Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i Entrepreneur Magazine

EARLY THIS FALL , I was having lunch with the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company called IAC. You may not know its name, but you definitely know its brands: Match.com, Tinder, CollegeHumor, Vimeo, The Daily Beast, and more. It’s a digital behemoth, and Joey Levin, its CEO, is as sharp as they come. When I first started covering business, lunches like these intimidated me. I was keenly aware of how much more knowledgeable these executives were than I was, and I felt the need to hide my deficiencies. But these days, I understand that the opposite is actually true: When you’re confident in your foundation, you’re able to admit shortcomings. My conversations with CEOs now tend to be about what we’re learning, and what we still want to figure out.…

Q My company is small, and every team member seems necessary. How do I know if I need to fire one? —BEN P., FLORIDA NOTHING IS worse than having to fire an employee. But for business owners, there is nothing more important than removing employees that are disruptive to your mission. This is a lesson I’ve learned over and over again. When I’ve leaned on kindness and given people the benefit of the doubt, it’s often led to a greater investment of time and resources spent on employees who, ultimately, were just not worth it. There’s a popular axiom that suggests you should hire slow and fire fast. That’s great in theory, but I’ve never found it especially practical. Hiring slow can cause you to miss out on potentially valuable…

→ EVEN IN BLACK SWEATPANTS and basic white sneakers, Maria Sharapova is impossible to miss. We meet in late spring in Sarasota, Fla., at the IMG Academy Bollettieri, named for the tennis coach who helped make her famous. His name, this place, are very much part of Sharapova’s often-told rags-to-riches story. Here is where she came—straight from Russia, with her father, Yuri, neither of them knowing much English—to become a tennis star at the age of seven. They had just $700 to their name and got to practice by bicycle because they couldn’t afford a car. Turned out that at seven, Sharapova was still too young to even attend the academy, but Yuri took odd jobs to help keep them afloat until she was, at nine, when she entered with…

When Emma Grede launched size-inclusive fashion brand Good American in 2016 with cofounder Khloe Kardashian, she had an instant hit. Sales topped $1 million on day one. But to build on the momentum, she knew she’d have to continue being honest about the company’s products, mistakes, and decisions. Over the past two years, Good American has done that—expanding into new product categories partly by delivering on customers’ requests, and by being open about what the company can’t deliver, too. Grede urges other founders to adopt a similar transparency: Create a stellar product, and don’t BS your customers. What do entrepreneurs need to focus on for 2019? I hate to say it: authenticity. But it’s true; consumers love a no-bullshit approach. Honesty is what people are craving.…

Adam Bierman could be the poster boy of the modern cannabusiness executive. Clean-cut, young, driven, smooth as a vape hit—about as removed from the bong-bogarting stoner as you can get. He’s also killing it. As cofounder and CEO of marijuana giant MedMen, he has grown the company from a few dinky L.A. dispensaries to the largest cannabis business in the U.S.—made possible by its acquisition of PharmaCann, and a rapid expansion that includes 66 dispensaries and 13 cultivation centers across 12 states. But Bierman says this is just the beginning. You’ve been growing rapidly for nine years. What’s the secret weapon? We had the vision that we could build this marijuana company through brand, through accessibility by way of destigmatizing cannabis and knowing it’s something people could benefit from. But…

Miko Branch is the cofounder and CEO of a multimillion-dollar curly-hair product line called Miss Jessie’s, for women who, like Branch, want to wear their hair naturally. But when she started out 20 years ago, she wasn’t thinking about making products. She just loved working with hair, so she opened a salon. It failed quickly—and yet set her up for future success. STEP 1/ Learn from the past. After hair school, Branch and her sister, Titi, opened a two-chair salon in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood—and then, eager to grow, moved into a larger space without the clientele to support it. “We experienced failure within two years,” Branch says. So they took it as a lesson. They opened a new salon, kept it small, and decided to be more methodical this…

There are two tracks to entrepreneurship: You can dive in and figure it out (hopefully) as you go, or attend a college or a university dedicated to teaching the tools needed by—and harnessing the passion of—entrepreneurs. These classrooms are where tomorrow’s CEOs and startup founders focus their drive and, more important, meet the people who can help turn their ideas into reality. Each year we partner with The Princeton Review to rank the top 25 undergraduate and top 25 graduate schools for entrepreneurs. The annual survey, now in its 13th year, looks at more than 300 colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad and weighs each institution’s commitment to provide its students with world-class mentors, professors, and alumni and an environment for budding entrepreneurs to thrive. UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS for…

FUND-RAISING Insider experience matters more. INVESTORS HAVE always asked entrepreneurs the same two questions: Why does the product matter, and why are you the one to actually go and do it? But those questions will take on additional meaning in 2019. In the past, when investors flocked to support flashy tech products, an entrepreneur just needed to be sharp, savvy, and full of vision. But now more VCs like me are looking toward companies that tackle problems in unsexy fields, like construction and waste management. In the first half of 2018 alone, investors plowed a record $1.1 billion into construction tech startups. And these industries require founders who know their problems intimately. More than 60 percent of our portfolio entrepreneurs come from the industries they are trying to optimize, for…

