Multiple Streams of Income
Wednesday, September 1, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Financial Concerns, General Thoughts |
Tags: diversification, investment strategies, job loss, multiple income streams, risk |
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I find it fascinating that a large part of wise investing is based upon the idea of diversification in order to avoid risk, yet most people never diversify their source of income used for those diversified investments. Most people only have one source of income.
If investors are so tied to diversification, why are they not diversifying at their income source? I think this comes from an incorrect assumption that is burned into our minds in college. We are told that the way to make it in life is to get good grades so you can get hired at the big company and make a lot of money. If you achiev
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The Mortgage Conundrum
Monday, August 30, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Economics, Financial Concerns |
Tags: debt, fannie mae, freddie mac, housing, mortgage crisis |
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How does this mortgage crisis play out at the individual level? We often hear about the near collapse of the economy due to bad mortgages. But what does this mean for one family who purchased a home in 2007? Let’s look at a specific example I heard from a real estate broker friend of mine.
One family purchased a home in the Atlanta area in 2007 before the housing market really took a turn for the worse. In 2009, they needed to sell their house in order to move to another city. The house did not sell until this past month, and it sold as a short sale.
In a short sale, the home owner
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Are Older Entrepreneurs more Successful?
Thursday, August 26, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: General Thoughts, Total Entrepreneurial Activity |
Tags: age 55-64, older entrepreneurs, success, vivek wadhwa, young entrepreneurs |
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Duke University scholar Vivek Wadhwa recently completed a study of roughly 550 technology ventures and the people who founded the companies. What he found was that older entrepreneurs have better success than younger entrepreneurs when it comes to starting companies. Older entrepreneurs are defined as those in the 55 and over crowd.
Now, this may seem very logical, but the picture we most often see in the media is of the young entrepreneur and not necessarily the older entrepreneur. The older entrepreneur has likely spent many years in a company or in a trade learning the ins and outs of
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Entrepreneurship in India
Tuesday, August 24, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: International, Total Entrepreneurial Activity |
Tags: bollywood, engineering, IIT, india, india entrepreneurship, indian economy, innovation |
3 Comments
The new dean of the Harvard Business School, Indian-born Nitin Nohria, recently made this statement about Indian Engineers:
Indian companies have always had very strong engineering base, but no major global product yet identified as being developed in India.
This is actually quite astonishing when you consider that India has some of the best technical universities in the world. These IIT’s are so renown that most Indian students hope to get into an IIT over MIT.
In the past, many of these IIT graduates sought greener pastures in the United States and Western Europe. That’s where
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USA Wages
Friday, August 20, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Economics, Global Trade |
Tags: american apparel, call center employees, competitive advantage, india, wages |
1 Comment
There were a few interesting news stories the other day regarding wages in the USA. The first story dealt with call center employees and the second story dealt with the apparel industry.
If you’ve had any sort of problem with your computer lately, chances are, when you called the help hotline, you were magically transported to India where a call center employee took your call. With the advent of decreasing phone costs, rapid Internet expansion, and a rising Indian employee base that spoke English, U.S. corporations flocked to India to outsource their menial tasks. The biggest motivato
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Andrew Mwenda’s Africa Speech at TED
Thursday, August 19, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Government, International, Total Entrepreneurial Activity |
Tags: Africa, andrew mwenda, entrepreneurship, failure of aid money, Government, ted |
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Below is a video from the TED conference by a gentleman named Andrew Mwenda. In it, he describes the answer to Africa’s woes is not more aid, but is in releasing the entrepreneurial fervor of each nation. Job growth does not occur from more money to the government, but comes from entrepreneurs starting businesses. This is a very interesting video and one that holds relevance to the USA as well:
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The DIY Artist
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Bootstrapping, Creativity and Ideation, General Thoughts |
Tags: Bootstrapping, diy, diy artist, entrepreneurial artists, live nation, music industry, record labels |
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What is a DIY artist? DIY stands for Do It Yourself, and it basically means the entrepreneurial artist. The bootstrapping artist. It’s the musician who is using a laptop and a microphone to record his or her first album, using Facebook and MySpace to promote the album, and is playing at coffee houses, bars, and music venues in order to make some tip money and hopefully sell some of those self-produced albums.
