There was a story on NPR recently where a junior soldier in Iraq was recounting a fire fight he was in where he was completely surrounded.  The soldier recounted the fear and desperation that gripped the team as they bravely fought the enemy in all directions. The story turns when a more experienced soldier somehow…

Much of my days (and many of my nights) since joining U-M have been focused on helping develop programs and activities that foster entrepreneurship and commercialization activities.  Students, Faculty and Staff seem to have an insatiable appetite for entrepreneurship and this, in many cases, is a good thing.  But should everyone become an entrepreneur? In…

I was recently mentoring this entrepreneur who had developed a product, had 10 beta customers and was preparing to raise a round of pre-seed financing to take his company to the next level.  He wanted my input on his business plan and pitch deck so I agreed to sit down and have a look. The…

Someone asked me the other day what magic did I use to resurrect one of my startups from almost certain death.  What tremendous insight did I bring to bear or epiphany did I have to change my company from having closed sales of less than $10,000 over two years to annual sales of almost $5mm…

So there I was; my first board meeting as the CEO of the company I co-founded was going to start in about 45 minutes and I was still in my car in the parking lot reviewing my presentation one more time.  Actually I was splitting my time between reviewing my slide deck and frantically flipping…

Now that I’m working at a startup again (the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan is very much a startup) I’m finding an old habit starting to emerge.  You see, when I’m in startup mode and I’m heading into the office I will often not fill my car all the way up with…

It seems like once a week someone mentions to me that it is really critical that we find the next Google. “What Michigan really needs…” (They’ll usually start) “Is another company like Google and then we will have achieved success”. I’m sorry, but to me that is not how entrepreneurship works. I seriously doubt that…

As my first blog entry as the new Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship it seemed only fitting that I blog about what entrepreneurship means to me. So, before I do that I have a confession to make. I’m a serial entrepreneur. They say the first step to self improvement is admitting you have…