbird School of Global Management; Member, Board of Trustees, The German Marshall Fund; Member, Board of Directors, Endeavor; Member, Global Advisory Board, Beijing Climate Policy Initiative; and Member, Advisory Board, BDT Capital Partners. Mr. Ahearn lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He holds B.S. and J.D. degrees from Arizona State University.

George Bilicic
Managing Partner, Omidyar Network

George Bilicic heads the Firm’s global efforts in power, energy and infrastructure and also works with companies in other industries. In addition, he serves as a member of the Firm’s Fairness Committee and Investment Banking Committee. Mr. Bilicic earlier completed a term as Head of Lazard’s Midwest Advisory business serving the needs of companies and governmental entities based in that region of the U.S. across all industries. Other than his time at KKR (see below), Mr. Bilicic has been at Laz ard since March 2002.

Most recently, Mr. Bilicic has advised on the following matters (client in parentheses): proposed merger of Progress Energy and Duke Energy (Progress Energy), proposed merger of Northeast Utilities and NSTAR (Northeast Utilities), resolution of joint venture and related matters between EDF and Constellation Energy (EDF), proposed sale of RBS/Sempra Trading Business (RBS and Sempra), proposed sale of Autopista Central toll road (Skanska), potential privatization or municipalization of the Long Island electric transmission and distribution system (LIPA), proposed exchange offer by Exelon for NRG (Exelon), leveraged buy-out of TXU led by KKR and TPG (TXU), Duke Energy spin-off transaction (Duke), National Grid acquisition of KeySpan (KeySpan), PlaNYC (City of New York), Duke Energy merger with Cinergy (Duke), various alternative energy financings and others.

From May 2008 to October 2008, Mr. Bilicic served as a Managing Director and Head of Infrastructure at KKR. At KKR, Mr. Bilicic was responsible for initiating and leading KKR’s global infrastructure investing efforts and contributing to other areas, especially alternative energy and power. During his time at KKR, Mr. Bilicic served on the Infrastructure Investment Committee and led teams that considered investments in airports, ports, surface transportation, utilities and power, alternative energy, midstream infrastructure, social infrastructure, and infrastructure conglomerates.

Video:

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Reprinted from under30ceo.com. See the original article here.

By Jaime Tardy

Everyone has had fear. It’s human nature to be fearful of a tiger. But why does it tend to get in our way in business so much? I’ve had the chance to ask millionaires and experts about their fear and how they pushed past it. Google defines fear as:

“An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.”

Fear is just an unpleasant emotion. That’s it! There are a ton of other unpleasant emotions, but for some reason this one can stop us from really becoming what we want to in life. It stops us before we start. If you want to have an amazing 2012 and beyond you need to find a way to fight your fear. Below are action items for you to do to get past the fear you have in your business. Choose at least one today to fight your fear.

You Don’t Have to Be Fearless

Earlier this year I was able to ask Seth Godin a question about fear. I asked:

“Do you use excuses because of fear? How do you recognize them and get past them?”

Seth Godin:

“Oh yeah, all the time. And the fact is, in our highly-leveraged world, where anyone can write a book on Tuesday and publish it on Wednesday, if I wasn’t using excuses I’d be a master of myself and would be producing tons of stuff. I ask myself, ‘What’s important enough to be afraid for?’ In those areas I’ll strip away the excuses. I’ll focus so much energy to do the things that I think are important enough. And in other areas of my life I will succumb. No one is Clark Kent and fearless. You don’t have to be Clark Kent to do what you want to achieve.”

You don’t need to be fearless! You just need to overcome it just enough to take action in spite of it. Millionaire Frank McKinney, who calls himself a real estate daredevil and creates $30 million dollar dream homes, said this about fear:

“The first emotional reaction to the thought of undertaking a risk is fear. So we’re afraid. That’s normal. That’s natural. Then we go and do our homework with that fear firmly embedded in the back of our minds, and as we’re researching, we are subconsciously looking for a way to say no. Realize that. Don’t let it happen. Realize there is a force at work subconsciously in your mind that is tempting you to say no. That’s the primary difference between my career and most others, especially in real estate, that I don’t let the fear that is there stop me. I’m afraid every day of my life. I admit it–I’m like an alcoholic that admits he’s an alcoholic. I admit I have fear every day, but I don’t let it stop me. That is the primary difference.”

Over and over again I hear it. You don’t need to be fearless! Frank also says you should exercise your risk like a muscle, and I think you can do the same thing with fear. Once you start to face it using the techniques below, you will get better and better at facing it.

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Reprinted from under30ceo.com. See the original article here

My watch doesn’t keep very good time, and I like it that way. Its uncertainty keeps me from organizing my days too precisely. It gives me breaks – sometimes short, some longer – for unstructured thinking.

At the top of organizations, and particularly in younger companies, time for unstructured thinking is scarce. Yet, unstructured thinking is what spawns the breakthroughs that people expect us, as CEO’s, to deliver.

This is our work of the highest order. But building space for this kind of thinking requires a stance that counters certain pressures we receive from others about how we should spend our time and requires a different discipline for managing our days. Not difficult. Just different.