The DIY artist has things both easier and harder with the proliferation of the Internet. Easier because for the cost of a basic MacBook ($999), a basic microphone ($200), an
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Indian and Chinese Entrepreneurs
Monday, August 9, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Government, International, Total Entrepreneurial Activity |
Tags: china, entrepreneurial success, entrepreneurship, guanxi, india, jugaad, start-up funding |
2 Comments
In 2007, a group of Georgia State students traveled to India to answer one central question – “Was the Indian government assisting or halting entrepreneurship?”
Our findings were that there were plenty of opportunities to start a business in India, that the bureaucratic process often hindered the speed of a start up, and that the Indian Government’s best policy would be to get out of the way.
A recent study on Entrepreneurial levels in India and China confirm these findings and added some very interesting information:
Major motivation for Indian entrepreneurs is to be
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UPS and TES – Atlanta Growth Through Global Trade Seminar a Success
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 | Written by Jacob Dearolph
Posted under: Global Trade, The Entrepreneur School |
Tags: Business Ideas, entrepreneurship training, Exporting, Global Trade, Importing, small business, UPS |
1 Comment
The Growth Through Global Trade Seminar in Atlanta was a success yesterday. We were fortunate to have a wonderful group of people from small business owners to exporters, importers, freight forwarders, logistic companies and many others. The Metro Atlanta Chamber (MAC) was a wonderful host. Thank you to everyone from MAC for your hard work and wonderful facilities. UPS had its team of people there as well. Much thanks for their hard work. Check out their Twitter Page as they were twittering throughout the event.
Jim and Chris explored the world of global trade through their own busin
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Five Ideas to Get Your Business Going
Monday, July 26, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Bootstrapping, Entrepreneurship Tools, General Thoughts |
Tags: blogging, How to Start a Business, starting a company with no money, top 5 bootstrapping ideas |
1 Comment
Most top 5 lists on what to do to start a business include getting a business license, setting up a bank account, and finding a lawyer to complete your important documents. We at the Entrepreneur School think that these steps come much later in the process and may not even be necessary until you are actually selling your product or service.
The basic philosophy of The Entrepreneur School is to bootstrap your business by selling first and then using that money to build your business. This is opposed to the approach of raising money first and then trying to build your business. So, in ligh
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Small Business Numbers Round-Up
Thursday, July 22, 2010 | Written by Jacob Dearolph
Posted under: Economics, Energy and Oil, Government |
Tags: bp, Congress, obamacare, Oil, small business, Tax Increases, Taxes, Us Government |
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Oil Spill Numbers and Small Business
- According to official US government figures, more than 270,000 barrels of oil (11.3 million gallons) have been burned in controlled operations since the start of the spill in April.
- That is more than all the crude that spilled into the seas off Alaska in the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
- 270,000 Barrels of Oil Burned – at 78.90 a barrel that’s $21.3 million up in smoke
- The US government also said that some 34.6 million gallons of oil water had been recovered from the Gulf since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in Apr
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Confidence in Small Businesses is Strong
Thursday, July 22, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: General Thoughts |
Tags: american public, confidence in congress, gallup poll, small business confidence |
No Comments
In a recent gallup poll, people were asked about the level of confidence they had in particular institutions. These ranged from government to business to military.
Small businesses have a strong level of confidence. They are in second place after the military.
Congress comes in dead last with an abysmal confidence percentage of 11%, losing 6 points from last year. The biggest dip was for the level of confidence in the office of the President, which dropped a whopping 15 points from last year. Big business also gained 3 points over last year.
Here are the entire poll results:
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Venture Capital Report 2010 Q2
Thursday, July 22, 2010 | Written by Erik Rostad
Posted under: Venture Capital |
Tags: 2010 q2 vc deals, venture capital funds |
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According to CB Insights, Venture Capital (VC) investments remained constant at $5.9 billion from Q1 to Q2 of 2010. However, the number of deals dropped dramatically from 731 deals to 612, meaning VC funds per deal went from an average of roughly $8 million in Q1 to $9.6 million in Q2.
These numbers contrast slightly with those put out by VentureSource, a News Corp. company. In taking Q1 & Q2 numbers from CB Insights, we arrive at $11.8 billion for the first half of the year. VentureSource places VC funds for the first half of 2010 at $12.41 billion. They also show the number of de
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