Top Business Planners and Venture Capitalist
Eugene Kleiner was
known as an engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist that put the silicon
in Silicon Valley. Kleiner was born May
12, 1923 in Vienna, Austria. In 1938, at the age of 15, he escaped from Vienna,
Austria before WWII (New York Times, 2003).
He graduated from Polytechnic University of New York with a B.S in
Mechanical Engineering. In 1948, he
graduated with a M.S. in Industrial Engineering from New York University.
In 1956, he accepted an invitation form Nobel Prize winner,
William Shockley to come to California to build computer transistors and help
form what became known as the Shockley Semi-conductor Laboratory (NY Times,
2003). Kleiner and seven others broke
off and used 3,500 dollars of their own money produced multiple transistors on
a single silicon wafer. Later, they were
able to get Fairchild to invest 1.5 million into their company and first Silicon
Company was created, Fairchild electronics in 1957(USA Today, 2003). This was not just the beginning of a new
technology, but they had created a new business model where the founders kept
the majority of ownership instead of the investors. After Fairchild, Kleiner
invested in another venture, Intel. This
also changed the way business was conducted.
Usually, when people started companies and became successful, they would
just go about their merry way spending their money on the American dream. Not Kleiner, he invested his money in other
start-up companies. In 1972, he and Tom Perkins started one of the world’s
first investment company called Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield, and Byers. To date
this company has invested billions of dollars into startups like Amazon.com,
Tandem Computers and Compaq Computers, just to name of few (New York Times,
2003). Kleiner died on November 20, 2003
but not before he left his mark on the world in regards to venture investing. His ingenuity and wisdom became known as
Kleiner’s laws. Three of his laws that I liked are:
·
Make sure that the dog wants to eat the dog
food. In other words, no matter how great the idea or promising the market,
make sure the people want the product or service
·
Build one business at a time. Kleiner said that most business plans are too
ambitious.
·
It is easier to get a piece of an existing
market than to create a new one.
The next person, Tim Berry, is the co-founder of Eugene
Social, Apps37, founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software, founder of
b-plans.com, author of books and software, teacher of entrepreneurship, and blogger. He has a M.B.A. from Stanford and is an angel
investor. He has a MA with honors from the University of Oregon, A BA magna cum
laude from the university of Notre Dame.
Tim has been successfully delivering business plans in 13 countries
since 1974. (Entrepreneur, 2013).
According to Tim, a
business plan should be lean, which means it should be efficient and effective. He gives three suggestions on how to make
your plan lean:
·
“The strategy should be to focus on the target
market and the solutions. Focus on the
differences.
·
Review and revise the plan regularly.
·
Track progress and manage course corrections
constantly. Use lists and tables in order to be able to clearly see what needs
to be corrected.”
(Berry, 2013)
Lastly, we have Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist and
managing partner of Union Square Ventures of NYC. He has a bachelors’ degree in
mechanical engineering from MIT and a MBA from Wharton School of Business at
the University of Pennsylvania. Union
Square Ventures manages $450,000,000 across three funds.
According to Fred, they look for three things in the
entrepreneurs that they back:
·
“They look to see how the founder and the
managers get along to drive the business forward
·
They look to back people who they will get along
with
·
They look to back entrepreneurs that have been
successful before and bring new ideas to the table (content.usv.com, 2013)”
Abrams, Rhonda. (2003, November 26). Kleiner. Retrieved from
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/small
business/columnist/abrams/2003-11-26-Kleiner_x.htm.
Berry, T (2013, April 17). How to Build a Lean and Efficient
Business Plan. Entrepreneur.com. Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226417
Union Square Ventures [Web log post]. Retrieved from http//: content.usv.com/pages/fred-wilson
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