Teen Business Forum

Today’s roundtable, as usual, was an international affair, with entrepreneurs presenting from different parts of the US, India, Israel, and many other geographies. Before I share what we heard from them today, I want to highlight an important aspect of 1M/1M that is repeatedly underscored in these roundtables: the international, inclusive, democratic nature of the [...]

Ben Wagner is the founder behind LifeKraze, a website that asks “What have you done?” Another social network? Maybe, but this one is unique because you are awarded points for doing “stuff” and then redeem them for things you actually want. This was a really fun interview with Ben. He’s a real funny guy. What [...]

In my recent piece Reengineering Capitalism I highlighted a phenomenon that the global entrepreneurship ecosystem is paying very little attention to: Over 99% of entrepreneurs who seek funding get rejected. Yet, the entire world is focused on the 1% that is “fundable.” The media, when pitched a startup story, is interested in who funded the [...]

There’s a lot of news surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA in the last couple of months. It’s aim was to expand the ability to fight online trafficking of copyrighted intellectual property. It’s measures, however were extreme. The vote for the bill would be have been today but has been postponed due to [...]

Today’s roundtable brought some core issues up for debate regarding media startups that are focusing largely on Content and Community features and expecting to get funded. So, I would like to take some time to offer a broad overview on the topic and some pointers to entrepreneurs who are making the assumption that you can raise $500,000 [...]

Did anyone else feel sick after reading the article on Tech Crunch on why entrepreneurs will fail? Ok, I admit it’s true but where’s the other side of it? Are we so jaded that we have become pessimist instead of the optimist that we were when we first started our businesses? I already have enough [...]

Today’s roundtable was jointly organized by the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT KGP) and the 1M/1M program as part of the former’s Global Entrepreneurship Summitorganized by the student-run e-cell. For the uninitiated, IIT KGP is considered one of the top technology schools in India, and it is located in the Eastern part of the country, [...]

At today’s roundtable, we had an unusual amount of discussion on ERP startups. Given that ERP is such a mature market, the fact that all this startup activity is going on in ERP is a bit puzzling to me. Rural ERP Surjith Singh from Chennai, India, pitched Rural ERP, a business that intends to focus on [...]

At today’s roundtable, we had a 30-minute segment on Web 3.0 and Social Dancing. We basically took the Web 3.0 framework – Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS) – and did a blue sky exercise on how to create a comprehensive user experience for social dancers. We also explored business models that not [...]

I have written about this before on my Forbes column, but want to raise the question again: Are Business Schools Setting Up Entrepreneurs To Fail? The question has, over time, resulted in huge discussions, some defensive, some self-aware and some even solution oriented. Nonetheless, in the last couple of years, the flow of first-time entrepreneurs [...]