A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc.. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are often from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Sweat equity refers to work one does to build up value without a salary. This ownership interest, or increase in value, is created as a direct result of hard work by the owner. For example, homeowners who renovate or repair their house themselves are investing in sweat equity that increases the value of their home. Or it could be a non-monetary benefit that a company's stakeholders give in labour and time, rather than a monetary contribution, that benefit the company. In some cases, sweat equity may be rewarded in the form of sweat equity shares. These are shares given out by a company in exchange for labour and time rather than a monetary amount.
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University is the business school of Northwestern University, a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. It was founded in 1908 as the School of Commerce.
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is the graduate business school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1898, Chicago Booth is the second-oldest business school in the U.S. and is associated with 10 Nobel laureates in the Economic Sciences, more than any other business school in the world. The school has the third-largest endowment of any business school.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Corporate venture capital (CVC) is the investment of corporate funds directly in external startup companies. CVC is defined by the Business Dictionary as the "practice where a large firm takes an equity stake in a small but innovative or specialist firm, to which it may also provide management and marketing expertise; the objective is to gain a specific competitive advantage." Examples of CVCs include GV and Intel Capital.
Patricia Mary Cloherty was an American businesswoman, company director, and private equity financier. She was the chairman and CEO of Delta Private Equity Partners. Cloherty served as manager of The U.S. Russia Investment Fund and Delta Russia Fund, two venture capital funds which operated in Russia. In 2004, Cloherty was named Businessperson of the Year by the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. In 2007, Crain's New York Business named her one of the Most Powerful Women in New York. In 2008, Cloherty received the Order of Friendship from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mark Tebbe is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business where he helped develop and co-teaches the Entrepreneurial Discovery class having served in this role since 2011. In addition to his appointment as Adjunct Professor, Mark is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence in Booth's Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation where he mentors students and advises faculty in developing technological business techniques. He is an active investor and mentor to various companies in the startup ecosystem as part of Hyde Park Angels.
Scott Meadow is an American venture capitalist and academic who is the faculty member of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he is a clinical professor of entrepreneurship. He has previously received the Richard J. Daley Award. The Daley Medal acknowledges a single individual who has given direct and extraordinary support to the state of Illinois by participating in or being an advocate for the venture capital and private equity industry.
David Semel Rose is an American serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He is an investor in startup technology companies and founder of New York Angels, an early-stage technology investment group. He is Managing Partner of Rose Tech Ventures, a venture fund focused on Internet-based business, and CEO of Gust, which operates a collaboration platform for early stage angel investing.
Suren G. Dutia is an advocate for entrepreneurship and has served as a Senior Fellow of the Kauffman Foundation from March 2011 to December 2016. He has also served as a Senior Fellow with the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Washington University in St. Louis. From February 2006 to May 2010, Dutia served as the Chief Executive Officer of TiE Global based in Silicon Valley. With 61 chapters in 17 countries, TiE is one of the largest non-profit organizations involved in fostering entrepreneurship globally. Dutia founded the San Diego chapter of TiE in 2000 and was its President for three years. With the Kauffman Foundation, Dutia has been involved in varied initiatives, including building and growing entrepreneurial ecosystems, immigration policy, and mentoring a number of grantees who contribute to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. Dutia has also authored papers on topics such as Diasporas networks, AgTech, Startup boards and Founder-CEO transition planning. In addition, Dutia also serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Digital Transformation, University of California, Irvine.
Howard A. Tullman is an American serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, educator, writer, lecturer, and art collector. He is the former executive director of the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship at Illinois Tech in Chicago and the first University Professor appointed at IIT. He is the former CEO of 1871, the current General Managing Partner of G2T3V, LLC, and the current General Managing Partner of Chicago High Tech Investment Partners LLC, both early stage venture capital funds based in Chicago.
The 'Engineering, Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Excellence Masters Program' also known as the 'ESTEEM Program' is an entrepreneurship master's program and collaborative effort between the Mendoza College of Business, College of Science, and College of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. The 1-year program includes business courses covering finance, marketing, strategy, leadership, project management, quality, operations research, and ethics as well as science and/or engineering electives and a capstone thesis project.
Josh Lerner is an American economist known for his research in venture capital, private equity, and innovation and entrepreneurship. He is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at the Harvard Business School. According to Web of Science on June 16, 2023, he has 165 indexed publications and a Hirsch index of 66, which puts him in top 5% of economics researchers in the USA. His research encompasses investments, startups, venture capital and private equity.
Lawrence Lenihan is an American businessperson. Lenihan began his career at IBM, and became a principal at Broadview Associates. He is the co-founder of Pequot Ventures in 1996, FirstMark Capital in 2008, Norisol Ferrari in 2009, and Resonance in 2015. He has also served as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and has sat on boards for companies funded by his venture funds in addition to others.
Gregg Latterman is an American entrepreneur, academic, and angel investor. The founder of Aware Records, he teaches "Positive Entrepreneurship: Profits and Meaning" at Northwestern University, and lectures on innovation and entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management.
The Garage at Northwestern University is an interdisciplinary innovation and entrepreneurship space and community for students at Northwestern University. The Garage provides students with resources and programming related to entrepreneurship and mentorship. The Garage houses approximately 90 student-founded startups per academic quarter. Its programs and resources are available to all Northwestern students.
Venture capital in Poland is a segment of the private equity market that finances early-stage high-risk companies based in Poland, with the potential for fast growth. As of March 2019, there is a total of 130 active VC firms in Poland, including local offices of international VC firms, and VC firms with mainly Polish management teams. Between 2009–2019, these entities have invested locally in over 750 companies, which gives an average of around 9 companies per portfolio. The Polish venture market accounts for 3% of the entire European ecosystem of VC investments, mainly in the digital space.