Jane Buckingham started trend-hunting at age 17, when she wrote her first book, Teens Speak Out . Some three decades later, she’s still hot on the scent—and still hanging out with teens, because doing so provides a keyhole view of the future. “They’re not so set in their ways, so that’s where you see change happening,” Buckingham says. The firm she founded in 2009, Trendera, forecasts what’s next through deep research and consumer surveys on everything from technology to gender fluidity. Entrepreneurs should pay particular attention to shifts in culture, she says, “because when attitudes change, there’s always opportunity.” What macro trends are you seeing in 2019? Entertainment is all about to change. Youth culture is where trends often take root. There’s a company called Brat that’s…

Any green entrepreneur knows the problem well: Major social media platforms won’t run cannabis ads. They’re shut out of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and even spammy services like Taboola and Outbrain—the places most startups rely upon to drive sales. In response, cannabis companies often throw money at influencers, hoping to at least gain some presence on the sites. And at conferences, people in the industry ask each other, “How are you growing in a Facebook-less world?” But the best answers may not come from other people working in cannabis. They may come from someone like Polly Rodriguez, whose company, Unbound, sells sexual health products—another industry shut out of social media advertising, but one that’s been around longer than most cannabis companies. That means she’s had more time to work on…

A brown delivery box on wheels stops outside a HobbyTown in Fairfield, Conn. A muscular, bald-headed UPS driver hops down from the seat, marches into the low-slung building, and plunks a 17-pound box next to the register. With a nod, he’s gone, and Marc Rosenblum, the store’s owner, darts over to inspect the package. “This is it!” he says. “It’s my first RadioShack reorder.” He pulls back the cardboard flaps to reveal a nest of curios wrapped in plastic: resistors, circuit boards, radial-lead electrolytic capacitors. The box’s 86 items could pass as robot guts. “I don’t know what this is,” Rosenblum says, holding up a ceramic bead wrapped in copper wire. “But I don’t need to know what it is to sell it.” Rosenblum opened his HobbyTown 11 years ago.…

When I was nine years old, I overheard my parents arguing about the rent. They didn’t have the money to pay it. I had a Mickey Mouse piggy bank with $30 saved up, which was a lot of money to me, so I thought I had the solution and offered it to them. “Thank you; that’s sweet, but it won’t cut it,” they said, “and it’s not for you to worry about anyway.” I remember thinking, If that’s not enough, I can get more. I grew up in Los Angeles’ Brentwood neighborhood in the early ’80s. Friends and I spent summers skateboarding all over. We also had a casual business operation: We’d wash neighborhood cars for $5 each, then immediately spend that money at McDonald’s. When I heard my parents…

One summer night in 2017, a friend texted me at 1 am with some news. A chocolate company she knew was leaving its retail space on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, Calif. Did I want to take over the remaining three years of the lease? she asked. I replied instantly: Yes! The next morning, I told my team about my decision… sort of. “We’re doing a fun little thing,” I said, trying to make it seem light and easy and not costly or work-intensive. I didn’t want to spook them; I’m definitely the risk-taker of the group. But in truth, I’d committed us to a lot of unknowns. We were an online-focused business trying to get Americans to drink mushroom tea. That alone is a tough task. Now we were…

THIS SPRING, The Princeton Review surveyed more than 300 colleges and universities to determine which of them best serve future entrepreneurs. Below are a few of the key metrics collected from those schools. For more information on the methodology and details on each ranking, go to PrincetonReview.com/entrepreneur . Academics and Requirements Schools were asked whether they offer a major, a minor, a concentration, or a degree program in entrepreneurship; how many courses in entrepreneurship they offer in topics such as feasibility analysis, new venture management, technology commercialization, and venture capital; and whether they provide cross-discipline opportunities to interact with students in other majors (e.g., working with computer engineering students to develop a product). Outside the Classroom Schools were asked for the number and size of scholarships available…

If anyone knows marketing’s future, it’s Seth Godin. The longtime guru of the subject and author of 19 books—his new one is called This Is Marketing, and he has a new notebook in partnership with MOO—preaches a kind of invisible marketing. “The word marketing should mean ‘What do we call it when we make something people want?’ ” he says. That’ll become increasingly important as 2019 brings more digital noise. His challenge: Be relevant, not loud. How will marketing continue to change in 2019? Attention and trust are the two most valuable elements of our economy going forward, and big companies have a long history of just burning it, wasting it. The alternative is to be the kind of organization that markets with people instead of at them. What do…

In 2017, when Adrian Sedlin launched a line of cannabis flowers called Canndescent, he thought a lot about how most consumers had previously purchased cannabis. It likely came in clear plastic baggies, with its origins and potency unknown—hardly what someone would pay a premium for. He wanted to make a clear and unambiguous break with that past, and court a consumer who’s willing to pay for quality. His solution: Create packaging that evokes luxury brands. Here’s how his team designed Canndescent in the least-baggie way possible. 1/ Name and number Canndescent’s flowers are named for their intended effect—Calm, Cruise, Create, Connect, and Charge. But each name is also followed by a three-digit number: “Calm no. 102,” for example, or “Create no. 301.” What does it mean? The numbers are supposed…

Mercedes Concepcion-Gray started working at age 15, and she’s never stopped. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, she made her own money by teaching other kids English and tutoring them in math. At 21, with two suitcases, $200 in her pocket, an engineering degree, and relatives willing to house her, she moved to the United States and entered the corporate arena—rising the ranks in tech, while building new teams and business units, and helping expand in Latin American markets. But her real ambition was to own a business, and after two decades of corporate life, she decided to finally venture out as a franchisee of Patrice & Associates, a recruiting search firm for the hospitality industry with 140 offices across the country. Today, she runs her Atlanta location while doing…

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