Entrepreneurs need 
to learn new traditional management skills to improve their ability to both attract funding and succeed. That is the message I delivered in a local TV interview discussing #entrepreneurship in Northern Virginia. The region is now called “Silicon Valley East” based on the surge of entrepreneurial ventures in the area. Read More
Hispanic Entrepreneurs Are Beating Expectations and Bolstering the U.S. Economy
This point obviously seems to be missed in our current political debate. And the conclusions here are driven by numbers and data, not rhetoric. Hispanic entrepreneurship helps drive our economic growth. Read More
Starting September 15, 2015, Gemini Business Group, LLC will focus exclusively on addressing the needs of entrepreneurs and investors and offer a portfolio of new venture development and management support services that have been well received in the market.
The revised Gemini Business Group website provides an overview of the new directions we will be pursuing with clients in coming months.
Look for additional announcements in coming weeks on staff appointments , new developments, and updates on the Gemini Venture Partners Emerging Growth Fund.
I also encourage you to visit my blog www.paulbsilverman.com/blog and also sign up for the complimentary Entrepreneurship Today! e-mail updates which I am using to share new venture developments, management tips, insights on new venture financing trends such as equity crowdfunding, and other topics.
Your comments are always welcomed. Drop me a note anytime at paul@paulbsilverman.com.
Paul B. Silverman
Managing Partner
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I have received many requests for a copy of a one hour Inside Scoop Virginia syndicated public TV Interview I did on November 21, 2011 discussing entrepreneurship. I am pleased to advise the station posted the interview on YouTube over the weekend.
The interview focused on entrepreneurship and the recent publication of my entrepreneurial management book at that time Worm on a Chopstick : Understanding Today’s Entrepreneurial Age: Directions, Strategies, Management Perspectives
In the interview, I reviewed the challenges facing entrepreneurs, recommended strategies, and entrepreneurial management perspectives. I also made the point, comparing the U.S. to China and others, that we can be doing much more through creative policies leveraging entrepreneurship to create jobs and drive economic growth.
I also reviewed the following two proposed entrepreneurship programs I developed and shared my plans for these:
Entrepreneur Empowerment Program (“EEP”) – structured regional economic development program driving economic growth and job creation. The program targeted metropolitan areas with a highly structured and targeted entrepreneurship training, mentoring, and management control methodology to help early stage companies succeed and grow. Founded on two core pillars, entrepreneurship and empowerment, the EEP provides the incentive framework at the local and regional level. Empowerment ensures these are locally driven programs, but pursued under the aegis of standards and guidelines set at the national level.
AEGIS (Accelerated Entrepreneurial Global Investment System): A new program attracting overseas entrepreneurial firms to the United States to promote job creation, innovation, and economic growth. The program replaces today’s ad-hoc approach to identify, analyze, track and manage new ventures with a highly structured, well-defined program and builds a base of ‘showcase’ companies in targeted sectors (e.g., alternative energy, bio-tech, health care, others) that provides high upside, economic benefits. To support upcoming discussions, highlights of the AEGIS program are now posted on my blog at AEGIS_Summary 072115
I am now again exploring interest in both of the above programs at both the national and regional levels. When you consider that in the past 15 years, about two-thirds (64 percent) of all new jobs have been created by companies with less than 500 employees, you realize that helping entrepreneurial companies succeed and grow makes good economic sense and creates value as I discussed in the interview.
Many of the points discussed in the interview and the earlier book are also further developed in my recent book 8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.
If you are interested in seeing the interview, you can check it out at http://youtu.be/toV7VFNnFCs.
Comments welcomed. I expect to be doing similar interviews in coming months – stay tuned
Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.
Commented on excellent Richard Branson TED talk How To Hack Into Happiness good messages here.
Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.
New Facebook Page – will focus on #entrepreneurship, #predictive analytics, #new ventures, #healthcare
More to follow. Check out http://tinyurl.com/m8t5z4g
Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.
Excellent New Yorker article about Spotify and how music sector business models are changing- very clear here that the online music market business models are morphing quickly- check out http://tinyurl.com/lw88lkc
The article reinforces my view that analytics, not content, packaging, or other features will be the primary success driver in most of today’s markets, including the music sector. I am looking at analytics-centric healthcare, financial, and business management ventures and clear to me these ventures will reshape current sectors and create new large scale opportunities just as Spotify is doing in online music
To fully understand the possibilities here, consider the following 3 points noted in the article:
“Now that the Echo Nest is part of Spotify, its team has access to the enormous amount of data generated by Spotify users which show how they consume music. Spotify knows what time of day users listen to certain songs, and in many cases their location, so programmers can infer what they are probably doing—studying, exercising, driving to work. Brian Whitman, an Echo Nest co-founder, told me that programmers also hope to learn more about listeners by factoring in data such as “what the weather is like, what your relationship status is now on Facebook.”
When I look at how analytics is shaping all market sectors, we see explosive growth of what I call second generation analytics- this will spawn many exciting new ventures, and some of these will be in new market sectors that don’t even exist today. Exciting times lie ahead here
Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.
Most entrepreneurs are familiar with the story of Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb. To outsiders, looks like a waste of time and effort- we see about 10,000 failures and one success. Thomas Edison saw it differently in his widely quoted views on success and failure: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
I agree with Thomas Edison and always define failures as “Learning Experiences” — this works for me.
