Tag: StartUp

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Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from their charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work.

For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at the Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company’s value was zero and in March 2018 the SEC charged Holmes with perpetrating “an elaborate, years-long fraud.”

Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.

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The Little Book of Start-Up Inspiration: 20 Lessons learned the hard way dammit… from the most outrageous year of my entrepreneurial life!

“For the play-it-safers… I am under no obligation to make sense to you.” Sharon Lee Zapata

From the creator of the increasingly popular blog The Bitchy Business Briefs comes 20 lessons learned the hard way dammit… from the most outrageous year of her entrepreneurial life!

This is a book for grown-ass women and men who know that starting anything new is hard work yet worth it.

Sharon Lee Zapata is unapologetic with her writing, misdirected energy, curiosity, and creativity that only she could write with her small-batch storytelling and smarty-ass quotes!

• Never let a bad moment turn into an hour. Learn to take a punch and move forward

• 3 types of life lessons: THE NEW, THE OLD, THE RECYCLED

• I got news for you, not everyone is going to be cheering for you. Nope… the haters will crack open the doors they’ve been hiding behind.

• Accepting haters is its own kind of hustle… sugar lips

We screw up… start-up a better way

When no one believes in you… start-up your belief

We have struggles… start-up and push forward

We know we have to change… start-up a new way

Boring ass appropriateness is not available on these pages. Sharon scoops up her failures and successes with learned confidence and inspires you how to arrive at a point in your life where you’re ready to do whatever it takes to move towards a new level of personal improvement.

Crack on! Let’s go!

Start-Up = anything you want to do or start-up, but you’ve been dragging your ass…

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Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

For 25 years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession – until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: poof. His job no longer existed. “I think they just want to hire younger people,” his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed.

Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of “marketing fellow”. What could go wrong?

HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place…by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at 4:30 on Friday and lasted well into the night; “shower pods” became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby while nearby, in the “content factory”, Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on “walking meetings”, and Dan’s absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had “graduated” (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee and literally old enough to be the father of most of his coworkers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball “chair”.

Mixed in with Lyons’ uproarious tale of his rise and fall at HubSpot is a trenchant analysis of the start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them, a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money lavishing perks on their postcollegiate workforces, and where everybody is trying to hang on just long enough to reach an IPO and cash out.

With a cast of characters that includes devilish angel investors, fad-chasing venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and “wantrapreneurs”, bloggers and brogrammers, social climbers and sociopaths, Disrupted is a gripping and definitive account of life in the (second) tech bubble.

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Invent, Reinvent, Thrive: The Keys to Success for Any Start-Up, Entrepreneur, or Family Business

In today’s uncertain world of business, one rule stands above the rest: If you want to survive–let alone thrive–you must embrace change. Everything else comes after.

In Invent Reinvent Thrive Kellogg School of Management Professor Lloyd Shefsky provides the inspiration and insight any entrepreneur or family business needs for long-term success–and he backs it all up with proven models of what works and what doesn’t.

Shefsky reveals the common thread of all business success stories: reinvention. He explains not just how to reinvent concepts and ideas from the start, but ways to continuously innovate and reinvent your business to meet today’s constantly changing marketplace conditions. In addition to his own expert insight, Shefsky provides firsthand advice through case studies derived from dozens of original interviews with entrepreneurs and family business giants, consisting of the leaders of some of today’s most successful companies, including: Howard Schultz (founder, Chairman, and CEO of Starbucks) Jim Sinegal (founder of Costco) Chuck Schwab (founder of Charles Schwab & Co.) Tom Stemberg (founder of Staples)

The author also gives special attention to family businesses (which account for over half the U.S. GDP) and how to address vexing family disparities, enabling family businesses to last more than two generations.

Invent Reinvent Thrive offers all the answers you need to get your business where you want it to be. You’ll learn exactly where new and multi-generational business owners fall short and miss incredible opportunities, why they fail to take the plunge or innovate–and how you can rework, revitalize, and reinvent your business not just to avoid the most common perils but to lead your business to the apex of your industry.

“Entrepreneurship is not a cataclysmic event,” Shefsky writes. “It is a constant process.” Follow his advice through every step of the process and you will successfully invent, reinvent–and thrive.

PRAISE FOR INVENT REINVENT THRIVE:

“If you think business books are boring, this is your chance to prove yourself wrong. Storytelling is an art, and Shefsky brings that art to business. Invent Reinvent Thrive is a treasure trove of valuable lessons.” — STAN KASTEN, President and CEO, Los Angeles Dodgers; former President of the Washington Nationals and the Atlanta Braves, Hawks, and Thrashers

“Invent Reinvent Thrive is full of wise and practical guidance for both would-be and continuing entrepreneurs. Shefsky’s discussions provide wonderful advice that will aid anyone embarking on or continuing in an entrepreneurial enterprise.” — DAVID RUDER, former Chairman, Securities & Exchange Commission

“Our company’s direct experience with Lloyd Shefsky . . . inspired us to methodically pursue Brown-Forman’s never-ending greatness, and this book can do the same for others. I highly recommend Invent Reinvent Thrive to all businesspeople.” — PAUL VARGA, CEO and Chairman, Brown-Forman Corporation, producer of Jack Daniels, Finlandia, Southern Comfort, and other spirits

“Lloyd Shefsky tackles the issues many entrepreneurs face and offers practical advice to defy the odds. If you’ve had business success, yet need to go to the next level, read this book.” — GINGER GRAHAM, former President and CEO, Amylin Pharmaceuticals, and former faculty at the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School

“This is a very serious study of a critical issue, and no one dealing with entrepreneurship or family businesses should make the mistake of ignoring it.” — ISRAEL ZANG, Professor and former Dean of Business School and Vice Provost of Tel Aviv University