By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Eyebrows rose recently when it was announced that WeWork, which is basically an office leasing company,  was valued at a whopping $5B.  The valuation was set when the company raised $355 million in Series A funding last December. The reason the four-year-old company, which divvies up rented office space and [...]

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker How to split equity is one of the most important decisions a founding team will make. Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman wrote that nearly 40% of startup teams spend a day or less hammering out an agreement. They frequently want to get it over with - often with a [...]

Henry DePhillips, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Teladoc Physician - Entrepreneur/Executive – Maverick “Listen closely to maverick entrepreneurs…and you quickly realize that they don’t sound like traditional executives.” – William C. Taylor and Polly G. Labarr, Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win (2006)   By Mary Jo Krump, Social Media Director [...]

  By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Shark Tank has become ABC’s wonder child, drawing record ratings in February and positioning the Friday night prime time show in the top spot for seven weeks and running. Why has a show about people who are willing to face a group of tough celebrity investors in front [...]

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker You can’t wait to start your own business. Yet, fear of failure continues to hold you back from venturing out on your own. You are frustrated, and you wonder, “When will I have the courage to start up?” I had these same startup goals, and I experienced these same [...]

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker  As a startup founder or investor, it’s easy to muster passion for success. You have a business vision and goals, a significant investment of time and/or money, and expectations for a return on your investment. But how can your employees who receive the same paycheck every week or month [...]

My love, she speaks softly. She knows there’s no success like failure, and that failure’s no success at all.    - Bob Dylan, “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” By Omar Douglass Contributing Writer for The Purpose is Profit Blog As Dylan tells it, the title for “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” came before the lyrics. The phrase [...]

 Open up your funky mind and you can fly. - George Clinton/ Funkadelic   By Omar Douglass Contributing Writer for The Purpose is Profit Blog Imagine what the world would look like today if everyone who lost their job amid the turmoil of the “Great Recession” had thought of themselves as “self-employed” rather than “unemployed”? [...]

    Part Two of the blog: “How Business Founders Can Start with Style”     By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker  How do you know if you have the firm footing to support a venture of your own? Your time to start up is not only a consideration of the market and your product [...]

Our Grandfather, Henry A. DePhillips, Inventor and Entrepreneur, circa 1940   By Ed McLaughlin and Mary Jo Krump Fortunes come and go, but a legacy of exceptional character endures. Innovation can create overnight success, but even the latest and greatest change-the-world products and services can be replaced or be rendered obsolete by the next brainchild [...]