The Great Recession threatened the well-being of tens of millions of Americans, dramatically weakened the working class, hollowed out the middle class, and strengthened the position of the very wealthy. Against this backdrop, the hit reality show Shark Tank premiered in 2009. Featuring ambitious entrepreneurs chasing support from celebrity investors, the show offered a version of the American Dream that still seemed possible to many, where a bright idea and a well-honed pitch could lift a bootstrap business to new heights of success. More than a decade later, Shark Tank still airs regularly on multiple networks, and its formula has sparked imitators everywhere, from elite universities to elementary school classrooms. In Entertaining Entrepreneurs, Daniel Horowitz shows how Shark Tank's version of entrepreneurship disguises and distorts the opportunities and traps of capitalism. Digging into today's cult of the entrepreneur, Horowitz charts its rise from the rubble of economic crisis and its spread as a mainstay of American culture, and he explores its flawed view of what it really takes to succeed in business. Horowitz offers more than a look at one television phenomenon. He is the perfect guide to the portrayal of entrepreneurship in business school courses, pitch competitions, popular how-to books, and scholarly works, as well as the views of real-world venture capitalists.

"In 2007, with the advent of the Great Recession, tens of millions of Americans faced challenges that threatened their economic and psychological well-being. Central to this recession were the threats to the nexus between family and work, with many forces hollowing out the middle class and greatly weakening the health of the working class. Against this backdrop, the hit reality show Shark Tank premiered in 2009 and provided a version of the 'American Dream' that was modest and even tangible. In a time of economic upheaval, the show has offered visions of ambitious entrepreneurs chasing after this dream, often successfully so. In a time of dystopian circumstances, the show has offered its audience utopian pleasures. Cultural historian Daniel Horowitz ties these two threads together, observing that it is no coincidence that Shark Tank launched when the effects of the Great Recession were widely felt and provides a window into the ways mass media explains the opportunities, traps, and dynamics of capitalism. He examines the pervasive popularity of the cult of the entrepreneur and digs into the entrepreneurial culture genre to explain just how this particular manifestation of capitalist culture distorts economic reality and affects the public's sense of what's possible in the 'American Dream' today"--

Start Small, Stay Small is a step-by-step guide to launching a self-funded startup. If you're a desktop, mobile or web developer, this book is your blueprint to getting your startup off the ground with no outside investment.This book intentionally avoids topics restricted to venture-backed startups such as: honing your investment pitch, securing funding, and figuring out how to use the piles of cash investors keep placing in your lap.This book assumes: You don't have $6M of investor funds sitting in your bank account You're not going to relocate to the handful of startup hubs in the world You're not going to work 70 hour weeks for low pay with the hope of someday making millions from stock options There's nothing wrong with pursuing venture funding and attempting to grow fast like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It just so happened that most people are not in a place to do this.Start Small, Stay Small also focuses on the single most important element of a startup that most developers avoid: marketing. There are many great resources for learning how to write code, organize source control, or connect to a database. This book does not cover the technical aspects developers already know or can learn elsewhere. It focuses on finding your idea, testing it before you build, and getting it into the hands of your customers.

Entertainment Marketing NOW: Every Platform, Technology, and Opportunity Covers film, cable, broadcast, music, sports, publishing, social media, gaming, and more Reflects powerful trends ranging from smartphones to globalization Demonstrates breakthrough strategies integrating advertising, promotion, PR, and online content distribution By industry insiders with decades of experience as leaders and consultants Entertainment spending is soaring worldwide, driven by new technologies, new platforms, new business models, and unrelenting demand amongst seven billion consumers. That means entertainment marketing opportunities are soaring, too. But this business is more complex and competitive than ever–and it’s changing at breakneck speed. Now, two leading practitioners show how to transform content into profits today and tomorrow...any content, on any platform, in any market, worldwide. You’ll master innovative new ways to grab consumers’ attention and wallets fast...make your experiences wannasee, haftasee, mustsee...drive more value through social platforms, mobile technologies, and integrated marketing strategies...overcome challenges ranging from bad buzz to piracy...fully leverage licensing, merchandising, and sponsorships...and successfully market all forms of entertainment.

The Wall Street Journal Bestseller featured in Bloomberg, Fast Company, Masters of Scale, the Motley Fool, Marketplace and more. An indispensable guide to building a startup and breaking down the barriers for diverse entrepreneurs from the visionary venture capitalist and pioneering entrepreneur Kathryn Finney. Build the Damn Thing is a hard-won, battle-tested guide for every entrepreneur who the establishment has left out. Finney, an investor and startup champion, explains how to build a business from the ground up, from developing a business plan to finding investors, growing a team, and refining a product. Finney empowers entrepreneurs to take advantage of their unique networks and resources; arms readers with responses to investors who say, “great pitch but I just don’t do Black women”; and inspires them to overcome naysayers while remaining “100% That B*tch.” Don’t wait for the system to let you in—break down the door and build your damn thing. For all the Builders striving to build their businesses in a world that has overlooked and underestimated them: this is the essential guide to knowing, breaking, remaking and building your own rules of entrepreneurship in a startup and investing world designed for and by the “Entitleds.”

