Zitat des Tages von Vivek Wadhwa:
Innovation is all about people. Innovation thrives when the population is diverse, accepting and willing to cooperate.
When I became an entrepreneur, I had the knowledge to develop and manage budgets, market products and review legal contracts.
Once we increase the proportion of women in technical roles, the challenge is to retain them and ease the transition to senior positions.
A key ingredient in innovation is the ability to challenge authority and break rules.
Entrepreneurship is like a computer game in which you have to master every level before achieving success. Startups repeatedly stumble and have to go back to the drawing board. The best way to skip some levels and to increase the odds of survival is to learn from others who have already played the game.
Most business schools are geared toward churning out investment bankers and management consultants.
Writing a book is usually a full-time job that takes years. I didn't have years. So I decided to crowdsource content for the book.
After my health suffered due to the stress of running my second company, I had to switch careers. But I still didn't want to go back to the corporate world. So I became an academic.
Recruiting talent is no different than any other challenge a startup faces. It's all about selling.
My advice to fledgling entrepreneurs is always the same: build a company that you plan to be with for the next 10 years - that is the best way to increase your chances of success.
Most successful entrepreneurs share their knowledge as a way of giving back. They do not demand compensation. Those who do are usually trying to take advantage of you.
Corporate executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromise when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be carefully sown into the fabric of their companies.
Big companies such as Google and Facebook buy startups at ridiculously high prices - not for their products, but for their people.
Student loan debt is the reason I don't advise students who want to become entrepreneurs to apply to elite, expensive colleges. They can be as successful if they go to a relatively inexpensive public college.
The IPO is no exit for the entrepreneur; it's the start of purgatory.
The truth is that entrepreneurship is more like a roller coaster ride than a cruise.
I realized that, after tasting entrepreneurship, I had become unfit for the corporate world. There was no turning back. The only regret I had was having wasted my life in the corporate world for so long.
I advise all of the entrepreneurs that I know to attend at least one entrepreneurship event every week. The worst thing an entrepreneur can do is to confine his or herself to a cubby hole.
Hiring foreigners is more expensive and more difficult than hiring locals, because of the visa fees and long lead times for visa processing. And companies face a backlash by anti-immigrant groups for hiring foreigners. So they do it only because they have to.
I became an academic so that I could share my knowledge and experience with students.
In my first company, Seer Technologies, where I was chief technology officer, we shied away from the media. We watched every word and were guarded in front of journalists.
If anyone tells you that you're too old to be an entrepreneur or that you have the wrong background, don't listen to them. Go with your gut instincts and pursue your passions.
Ask any venture capitalist, and they will tell you that they consider the experience and completeness of the founding team to be a more important factor in their investment decision than the technology that is being built.
When I start getting embroiled in heated debates and feeling stressed, I just turn everything off and disconnect from the world. I simply tell my colleagues and friends that I am not well and need to cancel all meetings for a day or more. I take it easy - go for a long hike, take a vacation somewhere, or just stay at home and read.
