Q: Friends who run companies, as well as the occasional investor I have spoken to, keep asking me what my exit plan is. I do not have one. I am not looking to raise money at the moment and have no plans to sell my business so as far as I am concerned I do [...]

Business strategists and government officials routinely visit Silicon Valley in hopes of learning how to emulate the area’s wildly successful startup culture. Now, thanks to a new book byLinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha, the curious can save themselves the plane ticket. The Start-Up of You, which is written mostly in Hoffman’s voice, [...]

Though it’s important to self-market your business and follow your intuition when making decisions, no startup should be completely dependent on three very particular things. Acquiring New Clients When I was starting out as an entrepreneur, I was only concerned about one thing: acquiring more customers. I thought I understood the logic: more customers equals more [...]

I was doing a radio interview recently when the host asked a most interesting question: “Can anybody become an entrepreneur?” Great question, and one that I had to think about for a second before answering. The short answer is that anybody can, but quite honestly, not everybody should. I responded that way because I have [...]

South African companies should learn to adapt to the different business cultures in the rest of the continent, says Nigerian-born entrepreneur Nissi Ekpott. “The market out in Africa is so much different than South Africa – the structure and how things work. Many times people fail just because of the differences in business culture. Some [...]

Writing for the Age of Energy: The Green Economy series, Sir Richard Branson explains why “doing good is good for business”. When entrepreneurs ask me if I have a single message which will help them, I say: doing good can help improve your prospects, your pro?ts and your business – and can change the world. [...]

So you are an expert, but are you really cut out to be an entrepreneur?  Is this what you really want to do, or is this a desperation tactic?  Entrepreneurship as a solution to employment is fast becoming a popular decision many are making. I recently interviewed Joe Abraham, author of Entrepreneurial DNA and the [...]

There are a number of reasons to be worried about the state of entrepreneurship in South Africa and globally. For instance, when one looks at the Gini coefficient – which highlights the gap between the poor and the rich in a country – it is clear that inequality is worsening. In spite of the critical [...]