Gail Simmons, a culinary expert, visited Babson College on October 24 and facilitated a round table discussion. The topic was on food distribution for the poor who often do not get an access to healthy food. People who joined the discussion were students, food entrepreneurs, and Wellesley residence community. All participants had a chance to…
One of the most common challenges that startups often face is a customers. Not only it is hard to find customers, retaining customer relationships are challenges. Founders of Quick Key (Issac Van Wesep M’08), SynapseSEM (Paul Benson M’09), and Growth Spark (Ross Beyeler ‘09), spoke with the Babson Entrepreneurship Club on customer acquisition, customer conversion,…
Entrepreneurs with great ideas often struggle in the beginning with financial difficulty. In order to solve the problem, they seek angel investors, investors, and venture capitalists to fund their business. Not only is raising money hard, it also brings substantial drawbacks to businesses. Regardless of the benefit of getting funding, venture capitalist involvement may not…
One of characteristics that successful venture should have is its value proposition to solve a customer’s problem. When customers realize that existing products do not satisfy their needs, entrepreneurs can step in and provide products and services that can solve the problem. Seth Goldman, co-founder of Honest Tea, recently came to Babson’s campus and recounted his…
Many people when they hear of Twitter associate people posting details from their personal lives. Over the last couple years, startups have found that Twitter can be used as a powerful marketing tool to gain new customers. As a startup, having a free marketing platform can bring a lot of return when cash is tight.…
In the summer of 2011 when I just graduated high school, I had a chance to help out my brother’s startup. The venture is called PATCHWORKS which manufactures and distributes handmade smartphone case all over the world. The cases are made of luxury materials such as gold, aircraft grade aluminum, titanium, wood, and silk that…
Getting your product or service to market is one of the biggest obstacles an entrepreneur can face. Sara Gragnolati M’10, a participant from the Summer Venture Program, came to share her experiences with the 2013 cohort this past summer. Gragnolati shared some of her lessons learned from getting her company’s product to market. Cocomama provides all natural,…
Customers can be categorized in two groups: a group of customers who is ready to buy and another group of customers who is looking to buy. Customers who already decided to buy products typically purchase the product/service within a short period time. They are relatively easy to approach compared to those looking to buy. These…
Many startups struggle to get their names out. Even if an entrepreneur has a great idea with an excellent business model, it is useless until customers acknowledge them and buy from them. Thus many entrepreneurs attempt to advertise themselves as much as possible. In order to deliver clear, memorable information that resonates, entrepreneurs need to…
Positioning a business is harder than most people think. Often entrepreneurs have a hard time defining their businesses correctly. To help entrepreneurs in the Summer Venture Program, Mary Gale delivered insightful information about how to position your business. Entrepreneurs should have their own positioning statements for their business. A positioning statement is not an ad,…