Here are five tips that will help you build time for unstructured thinking into your workday. And if you do it, you will raise your odds for delivering what others expect of you – the big ideas – even though some of your constituents might not see the connection as you start.

Calendars

When I see a day of back-to-back entries on my calendar, I know that it won’t be a very productive one. Still, most of us fall into a trap of feeling most important and that we’re doing our job best when we haven’t got a minute to spare.

Do you remember the Eureka! story? After working hard on a problem, Archimedes drew a deep, warm bath to clear his head, release all thoughts and relax. As water spilled over the side, the answer he’d sought for days emerged. Eureka!

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Reprinted from wamda.com. See the original article here

by Bushra Azhar

Investors are lined up, the website is done, glossy promotional material with smiling faces is all set, your core team is pumped, and you are ready to go live. Now is the time to worry about hiring the rest of your team. A social startup, unlike other businesses, is not just about “business”; it is also about passion and values, without which you cannot survive. Hiring the best team with all of the necessary ingredients is the key to your success.

That said, “best” can’t be determined simply by a university transcript or a recommendation letter; best is what gels most effectively with your enterprise and its values. Define your own best and then hire, not just those with suitable expertise, but those with suitable personalities that contribute toward success of your start-up.

Below are the seven people you should consider hiring:

1. Someone with Passion: What else is there to look for if your chosen hire doesn’t have passion?  Social Enterprise is about changing existing behaviours and mind-sets, and only a person with passion and purpose can make it happen. An entrepreneur once said, “Purpose may point you in the right direction, but it’s passion that propels you.” Enough said.

2. Someone who is Social Media Savvy: The current day and age is all about social media (until we find something more fun). If there is a potential hire who displays good social media skills (blogging, engaging, familiarity and presence on Social Media platforms and a Social Media following), do consider getting him or her on board. This person has a voice, and if used correctly, it can offer a tactical advantage to your enterprise. Of course it goes without saying that when I say SM savvy I don’t just mean updating Facebook status multiple times a day and posting YouTube videos of cats doing somersaults!

3. A Problem Solver: Social enterprise is challenging. From getting community support to gauging measurable impact of your work, it poses many more challenges than a regular business. If you have a potential hire that can get to the root of a problem and suggest workable solutions ; he is the one you cannot miss. I can hear you saying, “But how do we find out?” Well, there are many pre-employment tests like Wonderlic Test that help gauge the aptitude of prospective employees for learning and problem-solving. Have the applicant take these tests, but trust your gut feeling in the end.

4. Someone with Compassion: Thomas Merton said, “The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.” Simply speaking, if a person does not have compassion, he won’t be able to appreciate this interdependence and has no place in a social enterprise.

5. A Strategic Thinker: A person with foresight and vision is an asset for any business, but even more so for a social one. It is much easier for forward thinking, strategic people to look positively at what may seem like a short term decision because they know it can provide substantial societal and business benefits. The person who can see the bigger picture is the person you cannot afford to miss.

6. Someone from the Community: When you are working in a certain community, it is imperative that you have someone from thatcommunity as part of your team. This person should be familiar with local issues and should have a position of trust within the  community. If trained properly, he or she can prove to be invaluable in bridging the gap and managing expectations between the community and your enterprise.

7. A Good listener: Companies usually look for charismatic speakers who can move audience to tears with a well-rehearsed, yet oddly spontaneous-sounding speech.  While it is great to have a few (very few) such people as part of your team, t a social enterprise benefits more from good listeners. Listening is an engagement tool that is highly underrated. As Dr. Covey in his timeless book stresses, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” This approach is key to effective dialogue and results.

All of these traits are important for building a cohesive team, but I’m not suggesting that you need to hire seven people to find these seven traits. On the contrary, you may find them all in one, or make a point of being sure that anyone hired on your team has some of these traits (e.g. passion, listening skills, problem solving and strategic ability). The key is to define what you’re looking for in a holistic manner so that your social enterprise can maximize its effectiveness. Good luck!

Photo from gwen‘s photostream.

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Bushra Azhar is the Founder of Good Business Sense (GBS), a CSR and Sustainability Knowledge Advisory based in the Middle East. A former corporate VP and academic, she has 14 years of experience under her belt with almost 5 years in CSR related areas. She is the author of a research study examining the growth of CSR in Saudi Arabia and is also responsible for developing 3 out of a total of 6 CSR reports released in the Kingdom. Her latest publication “The Concise Dictionary of CSR: Simple, Practical, No-Nonsense Introduction to the Main Concepts” is available for free on her company website. You can follow her on Twitter @bushraazhar.

Reprinted from under30ceo.com. See the original article here.

Raising money should be seen as a means to accomplish ambitious goals for your company, not an accomplishment on its own. Securing investment from a prestigious venture capital firm can make headlines, but there are many downsides to raising money for an early-stage company. Here are a few:

1.) Dilution

The earlier stage your company is in, the higher risk it’s perceived to have. This means lower valuation and ultimately, lower returns for you. Startups should aim to validate their idea and get as much traction as possible before raising money. From the investor’s perspective, there is much more risk associated with a company with an unproven idea. A company with no traction is less likely to get funded and if it is funded, it will be valued lower than a company with traction. More dilution means lower returns for founders.

