Common Questions and Myths
How do some of the most successful entrepreneurs start their companies?
What is have their idea and pre-test it with people before it actually gets big.
This activity involves attracting public attention to a product or business through paid announcements.
What is Advertising
Term for the smallest version of a product built to test a single hypothesis with customers.
What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Has over 300 patents, dropped out of Reed college, and founded apple in March of 1967.
Who is Steve Jobs?
The early stage funding round often from founders, friends, family, and angel investors used to build a prototype or initial product.
What is Seed (or Pre-seed) funding?
How do entrepreneurs make their products appealing to consumers?
What is make the product cost effective and and accessible to most people of many different backgrounds.
This is a form of protection that applies to published and unpublished literary, scientific, and artistic works.
What is Copyright
The Business Model tool with nine building blocks (customer segments, value proposition, channels).
What is the Business Model Canvas?
Is the owner of Washington Post, began his first business in high school, worked on wall street in the 1900’s, and founded Amazon in his garage.
Who is Jeff Bezos?
The financial metric showing how long a startup can operate before it runs out of cash.
What is Runway?
True or False: Uncalculated risks are crucial to the success of a new company?
False, uncalculated risks lead to failure in the future.
This term is a detailed method, made beforehand, for managing a company.
What is Planning
The test to check whether customers will actually pay for the product.
What is a Payment / Pre-sell / Concierge test?
Played himself in an episode of Big Bang Theory, had a net worth of $116 Billion in 2020, dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year and founded Microsoft.
Who is Bill Gates?
The bootstrapping practice that relies on personal funds, revenue, and tight controls rather than external VC money.
What is Bootstrapping?
True or false: Your social media following determines your ultimate success?
False, social media is not a way to measure success.
This term refers to a form of financing for a company in which the business gives up partial ownership and control of the business in exchange for capital over a limited time frame.
What is Venture Capital
The stage after seed where startups raise significant capital to scale product market fit and grow teams.
What is Series A funding?
Was deemed the first black billionaire, received the presidential medal of freedom in 2013, won miss black tennessee beauty pageant in 1971, and starred in the show “The Oprah Winfrey Show”
Who is Oprah Winfrey?
The stage after seed where startups raise significant capital to scale product market fit and grow teams.
What is Series A funding?
What do entrepreneurs’ academic backgrounds typically look like?
What is have a degree in accounting but no background with business startup.
This term refers to a form of legal protection for words, names, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish goods and services.
What is Trademark
The ratio often compared to CAC to determine sustainability. how much revenue value a customer brings vs how much it costs to acquire them.
What is the LTV:CAC ratio?
Wrote The Gospel of Wealth, sold his company for $480 million in 1901, gave away a large portion of his wealth, and was on top of the steel industry in the late 19th century.
Who is Andrew Carnegie?
Metric measuring the money a company spends to acquire a single customer.
What is Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)?