What we can learn from successful entrepreneurs? Find out NOW ：）

Entrepreneurship is growing at a breakneck pace. And with our technological revolution, businesses are scaling and impacting the world more than ever before. For the United States to remain competitive, innovation and entrepreneurship must remain center stage. After all, entrepreneurship has been the primary engine of job creation in our economy over the last several decades – from 1980 to 2005, new companies (less than 5 years old) were responsible for nearly all net job growth in America.

But it is not only jobs and wealth which entrepreneurs create. Oftentimes, business creators bring forth solutions that solve society’s most difficult problems, provide inspiration and brighten our future. To celebrate entrepreneurship and its contributions, here is a list of five truly incredible entrepreneurs and lessons we can learn from them:

1. Bill Drayton, Ashoka

Lesson Learned: Incorporate empathy into your business

Widely considered the “father of social enterprise,” Bill Drayton has extended the idea of entrepreneurship into the spheres of education, health, environment and human rights. He regards empathy as the most powerful factor in forming an organization. The ability to see, understand and feel from the perspective of others, he says, is absolutely key in the process of creating a business that will be helpful and desirable.

Empathy played a role in Drayton’s founding of Ashoka, a global enterprise that identifies and invests in social entrepreneurs across the globe. Ashoka currently operates in over 70 countries and supports the work of over 2,000 social entrepreneurs making important contributions.

2. Oleg Firer, Unified Payments

Lesson Learned: Start young

As the founder of the number one fastest growing business on the Inc. 500 list in 2012, Oleg Firer’s career is a testament to the power of starting young as an entrepreneur. Firer started his first business at 17 and worked hard through successes and failures for the next twelve years, when he founded credit card processing company Unified Payments in 2007.

By 2012, Unified Payments was processing $10 billion worth of transactions for 100,000 merchants a year – with a mind-boggling three-year growth rate of 23,646.3 percent.

Firer undoubtedly achieved his success in large part due to the hard lessons learned from being in business at such a young age.

3. Halle Tecco, Rock Health

Lesson Learned: Pick a specific niche

It seems that accelerators, incubators and other startup-boosting programs are popping up everywhere. So when Halle Tecco graduated from HarvardBusiness School in 2011 and set out to create an accelerator program, she picked a specific niche to tackle: healthcare technology. Today, Tecco’s accelerator — known as Rock Health – has provided dozens of health tech startups with millions in collective funding.

Rock Health tripled its revenue last year and has solidified itself as the first accelerator exclusively focused on health startups.

Tecco’s success proves the importance of picking a specific niche and sticking to it. In the words of marketing genius Seth Godin: don’t be a generalist that is pretty good at lots of things, rather be a specialist that is great at one thing.

4. Aaron and Karine Hirschhorn, DogVacay

Lesson Learned: Use personal pain points to inspire your business idea

When husband and wife Aaron and Karine Hirschhorn couldn’t find the right overnight kennel for their dogs, they decided to take matters into their own hands and created a marketplace that pairs traveling pet owners with local pet-sitters. Since being founded last year, LA-based DogVacay has raised over $6 million in venture capital and is increasing revenue 60 percent monthly.

The online service, dubbed “the Airbnb for pets,” has already booked 50,000 nights for pets and has paid over $1 million to pet-sitters signed up with the site.

The Hirschhorns identified a simple pain point in their own lives and created a business that solved the problem. Entrepreneurs should remember that great businesses are often born from observations of and attempts to solve personal pain points.

5. Jake Nickell, Threadless

Lesson Learned: Build a community around your business

Jake Nickell founded Threadless over a decade ago on the premise that a community of individuals would contribute and determine the T-shirt designs his company would print and sell.

More than two million artists have submitted their designs to Threadless and collectively vote on which designs will go to print. The company, which is rumored to be at $30 million or more in annual revenue, sells millions of shirts each year and gives previously unknown artists a spotlight.

Nickell says his goal is to “give the creative minds of the world more opportunities to make and sell great art.” His constant focus on community building and collaboration has been at the heart of Threadless’ success.