2.) Control

You can get fired from your own company! It’s fairly common for venture capitalists to remove the founder from the CEO position and hire a new one. In addition you will have less voting power on business decisions.

3.) Resourcefulness

Money can remove spending discipline. It’s nice to be able to take a salary after getting funded, but as Peter Theil believes, CEOs should be motivated by the long-term success of the company, not by the short-term benefits of a salary. Reid Hoffman took the minimum salary available while staying above the poverty line of $15,000 while serving as CEO of LinkedIn.

4.) Exit opportunities

If you decide you want to sell the company early at low price and move to the beach, you won’t be able to because of a term called a liquidation preference. This grants investors a minimum amount of the exit price before founders receive any.

5.) Time

Raising money is extremely time-consuming. It requires a lot of networking and meetings. For someone without much knowledge of how to raise money, it can also be very time consuming to prepare for fundraising. It’s time that could be better spent building the business or networking for partnership or distribution opportunities.

Technological advancement has made it cheaper and easier for a technology to launch and start getting traction and has thus raised investors’ expectations. I recommend startups use Lean Startup Methodology to validate their idea and get traction in a time and capital efficient manner. I agree with Niki Scevak: “Instead of raising money, writing code and then proving the business, do the complete reverse.”

Mike Fishbein helps startups through mid-size companies with capital raising, mergers and acquisitions and strategy. He also teaches a Skillshare class on capital raising and can be reached at twitter.com/mfishbein.

This article was written by John Jantsch and published at Duct Tape Marketing. You can find the original article here.

After owning a business for over twenty years now, here’s something I firmly believe. Your business is worthless until it can operate without you.

Now that may seem a bit harsh to some, but until you’ve created a system that allows others to bring in the business and provide the products and services without the need for you to make it happen, you’re stuck in a job. It may even be a well paying job, but it’s probably not one that you could convince someone else to come in a buy some day. In many ways, your business is stuck to the degree you can successfully delegate the work you do today to others. Others may mean key employees or it may mean other companies or virtual support staff, but your goal as the owner of the business should be to actually rise to the level of CEO.

We could all argue about what CEO work is, but I’m guessing you spend large parts of your day not doing it. I get that, the printer gets jammed, the package needs to be shipped, the copy must be proofread, and then it’s time to go home. One of keys to growing your business to the point where you can rise to the level of CEO, the place where you can focus on the highest payoff work, is to adopt a mindset of systematic delegation. The first step in creating this mindset is to analyze the work you currently do each day and assign a value to it in a way that creates priority.

The value matrix

I like to do this little exercise with people because is assigns a fictitious monetary value to work that helps with delegation thinking. To me there are four kinds of work we do each day – $5, $50, $500, $5,000. (The actual numbers you use for this don’t matter as much as the concept of differing values.) The idea here is that some work you do has great value and is likely the work you should attempt to focus on and some work has little value and is certainly the work you should delegate if you are to ever get to the high payoff work.

$5 is stuff you can easily delegate such as proofreading, link checking or many kinds of basic research.

$50 includes stuff that you’re probably not that good at and should pay someone that’s likely better to do, such as getting your site to run faster, creating PPC campaigns or most of your bookkeeping functions.

$500 is the trickiest one of all. This is usually stuff that’s important, expensive to delegate and that you may indeed be pretty good at, but that will keep you from truly getting free. This includes things like writing sales copy, creating key PowerPoint presentations, delivering your services or even making sales calls.

$5,000 is the high payoff work, but it’s also the hardest to accept because the payoff may indeed be off in the distance, so sometimes it doesn’t feel like the most important work. Spending more time in the $5,000 box should be your goal if you’re ever to set your business free to create value. This is innovation work, strategic partner creation, product and service development, masterminding, documenting and delegating your success systems. The items left in this box should be things you enjoy doing, that serve your passion and purpose and that tap your core abilities or you might need to rethink your business entirely.

Draw a box and create four squares, placing one of the above numbers in each box. Now, go through you typical work week and think about the tasks you’ve done or do routinely and put them in one of the boxes according to what you think they are actually worth. For most people the easy delegation starting point is the $5 and $50 boxes. Right now, commit to documenting how to successfully get that work done by others and start looking for ways to stop doing anything that keeps you in these boxes. Look at your $500 box and start thinking about items in that quadrant that you could delegate. This will be the hardest one because this box almost always contains things that you enjoy doing or that you don’t think you can ever get anyone else to do as well as you, but this is where the real progress comes from.

The to-delegate list

As you start to adopt this thinking make it a daily habit by combing over your daily to-do list. Write it down and then break it into two tiers – to-do and to-delegate. Identifying the things you’ve come to realize you can and should delegate, but still do on a daily basis, will train you to focus on getting them off your to-do list.