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:

Full transcript:

What is Alternative Energy?

[George]

It could mean Solar, Photovoltaic, Wind, Traditional Clean Generation like Hydro Power, Geothermal, Biomass, and some people include Nuclear power.

And then the misunderstood and ill-defined area of the smart grid: Energy Efficiency, Smart meters, Smart transmission, and Storage. Storage, by the way, is one of the holy grails of the alternative energy area. People have not figured out a way to efficiently store electricity, which is very much the key to the next area.

Alternatively-fueled vehicles. Natural gas vehicles are a very attractive proposition in this country at the moment. Electric vehicles and the related infrastructure.

Biofuels. A series of companies have gone public in the US capital markets in this area this year and they cross a wide span of technologies.

LED lighting – another big area of emerging growth. There is a large company in Germany that will be spun out of Siemens this year that is in this business.

Smart building products. A series of companies will go public in the next year in this area.

What Companies are Participating in this Alternative Area?

The area cuts across the entire economy. Companies that are defined as Alternative Energy-Focused Companies include First Solar, Itron, which is a smart meter company, Suntech, a Chinese solar tech company, BrightSourceEnergy, which is a solar thermal company that has filed to go public, Enernoc, which is an energy efficiency company, and Vestas, a Danish wind company.

Utilities are very active in this area and are very important. They are the end users of a lot of these products. One of the keys of success in Mike’s company has been their success in dealing with utilities. IBM – they do WATSON, they do things in the energy efficiency area. Oil companies – a company called Total, a French oil company that is taking a big equity stake in a California based solar company called Sun Power. Then there are various Asia based conglomerates that are very active in the area, particularly the Japanese companies and increasingly Chinese companies.

Investing in Alternative Energy

There has been a total of $167 billion invested out of the VC community. The pace of investment from the VCs has slowed because some aspects of the business are so capital-intensive that it doesn’t lend itself to the traditional VC model. So you see emerging efforts in this area from large cap industrial companies like General Electric, Toshiba, Google, and Total. An important investor in this area is government. Government investment across the globe is either through subsidies or through direct investment. The Department of Energy in the US has a series of programs designed to support the area.

What Does One Need to Understand to be Successful in Alternative Energy?

Energy prices are very important. We will meet with a company in the alternative energy area, and the most important thing they should understand is, depending on the region of the world, oil prices or natural gas, government incentives, project finance, the fact that this is a global business, not typically a regional business, you need to understand the end markets, particularly utilities. A lot of this stuff people want to sell cannot be sold except directly or indirectly through utilities.

Stakeholders are very important. One can’t be successful without supportive stakeholders because you are often relying on government regulation for your returns. You need to understand the electricity grid. You need to be sophisticated when it comes to technology and manufacturing. It’s a multidisciplinary area that requires a variety of skill sets. The very successful companies that we see will have a very good government relations person, a really good operator, manufacturer, someone who really understand IP and technology, someone who is good with the investors, and other skill sets.

Ten Suggestions for Success

[Mike]

Envision big – execute small
Thing global – act local
Work with, not around, the public sector
Favor fundamental value creation over up rounds and exits
Maximize throughput velocity over margin maximization
Think marketing, not sales
Compartmentalize the known vs. the unknown
Institutionalize uncertainty and flexibility
Institutionalize continuous improvement
Make your success vital to the stakeholders who matter

1. Envision big- execute small

I don’t think the risk return makes sense unless you have a really big idea and big aspiration. I think you have to start thematically. There are big pressing problems that have to be solved in this space. You have 2 billion people in the world who don’t have access to electricity and another billion that have intermittent access at best. In developed countries, you have electricity infrastructures under severe strains. In some places like China and India, they can’t keep up with the demand for electricity. Then there is this whole climate overlay. How do you move off of the world’s mainstay, which is coal, into things that are green and sustainable? And this says nothing of what’s happening in transportation. Water comes in to play here too. There are already regional shortages. There is a longer term trend over the next twenty years where supply demand imbalances for water are going to become very significant. From an agricultural point of view, you have massive demand growth for food, driven by class migration in developing countries, and specifically around high-protein content, which in turn drives beef production and certain types of farming that use water and energy extremely inefficiently. The waste streams present another piece of the puzzle. In a lot of the emerging markets, there are no centralized infrastructures for dealing with this pollution.

