This book explores, documents and establishes how to help founders start businesses with the collaboration of local and international resources. An incubator, accelerator or science park all have this goal but provide a variety of foci and support. At a minimum, it’s important to not only attract entrepreneurs but to have support services that can include mentoring, financial support and other services that make the incubator really filled with energy and potential. It’s becoming insufficient to just have office space and WiFi. It is also important to develop good interactions between directors, the start-up community and residents. Managing the community to help residents to launch successfully is the main goal of the director. It’s also important to stay abreast of the innovations happening in start-up support. Today there are many ways to incubate from bare bones office space to Incubator 1.0 space with some support to Incubator 2.0 with a great deal of support including a fund. For that reason, it’s important to develop a clear strategy for the type, style, clientele and support that will be built. This book provides guidance in three main areas: 1) What are the different options for incubators, accelerators and science parks, 2) How to assist the start-up founders (residents) and 3) How to manage the space.

"The public-private partnerships of the future will need to embody a triple-bottom-line approach that focuses on the new P3: people-planet-profit. This book is for anyone who wants to improve the way that we live in cities, without waiting for the glacial pace of change in government or corporate settings. If you are willing to go against the tide and follow some basic lessons in goal setting, experimentation, change management, financial innovation, and communication, real change in cities is possible."--Publisher's description.

This revised and updated edition of Nesheim's underground Silicon Valley bestseller incorporates twenty-three case studies of successful start-ups, including tables of wealth showing how much money founders and investors realized from each venture. The phenomenal success of the initial public offerings (IPOs) of many new internet companies obscures the fact that fewer than six out of 1 million business plans submitted to venture capital firms will ever reach the IPO stage. Many fail, according to start-up expert John Nesheim, because the entrepreneurs did not have access to the invaluable lessons that come from studying the real-world venture experiences of successful companies. Now they do. Acclaimed by entrepreneurs the world over, this practical handbook is filled with hard-to-find information and guidance covering every key phase of a start-up, from idea to IPO: how to create a winning business plan, how to value the firm, how venture capitalists work, how they make their money, where to find alternative sources of funding, how to select a good lawyer, and how to protect intellectual property. Nesheim aims to improve the odds of success for first-time high-tech entrepreneurs, and offers an insider's perspective from firsthand experience on one of the toughest challenges they face -- convincing venture capitalists or investment banks to provide financing. This complete, classic reference tool is essential reading for first-time high-tech entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs already involved in a start-up who want to increase their chances of success to rise to the top.

Budding entrepreneurs face a challenging road. The path is not made any easier by all the clichés they hear about how to make a startup succeed—from platitudes and conventional wisdom to downright contradictions. This witty and wise guide to the dilemmas of entrepreneurship debunks widespread misconceptions about how the world of startups works and offers hard-earned advice for every step of the journey. Instead of startup myths—legends spun from a fantasy version of Silicon Valley—Rizwan Virk provides startup models—frameworks that help make thoughtful decisions about starting, growing, managing, and selling a business. Rather than dispensing simplistic rules, he mentors readers in the development of a mental toolkit for approaching challenges based on how startup markets evolve in real life. In snappy prose with savvy pop-culture and real-world examples, Virk recasts entrepreneurship as a grand adventure. He points out the pitfalls that appear along the way and offers insights into how to avoid them, sharing the secrets of founding a startup, raising money, hiring and firing, when to enter a market and when to exit, and how to value a company. Virk combines lessons learned the hard way during his twenty-five years of founding, investing in, and advising startups with reflections from well-known venture capitalists and experts. His candid advice makes Startup Myths and Models an ideal guide for those readers just embarking on the startup life and those looking for their next adventure.

"Traces the graphic evolution from early games through the golden era of arcade gaming all the way to current HD masterpieces"--From publisher's note.