Doug Richard's School for Startups

Global Network for Entrepreneurs with Disabilities

The Global Network for Entrepreneurs with Disabilities is an association dedicated to helping People with Disabilities (PwD) start and run their own businesses. The GNED works as an advocate for disabled business owners worldwide, and serves as an information resource for disabled business owners, disabled people starting their own businesses, local communities, national and international governmental bodies. Most recently, for example, GNED gave presentations to the US Business Leadership Network at their annual conference in Chicago.

Simon Cox, a founder of the GNED, says ““ The GNED is...

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Writing, Designing, Publishing, Distributing, Promoting and Selling a Book Profitably

Get a Book into Amazon's Bookstore by Publishing Through CreateSpace

Writing, publishing and selling a book with today’s technology can take as little as a month. In this article we review specific steps you can take to design, write, publish, distribute and promote your book profitably.

Identify your target market and determine what they need to know and how they need to learn it. Note: Putting this step first insures that your book will make money, and if you find it...

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Making All the Right Mistakes

That said, the history of any business is based on mistakes made and lessons learned. The more seasoned you become as a business owner, the more willing you become to make little mistakes that might lead to big profits. The trick is, of course, knowing which mistakes to make.

Why Do People Hate Lifestyle Businesses?

I have never understood the antipathy that otherwise rational people have for the so-called “lifestyle business”. Quite recently I heard someone in a position of responsibility in the small business community disparage lifestyle businesses. They weren’t real businesses, he said. They only enriched the owner, he said. What the f**k, I thought to myself?

Even more puzzling was the unthinking regard that everyone holds for the externally funded business. Get angel funding, get venture capital, get debt from a bank...

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Disruptive Technologies

Technology comes in two types. Sustaining technologies that are incremental in nature and support existing market leaders, and disruptive technologies that represent complete paradigm shifts and displace existing market leaders. Disruptive technologies are the tools used by effective entrepreneurs to unseat market leaders.

Practical Q&A With Doug Richard: Mentoring, Recruiting & Seeing Opportunities

At a recent Start Here: Starting & Growing a Successful Business event held in London, we received the following questions. We’ve taken a moment to respond to them. We thought others might find the answers interesting.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating & Testing Business Models

To Entrepreneurs starting a business for the first (second or third time) every business looks different. To an investor, who evaluates hundreds of businesses a year, businesses clearly fall into groups.

Jenny Twigg, Managing Director of LilyPins

Jenny Twigg, Managing Director of Lily Pins was runner up in the Pitch 2009 competition. She will be joining Doug Richard at the Perfect Your Pitch Event on June 21. This event will be delivered at University College of London and will also be presented online via S4Stv. As this interview indicates, Jenny and her business are quite amazing . . .

We’re a Volcano Company: Working Remote From Kenya

As readers of this column know, School for Startups (S4S) closed its office doors last summer and we all became remote workers. The idea of not having an office seemed at the time to offer much more upside than down side.

Pitching Investors: Mastering the Story That Sells

By Doug Richard

Before You Pitch

Before we drive right into mastering the single most important skill you need to succeed in gaining investment from a pitch meeting, let’s have a two minute review of what you need to have in place before you get one. Assuming your intent is to raise funds for your business, your business should have either a track record of successful performance measured in cash, customers or market share. Alternatively it can have some kind of intellectual...

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