I recommend checking out “Failing Forward — 3 Tips for Failing Your Way to Success” – an excellent perspective on success and failure from Marshall Graham, Managing Partner at Indian River Advisor, LLC. Excellent insights here for all entrepreneurs.
Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.
On November 10th, the WSJ reviewed Alibaba results and the Gross Merchandising Volume or “GMV” metric used to measure performance of e-marketplace companies such as AliBaba and others. I find GMV and related platform business model metrics not well understood. These will be increasingly important as growth of “customer to customer” platform networks accelerate in healthcare and other sectors. Below is a full copy of my comments. Link to the WSJ article and edited comments at http://tinyurl.com/n369mha
Eeading about Alibaba’s business model, I recall the “eyeball model” driving the e-commerce explosion in the 1990’s. The premise- attract large numbers of users/customers to your site, generate value by product and service sales and, most important, generate scale to drive advertising revenue and “exponential” future earnings. Some did it well such as eBay, but the model spawned hundreds of new ventures and most failed. Why? Management, undercapitalized, poor execution strategy- these are the usual reasons most ventures fail. But there was also a fatal flaw here- the eyeball model at the time could not create a universally successful business in all sectors without careful positioning and deep pockets, not the outcome many investors expected. “Build it and they will come”- they didn’t.
Fast forward to today. Alibaba reported very impressive results on “Singles Day”, I.e., 111114, reporting 35 billion yuan ( about $5.75 billion) in the 24 hour Singles Day period. GMV or Gross Merchandise Value is their key business model metric- high GMV translates to higher revenue and presumably long term earnings growth. Following a $25 billion IPO two months ago, there is great pressure to show high GMV.
Several comments here. No question Alibaba is an outstanding success by any measure. One question is long term sustainability. Having merchants offer steep discounts ( 50 % in some cases) to create high single day sales volume looks like a “loss leader” strategy- at least one analyst also questioned whether this is sustainable long term. Remember Groupon and LivingSocial issues. Secondly, note GMV shows total value of transactions sold through Alibaba’s marketplace platform and is not a well defined standard. GMV may include shipping charges, items that will be returned, and other components for the “customer to customer” sales via Alibaba’s platform. GMV is excellent for comparing marketplace companies, but each player may use different assumptions to calculate. Finally, recognize GMV is one of several platform model metrics such as Gross Transaction Volumes or GTV which is well suited for platforms using commission-based pricing strategies. Bottom line here- Alibaba’s success will spur other “GMV” centric new ventures as did the “eyeball” model- lets understand the definitions here and standardize, ensure the proper financial accounting and reporting practices are in place, and ensure the e-marketplace sector achieves the global market growth we all foresee.
Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.
Asking CIOs how they feel about EHR’s, you would expect comments that today’s EHRs are challenging, slow, and have operational problems. That is the right answer, but in my view the wrong question. While the information gained provides insights into perceptions, the more important question to address is from the CIO perspective, what do they see as the most immediate EHR applications they need to change and/or enhance their current operations, including meeting ACA guidelines and improving their cost/performance benchmarks. What I am suggesting is let’s move the discussion to focus on specific process enhancements that EHRs will drive. My thinking is driven by what we saw in the e-commerce market evolution.
E-commerce, new electronic services that displaced paper, was a driver of the Internet revolution in the late 1990’s. Many saw the vision that cost/performance benefits, not paper or admin cost reduction was the real driver here, but we faced formidable challenges, e.g., lack of standards, privacy, multiple technology platforms, training issues, complexity compared to ‘simple’ paper forms, and others.
From my perspective, sure sounds like exactly what we are facing with today’s migration to EHR. So looking back, what did we learn and what does experience tell us about today’s EHR “revolution.” I see three key directions based on my experience.
First, e-commerce winners understood that changing process, not solely displacing paper, was the key benefit. For example, using electronic purchase orders rather than paper saved paper and admin costs and were more efficient, but they also enabled analytics to optimize supply chains and improve profitability- that could not be done with paper. This was a key point driving e-commerce revolution which myself and others reinforced, i.e., “implementing e-commerce systems will cost more, but you will achieve cost and operational efficiencies and improve your competitive position.” This was not accepted by all at the time. Key point here- today’s EHR’s may cost more but they don’t just automate paper-based record keeping- they really open the door to create new processes and dramatically reshape healthcare. That is the message we should be reinforcing backed up with solid cost- effective applications.
Secondly, new e-commerce applications emerged and many new ventures were spawned contributing to e-commerce market growth. And these were entrepreneurial ventures, targeting sectors and all value chain functions to improve operations, e.g., supply chain management, distribution channel optimization, marketing analytics, and so on. Market growth at the time was fueled by venture capital and creative entrepreneurs, not the major firms. In today’s EHR environment, expect to see many new ventures accelerate in areas of remote telemonitoring, predictive analytics, and others- healthcare is a significant target, long overdue for major cost performance step up, and EHR is the accelerator to make it happen. VCs in my view are still behind the curve here but I believe approaching a critical mass here.
Finally, e-commerce was a global business and, at the time, many new technologies and e-commerce structures emerged overseas. Today, recognize that many countries have EHR adoption rates greater than 90 percent, and we are playing catch-up with EHR adoption at less than 70 percent and CIO resistance based on the survey . In these overseas markets today, EHR is embraced and driving new applications, analytics, and solutions which I expect will play a role as the US market for enhanced EHR achieves what I believe will be exponential growth in the next decade.
Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.
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