In a lot of areas outside of the US, a lot of entrepreneurs are thinking small. In the US you actually see the opposite sometimes. We’ve seen hundreds of millions of dollars go down the drain funding guys with big dreams that are going to go into the mass market and make big disruptive change. That’s the flipside of cleantech. You can’t move directly to the mainstream market, it’s not going to viral. There are too much entrenched, integrated, system level effects. There are politics and education of the consumer base.

What you have to do if you have a big vision is then come back and say, where is a market segment that I can enter with what I can do today and get some traction, some cash flow, and some learning, and then I can continue my mission, but from a base that’s real. What we look for from an investing point of view is that combination of that pragmatic reasonable market opportunity and that big idea and a will to migrate through these market segments to get to that big change.

[George]

There are two big mistakes that are commonly made. People have not thought about how big the market is and have not defined the market. The second thing is, a lot of this area will be driven by the cost effective solution and people will come with a great idea, but their idea is not cost-effective.

2. Think global, act local

Mike: We came up with a good low cost thin film semiconductor technology to dramatically reduce the cost of making solar panels. We found customers in the US that would buy it, but the regulatory structures would not allow market access. We really pounded on politicians in Washington to try to get programs changed. In the meantime we were burning 15-20 million dollars a year and we couldn’t get any traction. It finally dawned on us that we have to be globally agnostic as to where we build our business. Absolutely critically in any of these areas is a regulatory and political structure that will allow you to enter the market. Seven years later, we have 90% of our people, assets, and operations outside of the US.

3. Work with, not around, the public sector

[George]

This is particularly important because a lot of what is being done in this area depends on a governmental structure, governmental mandate, or governmental support or is at risk at intervention from stakeholders. A relevant company must figure out a way to be almost in partnership with the relevant government entity.

4. Favor fundamental value creation over up rounds and exits

5. Maximize throughput velocity over margin maximization

6. Think marketing, not sales

[Mike]

5 & 6 are related. What you see a lot is that you have an innovative approach and you start pitching this stuff to a utility or municipality or a large industrial customer and they’re interested and you start setting up deals, but sales cycle becomes drawn out. It becomes months, it wouldn’t be unusual to have this take several years. Because of the sales cycle length you really have a high price to create margin to cover all of your overhead. But paradoxically, the price being too constrains some of the sales. You get caught in this cycle. I think part of the answer here is that from the marketing perspective you have to segment in terms of a set of customers that have a top of mind need (something where if you come to them and tell them that you can help them, they say we have to talk, I have to solve this). If you please one of them, they tell the others. You should try to get into the right place before you concentrate on sales.

7. Compartmentalize the known vs. the unknown

8. Institutionalize uncertainty and flexibility

7 & 8 are also related. If you are trying to bring innovation and technology to create new markets that haven’t existed, then you are really dealing with experiments. You can take all the polls you want but until you put something in front of them, you don’t know what their reaction is going to be. At any given point in time, an early stage company will have a market segment where they have traction and they have a theory as to why it’s working and they have high confidence level that they can drive more sales. That’s what I call execution mode. On the other hand, if you are trying to enter a new market with a new idea, that shouldn’t get lumped into the forecast and the business plan with the stuff that’s known. That second part is not probabilistic. You can compartmentalize it at any given time by saying we are in execution mode on a set of things and we are in experimental mode on a set of things and then we have our big vision on where we want to get.

9. Institutionalize continuous improvement

If you think about how much you learned from when you started to when you got in the business. The question is, can you accelerate those learning cycles? What I find is that everybody acknowledges that, but you don’t find too often is a systematic effort to improve the capacity to learn. There are two ways. There’s external, that’s like benchmarking, networking, and collecting data and bringing it back to the team in a structured way to translate it into action. Then there’s internal where you take all these things that work and don’t work and feed them back into a process that repeats itself frequently. How did we benefit from what works and doesn’t work? And finally creating metrics. We created metrics specifically around rate of improvement.

10.Make your success vital to the stakeholders

[George]

This last point is about working with the stakeholders and having them aligned with and invested in the proposition that you’re offering to your customers and investors. It’s been particularly important in the renewables area as new markets are defined and the regulatory structure is established.

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.

