Finance (Bhide)
This term describes starting a business with modest personal funds rather than outside capital.
What is bootstrapping?
Strategy is described as making an integrated set of these, positioning an organization to win.
What are choices?
This metric represents the number of units that must be sold to cover all costs and break even.
What is volume?
Y Combinator advises founders to focus on these types of activities early on to kickstart growth, even if they aren’t sustainable long-term.
What are things that don't scale?
Entrepreneurs often face unique challenges in decision-making due to the absence of these established company resources.
What are clear ethical guidelines or established policies?
More than 80% of startups on the 1989 Inc. 500 list were financed through these sources.
What are personal savings, credit cards, and second mortgages?
Unlike strategy, this activity focuses on timelines, deliverables, and budgets.
What is planning?
This metric is calculated as the difference between price and direct costs per unit.
What is margin?
Airbnb founders took this approach to engage early users and improve listings.
What is going door-to-door in New York?
These relationships are often the source of ethical dilemmas for entrepreneurs as they balance personal and professional boundaries.
What are family and personal relationships?
These investors prioritize funding startups targeting markets worth at least $100 million.
Who are venture capitalists?
This term describes when plans are mistaken for strategies, often leading to poor outcomes.
What is strategic planning (masquerading as strategy)?
This term refers to the total fixed overhead expenses a business must cover regularly.
What is burn?
This is the most common unscalable activity startups must do to acquire early users.
What is recruiting users manually?
Entrepreneurship is both creative and destructive, a process known as this.
What is creative destruction?
This approach to testing and refining strategies, favored by bootstrappers, contrasts with rigid business plans.
What is try-it, fix-it?
Roger Martin describes strategy and planning as this type of relationship, rather than substitutes.
What are complements?
These costs, such as rent and salaries, remain constant regardless of how many units are produced or sold.
What are indirect costs?
This company used the "Collison installation" method at YC to onboard users by setting up their accounts directly on their laptops.
What is Stripe?
Entrepreneurs operating in developing regions often rely on this type of entrepreneurship that involves adapting proven ideas.
What is imitative entrepreneurship?
Amar Bhide highlights this risk of raising too much money prematurely in startups.
What is diminished flexibility or overspending?
A good strategy positions an organization in this way to outperform competitors.
What is to win or gain a competitive advantage?
This critical business metric shows how many products must be sold to offset all fixed and variable expenses.
What is breakeven volume?
Steve Jobs’ philosophy of quality, described as this phrase, is applied to early user experiences.
What is 'insanely great'?
This famous economist emphasized the dual nature of entrepreneurship in reshaping markets and societies.
Who is Joseph Schumpeter?