See more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2013/05/01/5-incredible-entrepreneurs-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them/ 

Quotes of Entrepreneur

Looking for some inspiration in starting your own business? Look no further! Here's what some of the world's most famous entrepreneurs have to say about entrepreneurship:

Entrepreneur Startup Advice

Starting a business can be exhausting, exciting and exhilarating--all at the same time. This is precisely why it's refreshing to hear words of encouragement from those who have done it before--and succeeded. We spoke with entrepreneurs we admire to cull the single best bit of startup advice they could muster--and the experiences that led to it. They're simple mottoes, to be sure, but their impact can be tremendous.

"Don't think, do."

So said a stranger to Jeff Curran, founder and CEO of Curran Catalog, a high-end home furnishings company in Seattle, more than 20 years ago.

Action hero: Curran Catalog's Jeff Curran.

Photo© Lindsay Buzzo

The two men were sitting next to each other on a cross-country flight, and Curran, then 25, had just broken into the catalog business. They got to talking, and Curran spilled his idea for a startup while his neighbor interjected with devil's-advocate questions. When the plane landed and the two rose to claim their bags from the overhead bins, the stranger finally opened up his can of insight. Those three words inspired Curran to pour $15,000 of his own cash into launching his company, which has grown into a profitable B2B and B2C brand.

"After that plane flight, I'm sitting in the bathroom at my parents' house and I pick up [a financial] magazine, and this guy was on the cover," remembers Curran, now 47. Turns out the man was mutual-fund maven Mario Gabelli.

Curran still lives by Gabelli's advice. Earlier this year, after learning about profit margins in the high-end car-accessories business, Curran Catalog launched a new product line: designer flooring for collector and European automobiles. "There is such a thing as overthinking a big decision," Curran says. "Sometimes you just have to get it done."

"Let your customers lead the way."

Anupy Singla never intended to build her business around this philosophy, but the more she looks back on the history of Indian as Apple Pie, her Chicago-based Indian food-products business, the more she credits customers with driving her strategy.

Seasoned pro: Anupy Singla of Indian as Apple Pie.

Photo© Brave New Pictures

Exhibit A: When Facebook followers complained they were having trouble finding certain Indian spices, Singla equipped her company to buy those spices from manufacturers and offer them for sale. Exhibit B: After friends and neighbors asked her to show them around Chicago's Little India, Singla began hosting intimate tours of the shops on Devon Avenue for $50 per person. Even her Spice Tiffin, a modernized version of a traditional Indian storage container for spices, went to market at the behest of customers.

"The point of view for this company is to make Indian food easy and accessible," says Singla, who was born in Chandigarh, India, and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was a child. "If customers are saying they want certain things, it's up to me to give them what they want."

Singla's ultimate goal is to sell her products in retail stores across the country. Until then, however, she plans to leverage her responsive customer base to test-market products and see what sticks. "If something isn't right," she says, "they'll let me know."

Corey T. Nyman of Labor Wines

"It's all about passion."

On some level, especially on the ledger sheets, Corey T. Nyman's fledgling wine label, Labor Wines, is about dollars and cents. But the Las Vegas resident prefers to focus on a more powerful force driving his business: his love for the work.

For Nyman, Labor Wines is the culmination of 20 years in his family's hospitality and food-and-beverage consulting business, and of more than a decade fantasizing about making and selling his own Oregon wine.

"I experienced Oregon wine country on numerous visits in 2002, and the place touched me in a way nothing else ever has," he says. "Since then all I've wanted was to give something back."

" I'm starting an Oregon winery living in Las Vegas. If that doesn't scream passion, I'm not sure what does."

--Corey T. Nyman

To bring his dream to life, Nyman turned the traditional winemaking model on its head. Instead of investing in land--a move that would have required a huge capital investment--he and a business partner work with growers to buy grapes from specific sections of specific vineyards, then pay those same growers to make wine. Production is small, but thanks to Nyman's connections with restaurateurs and distributors nationwide, Labor wine is available in more than 35 states.

"I'm starting an Oregon winery living in Las Vegas," Nyman says. "If that doesn't scream passion, I'm not sure what does."

"No simply isn't a choice."

Above all else, this was the mantra that got Leo Rocco through his toughest times on the way to founding GoPago, a San Francisco-based mobile payment company that last year received millions of dollars in funding from JPMorgan Chase. Before the big deal, Rocco had dumped $500,000 of his own money into the company, maxed out his credit cards, endured three years without a paycheck, fielded numerous eviction notices and pivoted his business three times.

