What Entrepreneurs and Angels Should Do Before They Dance CCICE Friday, Octob...

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What Entrepreneurs and Angels Should Do Before They DanceCCICE

Friday, October 3, 2014 from 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM (PDT)Santa Clara, CA

The Customer-Funded Business:

A widely accepted notion in entrepreneurial circles is that the way to start and grow a thriving business is to come up with a great “idea”, write a great business plan, raise capital from angels or VCs, flawlessly execute the plan, and (Voila!) get rich! But it hardly ever happens this way, and the vast majority of successful businesses don’t ever raise venture capital. Angels who make money don’t invest this way either!

The most cash-efficient entrepreneurs – including those who created iconic companies like Microsoft, Dell, Banana Republic and many more – get their seed funding and sometimes their growth funding not from investors, but from their customers, through a range of intriguing approaches. Angel or venture capital comes later, once at least some customer traction is in hand.

By telling the seldom-heard stories of their surprising origins and those of some more-recent 21st century entrepreneurial companies from around the globe – from Europe, India, and the USA – John will bring to life five distinct and distinctive customer-funded models that today’s entrepreneurs can, and often should, put to work to fund their start-ups or finance and grow their companies. In so doing, they (and often their angels) will, like Michael Dell, end up owning more of their companies, too!

Angels who want to make good money should ask that those seeking their capital put one or more of these models to work, too. “Come back when you’ve got customers (even before producing the first product),” they should say, “and I’ll then help you grow.”
Join us to hear John Mullins decribe how to customer fund your company.

Program Detail:

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Presentation  (Box Lunch provided)
1:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. Q&A
1:15 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Book signing

Pre-Order Book at: http://www.wiley.com/buy/111887885X

Bio:
John Mullins is an Associate Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School. He earned his MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. An award-winning teacher and scholar, John brings to his teaching and research 20 years of executive experience in high-growth retailing firms including two ventures he founded and one he took public.

Since becoming an entrepreneurship professor in 1992, John has published four books, numerous cases and more than 40 articles in a variety of outlets, including Harvard Business Review, the MIT Sloan Management Review, and The Wall Street Journal. His research has won national and international awards from the Marketing Science Institute, the American Marketing Association, and the Richard D. Irwin Foundation. He is a frequent speaker to audiences in entrepreneurship and venture capital.

John’s first trade book, The New Business Road Test: What Entrepreneurs and Executives Should Do Before Launching a Lean Start-Up (now 4e, London: Prentice-Hall/FT 2013), has become the definitive work on the assessment and shaping of entrepreneurial opportunities and is widely used by investors and entrepreneurs and in university courses worldwide. His second book, the critically acclaimed Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model (Boston: Harvard Business Press 2009), co-authored with Randy Komisar, a partner at the esteemed venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was named to “Best Books of 2009” lists by BusinessWeek and INC Magazine. John’s newest book, The Customer-Funded Business: Start, Finance or Grow Your Business with Your Customers’ Cash, will be published by Wiley in August 2014.

John has done executive education on five continents for a variety of organizations both large and small, including the Young Presidents Organization, Endeavor, the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Kenya Airways, Merck-Serono, the European and African Venture Capital Associations, and the IFC, among numerous others. He has served on the boards of fast-growing entrepreneurial companies in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia.