STARTUP CULTURE MINDSET A Primer to Building an Amazing Culture and Tribe was written for startup founders or executives who aspire to create an amazing team that buys into the mission. The key is to understand that the founder of a startup or leaders of a company determine the culture on purpose. And in order to do that well, you have to understand the key elements of a culture framework. Based on 20 years of company creation, leadership and observation, I will share with you the key elements of a culture framework: ‣ Leadership: Led by the founders or key leaders of a startup. ‣ Mission: The goal of the startup from a customer point of view. ‣ Values: The core values of the startup, usually determined by the leadership. ‣ Freedom/Accountability: The key mantra to any successful startup. I will delve into each of these four areas of the culture framework in the book. What you can expect from this book is research and knowledge on culture, a defined culture framework, insights from some amazing company founders and quite a few takeaways that you can incorporate immediately into your daily life. For example, you don't become a leader just because you launch a startup or lead a division in a company. You have to acquire years of knowledge, experience and mentor-based insights as a great follower. Those are things you could be doing right now. Your ultimate goal is to establish the framework for an amazing culture before you actually launch the startup. Then when you recruit your first employee, you will know what type of person you are looking for, not based on a skill set, but based on fitting into your culture. The people you recruit will be critical to your success and they need to feel they are setting out on a powerful mission, guided by great leaders, supported by solid values and fueled by a freedom and accountability atmosphere, all to help your customers attain their goal. If a potential recruit does not fit into this type of culture, regardless of skills, don't hire them. Long term, they will disruptthe "tribe" of your other employees and dysfunction will occur. Do everything you can to keep these people out of your company even if it means you still approve of final recommended hires with a "culture" interview. One final thought on the critical importance of creating a great "tribe" for your startup. Quite a few Silicon Valley investors have said this when investing in a startup team. "Give me a great startup team with even a mediocre idea over a weak team with a great idea every time. Because a great team will know when to pivot and they will trust each other to execute. A weak team will simply fail."

The Way Forward for Entrepreneurship Around the World We are in the midst of a startup revolution. The growth and proliferation of innovation-driven startup activity is profound, unprecedented, and global in scope. Today, it is understood that communities of support and knowledge-sharing go along with other resources. The importance of collaboration and a long-term commitment has gained wider acceptance. These principles are adopted in many startup communities throughout the world. And yet, much more work is needed. Startup activity is highly concentrated in large cities. Governments and other actors such as large corporations and universities are not collaborating with each other nor with entrepreneurs as well as they could. Too often, these actors try to control activity or impose their view from the top-down, rather than supporting an environment that is led from the bottom-up. We continue to see a disconnect between an entrepreneurial mindset and that of many actors who wish to engage with and support entrepreneurship. There are structural reasons for this, but we can overcome many of these obstacles with appropriate focus and sustained practice. No one tells this story better than Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem explores what makes startup communities thrive and how to improve collaboration in these rapidly evolving, complex environments. The Startup Community Way is an explanatory guide for startup communities. Rooted in the theory of complex systems, this book establishes the systemic properties of entrepreneurial ecosystems and explains why their complex nature leads people to make predictable mistakes. As complex systems, value creation occurs in startup communities primarily through the interaction of the "parts" - the people, organizations, resources, and conditions involved - not the parts themselves. This continual process of bottom-up interactions unfolds naturally, producing value in novel and unexpected ways. Through these complex, emergent processes, the whole becomes greater and substantially different than what the parts alone could produce. Because of this, participants must take a fundamentally different approach than is common in much of our civic and professional lives. Participants must take a whole-system view, rather than simply trying to optimize their individual part. They must prioritize experimentation and learning over planning and execution. Complex systems are uncertain and unpredictable. They cannot be controlled, only guided and influenced. Each startup community is unique. Replication is enticing but impossible. The race to become "The Next Silicon Valley" is futile - even Silicon Valley couldn't recreate itself. This book: Offers practical advice for entrepreneurs, community builders, government officials, and other stakeholders who want to harness the power of entrepreneurship in their city Describes the core components of startup communities and entrepreneurial ecosystems, as well as an explanation of the differences between these two related, but distinct concepts Advances a new framework for effective startup community building based on the theory of complex systems and insights from systems thinking Includes contributions from leading entrepreneurial voices Is a must-have resource for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, executives, business and community leaders, economic development authorities, policymakers, university officials, and anyone wishing to understand how startup communities work anywhere in the world

An instant New York Times bestseller, Dan Lyons' "hysterical" (Recode) memoir, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "the best book about Silicon Valley," takes readers inside the maddening world of fad-chasing venture capitalists, sales bros, social climbers, and sociopaths at today's tech startups. For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong? HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."

Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses of all kinds, ranging from established companies to early-stage startups, to grow revenues, drive innovation, and transform themselves into truly modern organizations, poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the twenty-first century. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups – building a minimal viable product, customer-focused and scientific testing based on a build-measure-learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot. In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to an entirely new group of organizations: established enterprises like iconic multinationals GE and Toyota, tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio. Drawing on his experiences over the past five years working with these organizations, as well as nonprofits, NGOs, and governments, Ries lays out a system of entrepreneurial management that leads organizations of all sizes and from every industry to sustainable growth and long-term impact. Filled with in-the-field stories, insights, and tools, The Startup Way is an essential road map for any organization navigating the uncertain waters of the century ahead.