Leo Rocco of GoPago

"I was on fumes," admits Rocco, who spent years working for IBM's Rational Software group before striking out on his own. "It takes an amazing amount of resolve and mental strength to continue doing what you're doing and fight the self-doubt that inevitably creeps in, but when you truly believe in the business you're creating, there's just no other way to do it."

Rocco boasts that his penchant for perseverance likely came from his parents, Italian immigrants who came to the U.S. with nothing and built a successful tailoring business in Buffalo, N.Y.

"They taught me that if you get knocked down, you get back up; if someone stops you from driving forward, you find another way to get to where you want to go," he says. "When failure isn't an option, you promise yourself you won't fail. It's not crazy. It's hard work."

"Seek fleeting competitive advantages."

Mike Masnick, founder and CEO of Floor 64, an insight and consulting company based in Sunnyvale, Calif., admits this advice might be a bit "wonky" for certain circles. But for Masnick, whose company has nearly a dozen revenue streams, it speaks volumes.

Mike Masnick, founder and CEO of Floor 64

Floor 64 manages two insight platforms: Techdirt, a technology and business analysis blog, and the Insight Community, a marketplace for connecting companies with a diverse community of expertise. Add to the mix competitive market analysis for businesses in a variety of industries and an effort toward improving government policy on privacy and intellectual property, and the firm dabbles in a bit of everything.

"There's no reason why any particular business can't have half a dozen business models all working together simultaneously," he says. "Think of it like an investment portfolio: You wouldn't put all of your money into a single stock, so why on earth would you do that with your own company?"

The crux of Masnick's advice: No matter what, keep innovating. Generally speaking, this requires a fundamental understanding of what benefits your market is seeking, and a commanding grasp of technology and technological change.

"By innovating and providing increasing benefits to your customers," he says, "you no longer have to worry about competitors 'catching up,' since you're always leading."

"Business relationships need work, too."

As founders and CEOs of San Francisco-based Little Passports, an educational monthly subscription company for kids, Amy Norman and Stella Ma remind themselves of this often.

Amy Norman and Stella Ma, founders and CEOs of Little Passports

Photo courtesy of dandelionmoms.com

The two met in 2004 while working high-powered jobs at eBay and became best friends. When they left to launch Little Passports in 2009, they recognized that they were in for a new challenge--one that could potentially shake the friendship to its core. Since then, however, they have managed to succeed through a commitment to candor.

"We have found it important to be honest with each other and communicate," Ma says.

Adds Norman: "Before we started the company, we talked about how we'd handle certain disagreements; this way, when we have them, we get our perspectives out in the open, talk them through and move on."

Trust also helps, which is why Norman and Ma opted to share the CEO title. Each woman has the power to act on behalf of Little Passports individually; if one needs to tend to her family during an important business meeting, the other can represent the company solo. They like to think of themselves as interchangeable. "Without trust," Norman says, "that would never fly."

"Be open to anything."

Without this line of thinking, it's hard to imagine where Wicked+ would be today. For years, it was a typical marketing and branding agency, operating out of a 500-square-foot storefront on the main drag in Hermosa Beach, Calif.

Up for anything: brothers Brian (left) and Colin Cooley of Wicked+.

Photo© Marc Royce

Passersby, thinking the space was a shop, often would come in to inquire about buying things they saw through the window. Gradually it occurred to founding brothers Brian and Colin Cooley that they should expand their operations to include retail.

Today the agency's modest store carries a handful of products from local businesses, including commuter bicycles, safety razors, Chemex coffeemakers and T-shirts. At any given moment, the brothers might go from writing a video script to selling a bag of coffee.

"I never imagined we'd evolve Wicked+ into a retail brand," Brian says. "But we saw the opportunity and made it happen."

He describes the strategy as a "small bet," noting that he and Colin could have invested big in tricking out a retail operation but instead opted to test the waters gradually. Now that the duo has seen that the shop can be successful, they're contemplating a bigger wager: expanding to a larger space. "We want to grow," he says, "but we want to do it organically."

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226379#ixzz2jn8eSipO

Types of Entrepreneurs

There are probably as many different types of entrepreneurs as there are people, since one of the great joys of being an entrepreneur is the freedom to invent and re-invent yourself and your business to meet your requirements and the needs of the market in which you operate. That’s why agility, flexibility and future focus are clear advantages to successful entrepreneurs and most would resist being placed in any kind of box, and often defy description in the breadth and diversity of their activities.