You are in charge of your own personal branding as an entrepreneur. Accordingly, if you wish to achieve great things in the business world, LinkedIn is the first logical place to start the process of building your personal brand . If you disregard the importance of branding, your ambitions are likely to be frustrated, and your competitors are more likely to win. If you do, you are more likely to win and succeed in your business objectives, whatever they are. LinkedIn Mastery for Entrepreneurs was written for anyone who wishes to maximise the many applications of LinkedIn to build their personal brand. By employing LinkedIn to achieve your objectives, you must learn to harness the process of becoming a thought leader on LinkedIn. Author, Chris J Reed, is undeniably one of the world's leading experts on LinkedIn. Maintaining over 60,000 LinkedIn connections, he has continued to uphold his status as one of the world's most viewed LinkedIn profiles. He is also an Official LinkedIn Power Profile. Chris's book will help you to tailor your own LinkedIn profile so that you too can start to yield its benefits as a powerful branding tool. Chris J Reed built his entire Black Marketing business exclusively on LinkedIn, and his business continues to grow and prosper via LinkedIn. LinkedIn Mastery for Entrepreneurs gives the reader valuable insights into many areas of LinkedIn, including: - What is LinkedIn? Why Use LinkedIn as an Entrepreneur? - Master Your LinkedIn Profile Like a Pro - Why LinkedIn Beats Facebook for B2B Marketing - How to Message Professionally for Results - How to Become a Thought Leader on LinkedIn - How to Develop Your Own Personal Brand in LinkedIn

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER As Alexis Ohanian learned when he helped to co-found the immensely popular reddit.com, the internet is the most powerful and democratic tool for disseminating information in human history. And when that power is harnessed to create new communities, technologies, businesses or charities, the results can be absolutely stunning. In this book, Alexis will share his ideas, tips and even his own doodles about harnessing the power of the web for good, and along the way, he will share his philosophy with young entrepreneurs all over the globe. At 29, Ohanian has come to personify the dorm-room tech entrepreneur, changing the world without asking permission. Within a couple of years of graduating from the University of Virginia, Ohanian did just that, selling reddit for millions of dollars. He's gone on to start many other companies, like hipmunk and breadpig, all while representing Y Combinator and investing in over sixty other tech startups. WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION is his personal guidebook as to how other aspiring entrepreneurs can follow in his footsteps.

WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER From the cofounder of a $40 billion software company comes an invaluable guide packed with $1 trillion worth of advice from some of the world’s most successful and recognizable entrepreneurs. Over the past 20 years, first as an early employee at Salesforce and later as a cofounder of Okta (a publicly traded software company now valued at over $40 billion), Frederic Kerrest has met the most successful entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley and beyond. He’s discussed every angle of entrepreneurship with them—what works, what doesn’t, and what to do when things get rough—and he’s taken notes. The result is this unmatched blueprint for building and growing a business, drawn from his own experience as well as that of his fellow visionaries and business leaders, who have collectively built over $1 trillion worth of wealth for themselves and their investors. They include Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz), Eric Yuan (Zoom), Stewart Butterfield (Slack), Aneel Bhusri (Workday), Julia Hartz (Eventbrite), Aaron Levie (Box), Fred Luddy (ServiceNow), Melanie Perkins (Canva), Patty McCord (Netflix), Sebastian Thrun (Udacity), and dozens of other luminaries. These ideas and practices aren’t taught in business schools. They’ve been learned the hard way, through trial and error in the real world of business. Kerrest has battle-tested them himself, so he knows their power. Organized by topic in roughly the order that leaders will encounter them as they scale their businesses, this book is the ultimate guide to taking a company all the way from founding to IPO—and beyond.

With business seemingly everywhere on television, from the risks of the retail and restaurant trade to pitching for investment or competing to become the next 'apprentice', The Television Entrepreneurs draws upon popular business-oriented shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons' Den to explore the relationship between television and business. Based on extensive interviews with key industry and business figures and drawing on new empirical research into audience perceptions of business, this book examines our changing relationship with entrepreneurship and the role played by television in shaping our understanding of the world of business. The book identifies the key structural shifts in both the television industry and the wider economy that account for these changing representations, whilst examining the extent to which television's developing interest in business and entrepreneurial issues is simply a response to wider social and economic change in society. Does a more commercial and competitive television marketplace, for instance, mean that the medium itself, through a particular focus on drama, entertainment and performance, now plays a key role in re-defining how society frames its engagements with business, finance, entrepreneurship, risk and wealth creation? Mapping the narratives of entrepreneurship constructed by television and analysing the context that produces them, The Television Entrepreneurs investigates how the television audience engages with such programmes and the possible impact these may have on public understanding of the nature of business.

Challenging simplistic claims that Chinese corporations merely serve Communist Party goals, this book argues we cannot understand these corporations without tracing their dynamic evolution within a unique socio-political ecosystem. Vivid case studies illuminate the strange hybrid structures and networks that are essential for corporate success in the Chinese habitat. Tracing the reciprocal impacts between Chinese corporations and their environment, Colin S. C. Hawes reveals how corporations' political adaptations have raised serious obstacles for their international expansion and worsened China's environmental crisis. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that synthesizes insights from behavioural economics, science and Chinese philosophy, this book proposes innovative solutions to the damaging impacts of Chinese corporations. It makes a compelling case for redirecting the vital energy of corporations and government officials in more productive and sustainable directions.