Recognize the Fear

Before you can get past that fear, the first thing you need to do is recognize it. It’s very easy to ignore fear. Have you ever started thinking about public speaking and then automatically thought about something else? It’s as if it’s a hot oven and we can’t even get close enough to touch it! If you have tried to recognize it yourself and can’t seem to make your head go there, ask a friend for help. Ask them to pay attention and see if they can figure out what fear you have, in general conversation or when they are asking you questions about it specifically. Getting to the root of that fear–and realizing it is there–is the first step!

Putting Your Fear in Perspective

One millionaire said their mentor shared a story to put fear in perspective. He told the story of a woman who had her children kidnapped, and the kidnappers were going to kill her children. Now that is true fear. Most of the time in business we fear things that might come true. Or we have fear because we need to step out of our comfort zone and risk something. But that is not TRUE fear. True fear is life or death. So the next time you are feeling fear, replace it with feeling grateful that you don’t have a life or death situation. Your business risk is not life threatening for you or those you love. Bankruptcy is not life threatening. I’ve interviewed millionaires that lost it all and came back to succeed. Another thing I love to do to put fear in perspective is to look at this: http://scaleofuniverse.com/ There you can compare the size of you to the size of the universe. How big are your fears now?

Action Item: Put Fear in Perspective

The next time you feel that fear, put it in perspective in your mind. Imagine how small your issue truly is in the world. It seems big to you right now, but it’s not as big as you think.

Lean on Your Mentors

Another great tip I’ve heard from many millionaires is to find a mentor. Mentors have been where you are and faced the fear you are facing. It’s easier to get past it with their support, and expertise. Armando Montelongo, host of Flip this House on A&E, said:

“To say that I did not have fear would be an inaccuracy. To say that I have doubt would be a lie, right? I had total fear. I had total disappointment in my life prior to that and I had feelings of anxiousness. I had the question, Can I really do this? Can this really happen? Is this pie in the sky? But I looked to my mentors for advice and started doing exactly what they told me. It helped me to almost immediately overcome the fear. I did have doubt but I listened to what they said.”

Armando had a belief in his mentors, that they knew how to get past it, and therefore he was able to get over his fear quickly.

Action Item: Lean on Your Mentors

If you already have a mentor, be honest with them about your fear. They have probably heard it before. It might feel a little vulnerable at first, but that is a good thing. If you don’t have a mentor yet, find one! You don’t have to pay for one either. I interviewed Derek Sivers and he gave me a step-by-step plan on how to find a mentor. Plus most of my mentors (even millionaire mentors) I have found for free.

Taking Action with the Fear

It’s not the fear that is the problem; it’s the inactivity that is. So focus on just taking whatever action you need to take in spite of the fear. The inaction will end up costing you a lot more in the long run than the “safety” you received from not doing it. Ren Carlton said:

“Fear is a very expensive trait to have. It’s a dangerous emotion to deal with and you have to put it aside. If you don’t, it will kill you. Inactivity is the worst thing you can do in the business world. You have to be out there mixing it up.”

Ren admits that he has had fear too. It’s not about the fear. It’s about doing whatever it takes to move past it. Here are a few actions you can take to get past the fear RIGHT NOW:

Action Item: Commit in Advance

One technique to use to get past your fear is to make it feel farther away. For example, let’s say you know public speaking could be really great for your business but you are scared. One thing you have always wanted to try was a webinar, but you don’t know how and you don’t want to look like a fool. Look at your calendar and pick a date that seems like a far away date. It might be a month for you or even three months. Something that makes it seem so far away you might not pay attention to it. Then tell a few people. It’s far enough away that it doesn’t seem that scary. But once you commit to it and tell others you will feel obligated to do it. You don’t want to look like a fool if you don’t do it! So you do it anyway, even with the fear. (I’ve used this before myself and with clients and let me tell you, it works!)

Action Item: Logically Counteract It

Another action item you can try is to logically counteract the fear. Imagine you are listening to a great friend of yours talk about their fear. What would you say to them? I like to do this exercise on paper so I can really get an idea of what will logically counteract it. Ask questions like, “What is the worst that could happen?” or “What would your contingency plan be if that happens?” Then immediately following this exercise take the first step towards the fear. Your brain will be in a better place to take that first step. You aren’t going to be perfect in this. And that is OK! But choose one of these action items to start moving past the fear in your business. Your bottom line will thank you! Which one did you choose? Tell me below what you are committing to doing!