World's Best Bank - A Strategic Guide to Digital Transformation is a thorough handbook aimed at leaders and decision-makers who want to transform their entire organization from traditional to digital.

Culture Can Make or Break Your STARTUP A great culture enables you to create an unassailable competitive advantage. It helps you to attract and keep your talent, create happiness in the workplace, increase your people's engagement with their work, drive high performance, and attract investors and customers alike. You improve your odds of growing a successful and sustainable business because your people are aligned with your vision, they know what to do without you telling them, and they move heaven and earth to make the impossible possible. Your startup's culture is more important than your funding, your products, or your marketing, because it underpins all those elements. It can't be left to chance. This is the book that will help you to develop the culture of resilience and adaptability your startup needs to thrive in an era of disruption and uncertainty.

This book presents a comprehensive guide for public relations and strategic communication professionals and entrepreneurs to effectively manage the communication aspects of startups in the context of business in China. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories, current issues, and updated research evidence obtained from entrepreneurs and startup leaders in China, this concise volume provides research-based insights on the best practices for public relations and strategic communication in the unique context of startups. It addresses relationships with stakeholders, public relations practice, leadership communication, and how to leverage the power of social media in the entrepreneurial context. Strategic Communication for Startups and Entrepreneurs in China will be of great benefit to public relations and strategic communication scholars and practitioners, startup leaders and entrepreneurs interested in opportunities in China, and advanced students in public relations, business communication, and entrepreneurship.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Thinkers50 Top 10 Best New Management Books for 2022 A distinguished Harvard Business School professor offers a compelling reassessment and defense of purpose as a management ethos, documenting the vast performance gains and social benefits that become possible when firms manage to get purpose right. Few business topics have aroused more skepticism in recent years than the notion of corporate purpose, and for good reason. Too many companies deploy purpose, or a reason for being, as a promotional vehicle to make themselves feel virtuous and to look good to the outside world. Some have only foggy ideas about what purpose is and conflate it with strategy and other concepts like “mission,” “vision,” and “values.” Even well-intentioned leaders don’t understand purpose’s full potential and engage half-heartedly and superficially with it. Outsiders spot this and become cynical about companies and the broader capitalist endeavor. Having conducted extensive field research, Ranjay Gulati reveals the fatal mistakes leaders unwittingly make when attempting to implement a reason for being. Moreover, he shows how companies can embed purpose much more deeply than they currently do, delivering impressive performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities alike. To get purpose right, leaders must fundamentally change not only how they execute it but also how they conceive of and relate to it. They must practice what Gulati calls deep purpose, furthering each organization’s reason for being more intensely, thoughtfully, and comprehensively than ever before. In this authoritative, accessible, and inspiring guide, Gulati takes readers inside some of the world’s most purposeful companies to understand the secrets to their successes. He explores how leaders can pursue purpose more deeply by navigating the inevitable tradeoffs more deliberately and effectively to balance between short- and long-term value; building purpose more systematically into every key organizational function to mobilize stakeholders and enhance performance; updating organizations to foster more autonomy and collaboration, which in turn allow individual employees to work more purposefully; using powerful storytelling to communicate a reason for being, arousing emotions and building a community of inspired and committed stakeholders; and building cultures that don’t merely support purpose, but also allow employees to link the corporate purpose to their own personal reasons for being. As Gulati argues, a deeper engagement with purpose holds the key not merely to the well-being of individual companies but also to humanity’s future. With capitalism under siege and relatively low levels of trust in business, purpose can serve as a radically new operating system for the enterprise, enhancing performance while also delivering meaningful benefits to society. It’s the kind of inspired thinking that businesses—and the rest of us—urgently need.

Leaders have talked about the importance of corporate culture for decades, but the success of iconic companies like GE, Apple, and Google shows how culture is a strategic lever that can be utilized for driving growth, change, and innovation. In this new age of globalization, rapid technology shifts, and constant disruption, the 21st century marketplace is more volatile and uncertain than ever. To thrive, businesses need a new kind of emphasis around culture. Sara Roberts, former CEO and founder of Roberts Golden and a seasoned executive consultant to dozens of Fortune 500 companies and CEOs, sees how flourishing companies—from established market leaders to the surprising upstarts—share three distinct attributes: Nimble: They are much faster and more agile than ordinary organizations Focused: They use their sense of purpose as a lens to understand and meet the needs of customers and markets Feisty: They play big and act bold to capitalize on advantages and out-muscle the competition For successful companies in this new era, culture is not about playing defense but about going on offense. It's purposely designed, leveraged, and honed to deliver value and drive growth. In Nimble, Focused, Feisty, Roberts provides not only a look into what these organizations are doing differently but also a blueprint and framework so your company can create a cultural strategy to thrive in the new era.