At the Entrepreneur's Week panel Translating Your Idea Into Reality at NYU's Tisch auditorium, heard some tips for entrepreneurs, some were typical, but with new nuance.
- Guard your cash. "Spend imagination,"where you can, instead of spending. Barter. Give options. (Steve Brotman, Managing Director at Greenhill SAVP talked of offering a landlord 50,000 options to save $2,000 - $3,000 a month on rent. "They don't know how much of the company that is," but they get excited for the chance to be involved.)
- Good advisers
- Get a “rock star” sales person. They’re very rare. Find one, pay him/her what they’re work.
- Don't keep the idea to yourself. Get it out there.
- Don't worry about lawsuits and be overly legalistic. When you're starting, and don't have $1/2 million or $1 million in assets, you won't likely be sued. A plain language agreement is often fine. Brotman said he knew he was going out of bounds to say this.
- Don't be greedy with your equity. Don't be stupid, but to get the right people give enough away to get them invested (and vested) in the project. This also Brotman, who said you could say to a top sales person, as an example, not necessarily literal: "If the company makes $5 million in revenue this year, I'll give you 10 percent."
(Here are some more I've written before, based on Naked Media.)
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