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Jaime is a business coach and speaker and has been featured on CNN, MSNMoney, Success Magazine, Fortune.com, Yahoo’s homepage and more. Each week she interviews self-made millionaires for their business tips, advice and stories. You can sign up for the Top 10 Tips from millionaires or check out over 50 of the free self-made millionaire interviews.

Reprinted from sethgodin.typepad.com. See the original article here.

By Seth Godin.

Are we doing this because it’s better?

Or because we can?

As organizations grow, they gain an audience, revenue, cash flow and trust. They add staff and then, soon, they decide it’s time to offer something new. Smuckers decides perhaps it should use its shelf space to offer a peanut butter. A corporate coach wonders if he ought to add HR consulting services. A website decides to clone a product made by a smaller company that they can bring to a larger audience…

If you extend your reach because you can, because you have market power, you will probably be doing your existing customers a small service (centralized support or billing or just one less person to deal with) but your brand doesn’t increase in stature. You had a chance to bring some of your original magic to the table (after all, it’s that magic that got you started) but all you did was bully the competitors out of the way.

On the other hand, if you extend your brand because the new offering is better, magical in the way you can make it magical, then you’ve dramatically increased not just your market share but your perception as well.

Nike and Apple sometimes fit into the second category–the iPhone and some of Nike’s clothing options are clearly different/better. Starbucks did it when they launched their ice cream.

On the other hand, there are literally thousands of organizations (including non-profits) that head down the path of mediocrity by rushing to offer 57 varieties, merely to please today’s shareholders, merely because they can.

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!

Tip: Be overly generous allocating time for appointments and leave comfortable gaps in between. End your appointments early and protect the gaps. Don’t use the time you’ve created to stuff in another call or talk with people. Use it to sit quietly and let your thoughts wash over you.

Teams

There is a lot devoted these days to teams and team effectiveness. Les McKeown’s recent book, The Synergist is a great one to read on the subject. But even Les sites the dangers of teams leading to least common denominator decisions. In effect, standing between the need for, and the origination of, bold ideas that reach beyond rather than just maintaining or improving current circumstances.

My best ideas, or at least the ones that seem best at their moments of emergence, often come to me in the shower. Not unlike Archimedes, when my head is clear after a good night’s sleep. In an unexplainable way, the solution to what I’ve wrestled with for days just arises through the lather of shampoo and conditioner.

From that point forward, however, my teams are great resources to help me reject, or build upon, refine and mobilize the ideas.

Tip: Start the day in your office with the door closed. Courteously let people know that part of your responsibility is to think deeply about your job and the company, and that you need undisturbed time to do it, before you start interacting with others.

Email

Over a year ago, I grew concerned about the amount of time I was spending with emails that weren’t contributing to my performance as a CEO. I decided to categorize my inbox at the end of each day: helpful or not.

Within just a few days, I was astounded and embarrassed by the results. On average, I was spending over a half day a week with correspondence not directly related to the decisions I needed to make, the direction I needed to set or the example I needed to establish for my organization.

Tip: Ask people, again courteously, only to include you on the address line of emails they believe are directly important to the performance of your job and to CC you on all others. It will take time for them to adjust. So again, be courteous, but let them know when you’ve spent time reading something they’ve sent that was not helpful and that you may or may not choose to read the CC’s.

Idea Book

One of the most influential CEO’s I met early in my early career always carried a small, leather flip pad in his jacket or shirt pocket. From time-to-time he’d pull it out and quickly jot something down. Just a few words or a sketch that wouldn’t distract him at all from the conversation, the task of the moment or even from loosing eye contact.

Later he explained that his flip books were full of ideas that he didn’t have time to address at the moment but wanted not to lose. And that the greatest contributions he’d made to his company started in his flip book.

Tip: The Mark Cross brand of flip book that he carried, and I still do, isn’t easy to find now. But Moleskine and others make great substitutes. Get one, use it and glance through it at the end of every day. It might drive a eureka for you in the next morning’s shower.

Just say no

We’re all flattered to be invited to discussions with our teams, but like email, well-intentioned others will control your life, if you let them. In this instance, however, you’ll also be enabling them to rely on you more than they should and to coopt your support, which retards their own effectiveness.

Tip: When a colleague or employee invites you to join a discussion, simply ask, “Will this help me do what I need to be doing for the company, and could this event be done without me?”

