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VC Fred Wilson was interviewed by a reporter on Monday, on the topic of what makes an entrepreneur, and entrepreneur. Read his post, but these 3 exchanges in the Q&A make for a nice Thought for The Day:

Q: What is entrepreneurship?

A: It’s the art of turning an idea into a business.

Q: Can entrepreneurship be taught/learned?

A: I don’t think so. It’s like a personality disorder. You are born with it.

Q: What do you look for in entrepreneurs?

A: First and foremost, they need to be magnets. For talent. For money. For attention. And for much more.

Do you think there is an entrepreneur gene? Or is being a founder a vocation that can be taught or learned over time?

Wilson was stumped on the question of whether entrepreneurs are happier than other people. What do you think? And read the comments on Fred’s post on this point!

Today we offer the latest edition in Larry Chiang’s long-running series on “Things They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School,” which he is turning into a book. (A list of Larry’s earlier posts is below.) This month’s installment is about how to build good credit for your business in a recession.

April is financial literacy month and it’s meant for kids — but we entrepreneurs can learn something too. Surprise! None of these tips are taught in business school. Credit isn’t a class taught inside such Ivory Towers. (I think maybe because we’re supposed to be too good to worry about our FICO scores?) But then, again, credit rules are archaic, so its understandable that Stanford GSB doesn’t school its kin in such minutiae. But I plan to, because especially right now — as we teeter into a recession — a lot of founders are going to learn just how powerful good credit can be.

My 9 Tips for How to Build Credit for Your Business…

Finding and retaining talent — true talent — is damn hard in a startup. Some bosses, whether consciously or subconsciously, want sycophantic workers. They would never tell you that, even with a few drinks in them at a bar, but their private, even autocratic styles, determine the ultimate caliber of the folks they hire.

But, for me (and hopefully for you, too) this is not the case. I want to hire people that will shoulder some of the unbearable burden I feel as a founder. Heck, I want someone to take my job someday! Yet, therein lays the problem. How do you find and retain rock stars?

I discovered, years ago, that I could not simply find people that believed in the same things I did. I further discovered that people didn’t work or live for the same reasons. Everyone has their own unique motivation; and, it is precisely this motivation that is the key. If you can uncover someone’s true motivation, you have unlocked the ability to hire them, retain them, and ultimately free yourself… Continue Reading

Editor’s Note: If you do, consider these four tips from contributor Ben Yoskovitz over at the Instigator Blog. Ben’s full post, The Challenge of Staying Focused in a Startup, was originally published on on April 8.

Startups need to be laser-focused on what they’re trying to do. It’s damn near impossible – especially when having to simultaneously build a product, sell a product, market a product, hire A-talent, raise more money, manage operations and more – but without focus (as Sequoia Capital notes) your startup is in big trouble.

I’ve suffered from “opportunity-itis” on numerous occasions. I still do. It’s so easy to get a bit of product feedback and chase those feature ideas. Or have a good conversation with a potential partner, and then decide to find 10,000 more partners like that. Or see a minor shift in the marketplace, only to revamp your entire business model and 12-month product roadmap (OK, I haven’t done that yet!)

You know you need to focus but at the same time you have to be looking for the right opportunities to make your startup a success. So how do you achieve startup focus? What follows are Ben’s four rules … Continue Reading

Editor’s Note: Regular contributor Steve Nielsen, sent us his 9 tips for how to use your brand effectively. Steve is also the founder of PartnerUp, an online community that matches founders to cofounders. Please read Steve’s post in its original format at The StartUp Blog.

We all know that creating your company’s brand is one of the most important things you’ll do as a business owner. Having a strong brand that represents what you do, conveys a professional and stable image, and builds a relationship with your target audience is essential to the success of your company. So when most people think of branding, they think of customers, but fail to see the impact that a strong brand has on all of the other functions of their business.

Something really interesting struck me the other day when I was looking through a few business plans/pitches from entrepreneurs: having a good brand for your startup idea is hugely beneficial in making a great first impression with potential investors, and even banks.

Consider this: You’re a banker or investor, and you get approached by two companies. The first sends you a pitch on plain paper, stuffed in a plain envelope and includes a business card that they printed on their home printer. The second sends you a pitch on company letterhead, has a unique logo, includes a business card that is well-designed and professionally printed, provides some professionally printed brochures and backgrounders on the company, and puts it all into a professionally designed and printed folder and envelope. Which company would you feel is more professional, stable, likely to engage successfully with consumers, and ultimately more likely to generate revenue? Continue Reading

I’m a repeat founder and YCombinator groupie. I’m the wrong age group to apply to YCombinator, but I’ve still learned a lot from the incubator from afar — like, the virtues of micro-loans and “entre-sumers.” This is my story.

More than a decade ago, for my first startup, I was fortunate to have found a successful but semi-retired former VC as a Board member and a mentor. As I learned more about his background, I discovered that my low-key friend was actually quite famous and had made seed investments in Sun Microsystems and a few other pioneer semiconductor and networking companies in the late-70’s to late-80’s.

One day I asked him how he managed to find these choice companies, almost all of which had become the pillars of Silicon Valley. He smiled and said, “We were lucky”.

I believed him. Many successful entrepreneurs and investors were successful because they were at the right place at the right time. It helps too that when the right opportunity presented itself, they also had the right skills, right experience, right circle of acquaintances and the right financial resources.

So I constantly ask myself, “What made him so lucky in the past?”

And more importantly, “Would I ever be so lucky in the future?” Continue Reading