8-30-2016, Entrepreneur -- When I first took the helm as executive director of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center over a year ago, I brought with me 15 years of experience in the Silicon Valley venture capital community. I’d been through tech booms and busts, economic upswings and downturns, so I was feeling an abundance of confidence: Like anyone who’s been in a profession for over a decade, I (initially) found it easy to sit back and think I'd "seen it all.”
I was mistaken; in fact, my first year of leading the Center taught me, through the experience of others as well as my own, that when it comes to starting and leading any young entrepreneurial organization, every day is filled with surprises and unexpected lessons.
The Nasdaq Entrepreneur Center, for those who don't know, is a new San Francisco-based non-profit organization designed to educate, innovate and connect aspiring and current entrepreneurs. Since the center's 2014 inception, some 2,000 entrepreneurs have gained from its classes and programs. Through interviews I conducted with the Center’s Young Executive Advisory Board members, I myself gleaned five practical lessons that can help any entrepreneur who dreams of starting something big:
- Customer problems are solved on a continuum, not with a single solution.
- Data cannot be collected retroactively.
- Patience for your company's most important problems is essential.
- Strategy time is crucial.
- Never deprioritize your team in pursuit of more working time.
Here are the direct words of those entrepreneurs:
1. Aleda Schaffer, strategic partnerships manager, American Airlines
'Customers are more than just a single problem they’re trying to solve.'
"Coming from venture capital, I was used to finding a single problem to solve. With the Center, I expected the single [biggest] problem to be an entrepreneur’s need to fund-raise -- and that this would drive the focus of our programming. But it quickly became clear that our customers needed a richer experience beyond just investor guidance; they responded to classes aimed at design thinking, sales and marketing, PR and media training and even organizational management. Don’t get me wrong -- they still wanted to meet investors, but it wasn’t a 'be all' solution.
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