Things that distract us from our most important roles in our jobs seem to be growing exponentially. Use these tips to regain time to think deeply about your highest and best contributions as a CEO – and to accomplish them.

Dick Cross has worked for more than 25 years transforming under-performing companies into powerhouses. Dick has been the Chairman, CEO, or President at eight of those companies, and has mentored more than 100 CEOs at others.

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.

by Greg Bier

The desire and skills to be a successful entrepreneur can be recognized early in a person’s life. Many young people realize the value of hard work, creativity, and effective marketing in their own way and try to relay those skills into profit. With the guidance and direction of parents and experienced entrepreneurs, the young entrepreneurial spirit can begin to form.

Signs of the Young Entrepreneur

While children or young adults might not necessarily have a business plan or feasibility study in hand, they do have certain traits that demonstrate that entrepreneurial drive. The most concrete sign for these students is the desire to earn money.  Whether it takes the form of the age-old lemonade stand, mowing the lawn, or babysitting, the knowledge of working for a profit exists. Common traits found in young entrepreneurs include independence, creativity, persistence, and confidence. By matching these traits up with the motivation for profit, a budding entrepreneur is born.

Key Lessons for the Young Entrepreneur

In a world where it seems children can get anything they want, it’s important for a young entrepreneur to struggle a bit to develop motivation and inspire creativity. Being a bit stingy with a general allowance motivates children to find ways to earn money. It also communicates the value of money so they know where it comes from, how to manage it, and how to determine the real value of a product. Young entrepreneurs learn “opportunity cost” through this process by analyzing their work and time in comparison to the cost of what they want to buy. This provides a life lesson as well as a business lesson.

Some parents might balk at the idea of making their children spend their own money at a young age, but this lesson is key for the young entrepreneur. Children will begin to scrutinize what they want and what they are willing to pay with their own funds. If a parent buys everything, then they only see half of this equation: how much they want something. The value of the process is finding that balance between desire and spending.

A concrete way to show this process to children is through setting up a bank account. They can see their income vs. their spending in a very organized way. Children also benefit from understanding how checks and debit cards work. Some older people still have a hard time understanding that, when you use a debit card, that money is gone. Even though checks might seem obsolete in our technological age, they do offer a more hands-on experience in actually writing out the amount deducted, as well as in balancing a checkbook. As mentioned earlier, this is a lesson many adults could benefit from, and it is essential to an entrepreneur.

Avenues for the Young Entrepreneur

A key facet of this process is the student’s ability to come up with ideas to earn money. The creative spark begins early. They may begin branching out and realize the assets they possess, such as video games, CDs, DVDs, and toys, and begin to sell those online via eBay or Craigslist. Online ventures open up a whole new world for potential entrepreneurs, as long as they are guided and supervised by parents. As a child becomes more interested, he or she may express a desire to work with a parent, or for the family business. This is a great opportunity for a young entrepreneur to learn how a business is established and maintained, as well as providing certain tax advantages for you, the business owner.

Young entrepreneurs also benefit from any experience that relies on teamwork. Athletics teaches goal orientation, social skills, and the importance of communication. In a similar way, school activities, such as plays, promote self-confidence, creativity, and public speaking skills. The goal of these activities is to have a child engaged and involved with other children. If this is a fairly diverse group, then your child can learn how to be open-minded and conscientious,

Games also have the potential to provide great entrepreneurial lessons. Games such as Sims 2: Open for Business Expansion Pack, Lemonade Tycoon, DQ Tycoon, and Hotel Giant build problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. Many children think they are just having fun, but they are acquiring essential business skills as well.

Young entrepreneurs display traits of venture-related success early in life. If pursuing those skills is a goal shared by children and parents, a multitude of opportunities and growth experiences are available. The independence, self-confidence, and drive that children possess can translate to a successful business, as well as a successful life. In nurturing these skills, it’s important that you, as a guide and teacher, provide your children real-life, practical experiences that show them how money is earned, as well as how they can analyze their wants and their needs in spending their hard-earned income. Those are lessons they’ll carry with them, no matter their entrepreneurial path in life.

Dr. Greg Bier is a Professor of Management at the University of Missouri. He leads the newly formedEntrepreneurshipAlliance in the RobertJ. TrulaskeSr. CollegeofBusiness. He is also a partner with Entrepreneur MO. Follw Greg @gregbier

Game-Changing Global Entrepreneurs

A Conversation on Visionary Women Entrepreneurs

Investing in Emerging Markets

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.

