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How Can I Start My Own Business?

Strategy Driven

Conducting market research along with taking the time to do a full competitive analysis as it pertains to your business is vital to the success of your company. For more information on market research and competitive analysis, utilize this guide from the SBA. Develop a Clear Business Plan.

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Learning from Microfinance's Woes

Harvard Business Review

A few weeks ago, I attended a lecture about microfinance, and got sucker-punched. Expecting to hear a litany of pros and cons about the business, and an exploration of good and bad models, I was instead greeted with a knockout punch: Microfinance doesn't work, at least not in the way we think it does. That's nice.

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Guest Post: An Entrepreneur's Thoughts on Market Incentives & Foreign Aid

Mills Scofield

You will be excited and optimistic about the passion, compassion, thought, analysis, and implementation of this generation. One of his main tasks was to structure a hedging derivative that negated foreign exchange risks so that Microfinance institutions could take safer loans from the developed world.

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Funders Can Give More than Money

Harvard Business Review

And while some foundations bucked the trend and made double-digit investment gains in recent years, the average foundation in Chronicle's analysis netted out 14.9 It called for leveraging the profits of the global microfinance institution, and coupling them with private investments from the Allmans and their donor network.

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Facebook Presence Is an Important Clue to a Social Venture's Future

Harvard Business Review

In an analysis of data from roughly a hundred social entrepreneurs, we found a clear connection between a venture's Facebook presence and its commercial performance. This makes sense to Milaap.org , a social enterprise in Bangalore that crowdsources low-cost capital for microfinance institutions through its online platform.

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President Obama Can Make Start-Up America Succeed

Harvard Business Review

Cities and counties should become the units of analysis, not the nation. Microfinance (Bangladesh), securitization of revenues (Saudi Arabia), and royalty-pay-back funding (Israel) were all invented overseas. Debt or equity providers, all acting rationally by the way, support just a tiny minority of start-ups.

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Entrepreneurs: You're More Important Than Your Business Plan

Harvard Business Review

And we are often happy to review these start-up plans — which include the typical elements such as a product description, competitive analysis, estimate of market size, and projected financials. Applying a formal spreadsheet-type analysis to an early stage concept can be " disastrous."