The Economy’s Down and Investors are Wary: It’s a Good Time to Launch Your Company
- Topics:
- Competitive Strategy
- Tags:
- Bankruptcy,
- Venture Capital,
- Strategy,
- Management,
- Litigation,
- Knowledge@Wharton,
- Investor,
- Investment,
- Financing Startups,
- Finance,
- ...
- Source:
- Knowledge@Wharton
FREE Registration is required
Overview: The article asks that in a market characterized by daily reports of e-businesses closing their doors and the NASDAQ continuing its tailspin, who would want to start a company now. Discussing such topics as growth strategies, high-tech startups, the dot.com bust and intrapreneurship at the fourth annual Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference held in Philadelphia, participants tried to tease out the secrets of starting a company with staying power in the new millennium’s roller-coaster market. It elaborates that entrepreneurs should shut their eyes to stock market trends and focus instead on their own vision. It noted that Wall Street goes through cycles of greed and fear – first embracing companies, then rejecting them - and asserted that these cycles breed investing fads and hype. The virus has infected the venture capitalists too, who keep trying to hit those fads. Enron was near bankruptcy in the mid ‘80s and to avoid bankruptcy, a small team tried to bail it out by importing Wall Street risk management strategies. Enron essentially built a "trading floor culture," which emphasizes qualities like: being willing to pay for a revolutionary idea that has no value now but may have in the future, knowing when to quickly shut down a bad trade, believing in the inherent wisdom of markets, and understanding how to act in them to create value and having a sense of urgency and of the need to move fast.
(Is this item miscategorized? Does it need more tags? Let us know.)
Format: HTML | Date: Jan 2001 | Pages: 1