“I’m incredibly impressed with the quality of the companies we are seeing at our panels this year,” said Endeavor co-founder and CEO Linda Rottenberg. “In particular, we’re seeing a whole new generation of fast-growing technology oriented companies emerging in growth markets that are equal to what we see coming out of US tech hubs.”

Endeavor Entrepreneurs have had a significant track record of creating thousands of jobs and building sustainable growth models in their home countries. The International Selection Panel is the culmination of a rigorous multi-step Search & Selection process where top local and international business leaders interview and then offer guidance to entrepreneur candidates. Post-selection, Endeavor provides entrepreneurs with customized services provided by local business mentors and volunteers from Fortune 500 companies, consulting firms and top U.S. business schools. Additionally, Endeavor’s Catalyst program co-invests in Endeavor Entrepreneurs’ professional funding rounds.

Endeavor will host three more International Selection Panels this year in London (June); Istanbul (October) and Miami (December).

Entrepreneur(s)/Companies selected:

Argentina

Entrepreneurs: Pablo Orlando, Daniel Jejcic
Company: Good People
Description: Founded in 2008, Good People is building a global community for action sports fans both online via its social e-commerce site, and offline through its 12 brick-and-mortar stores and partnerships with industry leaders including Disney’s X-Games.

Brazil

Entrepreneurs: Wagner Furtado, Marcio Furtado
Company: Cash Monitor
Description: Wagner Furtado and Marcio Furtado, both from the financial services sector, founded Cash Monitor to help companies manage accounts payable and receivable, which often arrive from different parties at different times in different formats/currencies. Cash Monitor’s two solutions—conciliator credit cards for retailers/service providers and consolidated financial statements for large companies—reduce costs, improve security, and empower CFOs. Cash Monitor targets clients in industries with tight margins (e.g. retail, aviation, and diagnostic laboratories).

Entrepreneurs: Rogério Gabriel
Company: Prepara Cursos
Description: Prepara Cursos offers young, middle class Brazilians more than 70 computer-based vocational and language courses at affordable prices, providing them with the knowledge and skills required to secure their first job. The company serves more than 200,000 students in 350 branches throughout Brazil.

Chile

Entrepreneurs: Paolo Escobar, Eduardo Donoso
Company: Bionativa
Description: Bionativa develops, produces and sells natural pesticides to fruit growers in Chile. Founded in 2002, Bionativa is now riding the wave of demand for organic produce and growing quickly. The company has a six-person R&D team. Currently selling to Chile’s fruit exporters, the entrepreneurs have plans for regional expansion.

Entrepreneurs: Victor Devia
Company: OpenDat
Description: OpenDat develops and sells software that enables mining companies to on-board and manage employees more efficiently and cheaply than they currently do. HR management is a major pain point in the mining industry due to the highly regulated workflow of miners. The company sells its product to the major copper mines in Chile and it plans to move into the Peruvian and Colombian markets this year.

Entrepreneurs: Alfredo Gomez, Patricio Rojas
Company: Scrum
Description: Based in Chile’s mining centre of Antofagasta, Scrum provides copper and gold mining companies with software that allows them to monitor the quality and track the production process of their products from start of production to client delivery.

Colombia

Entrepreneurs: Andres Alban, Mauricio Hoyos
Company: Conexred
Description: Conexred brings financial services and products to Colombia’s lower class population. The company has a network of terminals that facilitate the third-party sale of products such as pre-paid cell phone minutes and financial transfers. Conexred places terminals in neighborhood cafes, drugstores, and convenience shops, giving Colombian microentrepreneurs the opportunity to supplement their income.

Mexico

Entrepreneurs: Jesús Saro Boardman
Company: FAGRO
Description: Fagro develops, produces and sells organic fertilizers to Mexican farmers. Fagro’s products allow farmers to export from Mexico to markets with stringent organic certification requirements and environmental regulations.

Entrepreneurs: Luis Pernia, Luis Martinez
Company: Proa
Description: Proa builds personalized safety and security solutions for new construction projects undertaken by contractors and architecture firms. The company both consults with clients on their structures’ specific needs in the context of international safety standards and partners with vendors to supply installations such as doors and alarm systems.

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.