Josh Kopelman writes an epic post that should be standard reading for all entrepreneurs and business school students (and current crop of VCs). I’ve started 4 companies and can say with certainty that Josh is right on the money. PodTech Network original idea was a blog vertical search engine but it turned into a media company. I know that Mike Arrington started Techcrunch to understand and research the market for Edgeio. Now he has a budding media franchise. At the end of the day the results are the same … entrepreneurs adapt – they move on opportunities presented by the market.
Entrepreneurship is a funny thing these days…On the surface it seems easy because doing business on the Internet is easy, but building a business is hard. Josh’s post hit home with me because he sees the same thing. Failure is good and cost less then it ever was…but the game is the same as it ever was… build a product and make money for all involved.
Josh is a talented guy. