Slonlt's List: BU

• "Market" and "industry" are not interchangeable terms. A "market" is a mechanism for buyers and sellers to exchange goods and services, while an "industry" is a collection of companies that compete with one another.

• Customer Development is a system for radically reducing risk in a startup by testing ideas and products with customers before time, energy, and resources are plowed into them.

   

• Here is the problem with Arrington’s logic: students may come up with great ideas and start a company, but they aren’t going to be able make it big unless they have the educational foundation.
• The harsh reality is that for every Zuckerberg, there are a thousand who drop out of college and fail. Many get discouraged after their failures and move to other professions which require less skill and education.
• Plus, if you look at the backgrounds of the people who actually built Facebook—the executives and employees of the company—you’ll find that they aren’t college dropouts; they are highly educated. Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple—all started by college dropouts are the most selective in hiring; they are the most fussy about degrees.

1 more annotation...

• "An entrepreneur sees an opportunity which others do not fully recognise, to meet an unsatisfied demand or to radically improve the performance of an existing business. They have unquenchable self-belief that this opportunity can be made real through hard work, commitment and the adaptability to learn the lessons of the market along the way.