The decline of CSR and the rise of sustainability

Have you ever wondered what is left after a CSR campaign is over? What kind of water do people drink in Africa after the clean water delivered with the CSR campaign money is over? I often ask myself this question and I can never find its answer. Call me a skeptic, but whenever I think of all these CSR campaigns which bring clean water to Africa, etc. I feel there’s something missing in the whole picture.

Entrepreneurs everywhere should think globally of their business

Reading this article by Becky DeStigter my memory was triggered into remembering the event I attended in the beginning of May. It was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, and it functioned as a bridge between the Danish entrepreneurs and the ones already settled in Silicon Valley, US. Basically, the audience got the chance to learn from successful entrepreneurs the importance of having a global startup. As DeStigter also points out in her article, an entrepreneur should consider the global implications of his/her business idea from the very beginning. This cannot be stressed enough. The entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley, with several years’ experience in the field, stressed it again and again. Any business idea should have a global perspective and plan, even though the launch on the international market will not happen in the close future.

Entrepreneurs need to master the art of saying ‘no’

Female traits can add value to your company

Are you lagging behind in terms of innovation in your company? Do you sense a change is needed? Or maybe your strategy lacks something? Then take a look around you and see what the gender ratio in your company is. Women’s competencies may be the key to bringing abundance in your company.

This morning I read an article by Allyson Kapin which discussed if tech companies can keep innovating without so many women around. This article made me think about the eternal topic men vs. women from another perspective. Instead of thinking who’s better, I concentrated my thoughts on how male and female strengths can be utilized so that optimum results are achieved. Such a summary can be particularly useful for startups because of their explicit lack of resources.

Key steps for building a relatively correct budget for your startup

“Building an accurate budget is one of the hardest things to do for a startup, as you have very limited historical information to forecast with”, says George Deeb, the author of “101 Startup Lessons – An Entrepreneur’s Handbook”. However hard this road is, he believes following some key steps will help you create a budget that is relatively close to reality.

We, here in the Akasha Ventures office, read these steps described by Deeb and we agreed to share them with our community of entrepreneurs. In order to make them easy to understand and read, I followed the same pattern described in Jonathan Greechan’s article while writing this post.

Helpful and harmonious VS Harmful and obsessive Passion

Remember the saying: be careful what you wish for, since it may actually happen? Well, I do and I believe it can be totally true. Imagine you make a plan and set the goals, you might have a wrong or distorted image of what makes you happy. So, fulfilling that dream, plan or objective will not bring you happiness in the end. What can we do to prevent this from happening? We can start by planning from within ourselves, using as a base our passions and thoughts. And being completely true to ourselves. In this context, planning should be seen upon as the road that will take us closer to the goal. Planning is just a draft that we need to have in mind while getting closer to our dreams. We shouldn’t get lost in all the small details of the planning activity. Instead we should put our focus on the goal itself.

Pivoting and co-creation or the evolution of the new breed of entrepreneurs

Lizette Chapman has written a very insightful article about pivoting. Moreover, she tells Kevin Systrom’s story (the Instagram’s CEO) in order to exemplify how pivoting has changed the entrepreneurship field. As Lizette points out, there is a new breed of entrepreneurs which has been evolving recently. These people are between 20 and 30 and do “pivoting”, i.e. they try out new business ideas. Good if they succeed, if they don’t, the entrepreneurs just move to the next venture.

Delegating – The Key to Empowering Employees

“True empowerment gives people responsibility, and the freedom to live up to that responsibility” Bill Cushard says in his article and I have to agree. Having been an employee in different organizations throughout the past 6 six years allows me to speak from my experience. I can say that having a manager who believes in you and delegates certain activities to you, is what makes all the difference in the world.

Teen Entrepreneurs teach us a lesson

Browsing through different articles within the entrepreneurship sphere I came across one that particularly got me, Teen Entrepreneurs. I was able to relate to the vision these young individuals have and how doing what you love and believe in, will bring returns faster than anyone can imagine. It is a common belief that once you go into business you have only one goal: profit and one most often, forgets about the soul definition of a business: making life better for everyone involved.

A post about #Quantum thinking or why you should do what you feel like doing

To lead your own way or not to lead your own way – this is a question hard to answer sometimes. Schlesinger, Kiefer and Brown have written a great piece on how important it is to pursue your dreams and to do what makes you happy.

We all know that but when it comes to deciding if we quit our job and try to make a living out of a hobby, the decision can be hard an painful. A trade-off is rarely a good thing if you are not convinced the sacrifice you make will be worthy.