Nikhil Shah, founder of radio site Mixcloud, shares his tips on how to launch an online company for next to nothing and attract real talent along the way. This is bootstrapping, Mixcloud style.

“Starting your own business is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down,” says Nikhil Shah, founder of Mixcloud, the online radio website that launched yesterday.

Fortunately, Shah and his co-founder Nico Perez have made this, their first venture, fly. Here’s their bootstrapping guide for wannabe entrepreneurs.

Click here for the full report

MARY MAZZIO, a filmmaker who had already produced one movie about entrepreneurs, decided to make another on the subject last year, this one inspired by the work of a nonprofit group focused on at-risk youths.

Ever since that first movie, “Lemonade Stories,” was produced in 2004, she said, “I’ve been obsessed with the notion of entrepreneurs,” adding, “It really is just a metaphor for being an adventure in life.”

Click here for the full story

This list is compiled by focus.com and has the 100 greatest entrepreneurs of the last 100 years, enjoy it and let me know what you think of the list.

I have few issues with the list, but whatever, great list.
Andrew Carnegie stands at No 1 of the list.

Clcik here for the full list

A truly great post by Anthony Tjan, It’s a most read.

The late Oscar Levant — American pianist, composer, actor, hypochondriac, and world-class neurotic — once remarked, “There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.” As Levant saw it, this blur gave him creative impetus. Just as Levant achieved renown by navigating the lighter and darker sides of his imagination, couldn’t the same be said of great entrepreneurs?

To be truly great, entrepreneurs need to be a little…out there. After all, fearless creativity, maverick thinking and risk taking seldom show up in the middle of the bell curve. As venture capitalists, we see our fair share of aspiring and veteran entrepreneurs, and have often wondered if the man or woman standing before us was brilliant, deluded, or a combination of the two. In one of my previous posts, I explored the relationship between our strengths and weaknesses and how they are often one in the same: your strength is often your weakness and your weakness is often your strength. The goal is to find the optimal balance between the two.

To read the full story, click here

No wonder most businesses are hunkering down and capital investment has been in steep decline.

But when the consensus view is bleak, entrepreneurs scent opportunity. Recessions create a process of creative destruction and throw up once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to acquire distressed assets, to drive up productivity and to generate wealth.

to read full story click here

Here are the top 10 social networks for entrepreneurs. Each helps entrepreneurs succeed by providing them with the guidance, tools and resources they need to setup their company and gain exposure.

Check out the list here

A chance to put your questions to one of Britain’s most admired entrepreneurs

Whether you already run your own business or dream of being an entrepreneur, this event is a unique opportunity to hear from one of the UK’s best-known entrepreneurs about his path to success and his inspirations along the way.

A passionate believer in entrepreneurship (as his recent Government appointment shows), this evening event with Lord Sugar will be encouragement to anyone considering building their own enterprise. Put your questions to Lord Sugar about all aspects of his amazing personal and business journey.

As Lord Sugar says:

“We need entrepreneurs now more than ever, to make sure businesses survive these difficult times and are able to exploit fully the opportunities of tomorrow. Global Entrepreneurship Week presents an important opportunity to showcase the spirit of entrepreneurship that flourishes in the UK, and to raise awareness of enterprise for the nation and the community.

Events like the ‘Inspiring Entrepreneurs’ series help in increasing interest in business, and encourage entrepreneurs and future entrepreneurs to achieve their goals.”

‘In conversation with Lord Sugar’ is the latest in the Inspiring Entrepreneurs series, in partnership with HSBC Start-Up Stars Awards.

To read more and purchase tickets for the event,click here

The London Entrepreneurs’ Challenge is a workshop programme and business plan competition open to all members of UCL and the London Business School that aims to show participants the process of starting a business by helping them do it for themselves.

Clcik here to enter the competition

Saw a very interesting post, although being posted about three years ago i still feel it is very relevant.

(Since I’ve antagonized the venture capital community with last week’s blog, I thought I would complete the picture and “out” entrepreneurs to begin this week. The hard part about writing this blog was narrowing down these lies to ten. Luckily, my partner, Bill Reichert, had already documented this list of the top ten lies of entrepreneurs.)

We get pitched dozens of times every year, and every pitch contains at least three or four of these lies. We provide them not because we believe we can increase the level of honesty of entrepreneurs as much as to help entrepreneurs come up with new lies. At least new lies indicate a modicum of creativity!

1. “Our projections are conservative.” An entrepreneur’s projections are never conservative. If they were, they would be $0. I have never seen an entrepreneur achieve even her most conservative projections. Generally, an entrepreneur has no idea what sales will be, so she guesses: “Too little will make my deal uninteresting; too big, and I’ll look hallucinogenic.” The result is that everyone’s projections are $50 million in year four. As a rule of thumb, when I see a projection, I add one year to delivery time and multiply by .1.
2. “(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010.” Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn’t matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don’t believe this type of forecast because it’s the fifth one of this magnitude that they’ve heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.

Read more

Charitable entrepreneurs proved a real driving force for fund-raising as they donated a staggering £100,000 in a single night to boost the health of children across the North-East.

The impressive total in aid of The Children’s Foundation was the highest ever raised by the Entrepreneurs’ Forum’s annual charity ball, which this year took on a glitzy and glamorous Monte Carlo Formula One theme.

More than 300 of the region’s businesspeople and their guests gathered for the popular event, which was held for the sixth time at the Hilton Hotel in Gateshead.

To read the full story,click here