Entrepreneurship is the discipline of starting a company in absence of resources. Last Saturday the Entrepreneur Exchange opened, a renewable resource (wiki) for entrepreneurs.
Most entrepreneurs don’t fully understand their own power, especially when they work together. For example, Venture Capital is an asynchronous market, which should favor the entrepreneur. You will always know more about your business than they can. But there is a certain fear first time entrepreneurs have in dealing with VCs, not because they don’t know their business, but the process of raising and working with venture capital has been relatively opaque. This is changing with the rise of VC bloggers, many of them offering their content under Creative Commons licensing, openly sharing otherwise private equity insight. So the first part of the exchange aggregates some of the best links and resources on venture capital. I hope VCs jump in and contribute themselves (especially because there is a wiki page about a number of VC firms).
The second starting point of the Exchange is a StartUp Kit created by Andy Stack — a set of wiki templates and best practices to help entrepreneurs manage formation and growth. Andy co-founded Stata Labs which was acquired by Yahoo. Now he is sharing his expertise on how to manage a company lifecycle, timing your spend and organization with small investments that make all the difference when you are acquired. Andy used Socialtext for a couple of years at Stata, including coordinating due diligence for the acquisition, so he has thought through not only the practices, but the tool.
These two resources are really just starting points. There is no social contract for the space yet, just a creative commons license. Take advantage of it, contribute a bit and let’s see how this grows.
Ross Mayfield is CEO and co-founder of Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.
He also writes Ross Mayfield’s Weblog which focuses on markets, technology and musings.
