Entrepreneur Corner. Please check it out.
Starting a company is one of the most rewarding endeavors you can ever undertake. I'd recommend it to anyone. I speak from experience: Launching VentureBeat has been an amazing experience I'll never regret. I've grown as an individual in innumerable ways. Building something goes to the core of what we as humans are about. But creating a company is also also one of the most difficult and painful tasks you can engage in. Some entrepreneurs make it look easy. But I've made plenty of business and operational mistakes since starting three years ago. Sometimes decision-making has slowed the business in frustrating ways. I also think I've worked WAY too hard. Surely, it can be easier!
Well, that's why we've launched this corner. Its purpose is to provide the best answers to questions entrepreneurs might have while starting and driving a young company. We've decided to launch it quickly, without fanfare and will continue to build it and organize it so that it becomes more useful over time. It's still early, so give it some time. We'll be searching for the best advice on the web and posting it at the Corner as we find it.
For now, we see three main areas where a young company needs help: 1) finding financing, 2) handling all the business and management issues, and 3) deciding what products you need to run your business on, whether it be software or hardware.
We're kicking things off by inviting you to ask any questions you might have about operating a company in the downturn. We're delighted that Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, a CEO-in-residence at Accel Partners, one of Silicon Valley's leading venture capital firms, has offered to personally respond to your questions. She's a pro. She helped run an Internet company (Yodlee) through the previous downturn. Before joining Accel this month, she was at Google and led its Latin America and Asia-Pacific build out, including all operations there. Head over to Entrepreneur Corner and submit your question by Tuesday. She'll pick out the most interesting ones and respond by the end of the week.
We hope you enjoy the Corner as we build it out over the coming months.
If you're a veteran entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, a lawyer, accountant or other professional with solid advice for entrepreneurs, and you'd like to write a piece for the Corner, please submit your idea to the usual place.
Feedback welcome!