That said, there are a number of general categories by which entrepreneurs can be loosely described, as shown here.

Social Entrepreneurs 

A rapidly growing and vibrant sector, social entrepreneurs play an important role in providing products and services with the overall intention of creating social good, operating from a triple bottom line perspective of people, planet, profit.  Profit is often reinvested into the enterprise rather than being distributed to shareholders. There are different models of operation and varied legal structures to create such companies, and they are distinct from charities in being self-sustaining through income. Social enterprises have been a long-standing feature of the UK economy and contribute substantially to revenues.

Many people seeking to find meaning in their work are turning to social enterprise as a means of combining their desire to help others and make a difference with their ambitions to succeed in a worthwhile business. This means the demographic spread of social entrepreneurs is right across the spectrum from young to old and from every type of background and education.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron recently said: “Social enterprises have the human touch, the local knowledge and the personal commitment to get to grips with so many of our social and environmental problems…Social enterprises are businesses, just a different sort than most people are used to, but they create jobs and support growth. The facts speak for themselves… We want to make the UK the best place in the world to do social enterprise” (Recorded Address at Voice 11 Social Enterprise Conference, O2, March 2011) 

Organizations such as Divine Chocolate, Belu and the Big Issuein the UK are social enterprises, and one of the most famous global ventures is theGrameen Bank which was started in Bangladesh by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.

“Social entrepreneurs are people who recognize social problems, decide to roll up their sleeves and get into action using entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to implement social change that is sustainable, good for the planet and for the highest good of humanity.”
Christophe Poizat, Founder & President of International Network of Social-Eco Entrepreneurs (INSE). For more information, visit:http://inse.biz

Serial Entrepreneurs

Serial entrepreneurs set up businesses, and bring them to a stage of development where they can move on either by selling according to a pre-determined exit strategy, or place the enterprise in the hands of a successor or group of successors whilst retaining some degree of investment and/or strategic input,  whilst they start their next venture, with a view to repeating the process again.

Lifestyle Entrepreneurs

Lifestyle entrepreneurs choose businesses that reflect their passions and they are more focused on doing something they love than on the pure profit motive for starting a business. This includes making deliberate choices to fit a business around a way of living, for example preserving time with children and family, for a hobby or interest, a sport, or some other element of  their life which they wish to retain a place of importance.

Solopreneurs

The ‘one man band’ – An individual who operates alone in an enterprise and manages all aspects of the business themselves. Increasingly possible and prevalent with the advent of the internet, email, VOIP, etc and the consequent ability to perform multiple tasks, coupled with the ease of outsourcing to other freelancers through the ready supply available through websites.

See more: http://resourcefulentrepreneur.com/types-of-entrepreneurs/

Get Your Money for Your Business

A business loan will help you to start or expand your business, but if you don't have credit, it can be hard to get a good loan. You may not be able to get as much money as you wanted, and you may have to pay higher interest rates as a result. Still, if you have a good business plan, you may be able to find a lender that is willing to take a chance on your business.

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Step 1

Develop a relationship with a local bank. Large national banks typically have more restrictions than smaller banks that take a more personal approach. Open a business banking account with a local bank and use your account responsibility. This helps you to build your reputation with the bank.

Step 2

Talk to your bank about a loan. You want a loan that is backed by the Small Business Administration--most banks provide these loans. These are less risky for the bank because the government will help out if you default on the loan. Show the bank representative how you can repay the loan through current cash flow for your business or through the business experience that you have.

Related Reading: How Can I Get a Guaranteed Small Business Loan With Bad Credit?

Step 3

Offer collateral to secure the loan. Without credit, a bank will be wary of lending you money because they cannot be sure that you will repay the loan. If you offer some type of collateral, such as the equipment you will buy with the loan, you become a more attractive borrower.

Step 4

Build credit with a business credit card. If you are turned down by the bank due to lack of credit, you may still qualify for a business credit card. The credit limit on this will probably be less than you were looking for, but it will help you to build your credit as a business, making you eligible for loans in the future.

Read more: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/business-loan-credit-15112.html