EQ Journal

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Why Businesses (Really) Fail

And Why Even Mighty IBM Can’t Forget the Basics Below are some data published by BusinessWeek on why businesses fail. I’ll bet you that the top five reasons (too much debt, inadequate leadership, poor planning, failure to change and inexperienced management) are in fact related to number six on their list: not enough revenue; i.e., [...]

Can You Bootstrap a Chain of Specialized, Cash-Only Restaurants?

I recently had a chance to ask one of the founders of Toronto-based vegan ‘fast food’ restaurant The Hogtown Vegan (http://www.facebook.com/TheHogtownVegan), Madeleine Foote, six questions about her startup. There are some terrific entrepreneurial lessons here—like KISS (Keep It Simple), be authentic, have a sense of humour about yourself, deliver a lot of value to customers, [...]

70 Ways to Raise Bootstrap Capital

There are certainly hundreds or even thousands of clever techniques entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs are using to raise cheap/free capital, aka bootstrap capital. No list is ever going to be complete. But here is our summary of what people are doing these days to self-capitalize their new products/services/enterprises. If you would like to add to our [...]

Main Sources of Capital for Startups

Is lack of access to capital really the main barrier to entry for most entrepreneurs? I believe that a stated lack of access to capital by many would-be entrepreneurs is more of an excuse than anything else. There is lots of funding around for passionate entrepreneurs who can execute on a good biz model. Here [...]

Prof Bruce’s Startup DNA Checklist

“Those mundane and tedious little things that, when done exactly right, with the right kind of attention and intention, form in their aggregate a distinctive essence, an evanescent quality that distinguishes every great business you’ve ever done business with from its more mediocre counterparts whose owners are satisfied to simply get through the day,” Michael [...]

Cash Conversion Cycle, CCC

Plus How the CCC Affects Your Internal Rate of Return, The Power of Leverage to Work for You and Against You, and Effectively Manage your Enterprise by Measuring your Cash Position Entrepreneurs intuitively understand the importance of the old saw: “Collect early, pay late.” Most SMEEs are bootstrapped and most bootstrapped SMEEs are chronically short [...]

Ways to Get Paid

I don’t have to tell you that collecting your receivables or getting compensated for your work is the sine qua non of every enterprise. But getting paid is not easy these days. So I put together a list of the things you might do if you feel you are owed something. Here are the steps: [...]

Don’t Trade in Your Old Suit (Yet)

[This article first appeared in OBJ, Ottawa Business Journal: http://www.obj.ca/Opinion/Bruce-Firestone-5444.] “The world is a tough, competitive place,” said Jerry McGuire in the film of the same name. When I was a boy, there were about 3 billion people on this planet. Now there are nearly 7 billion. If you are a young person today entering [...]

The Complete Business Model

Author: Bruce M. Firestone, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa, January 2010. Introduction The Business Model (BM) has come a long way in the last few years from a one page pictogram (or flowchart) of the ‘engine of your business’ to a many faceted model that fully describes the ‘engine room’ of the enterprise. [...]

Good Corporate Citizen

The City of Ottawa is yet again embarking on a planning exercise for rapid transit in Canada’s Capital City. Based on LRT (Light Rail Technology), the last initiative foundered badly, not because of the technology, not because the financing wasn’t available, not because the public interest wasn’t there in Light Rail but because of political [...]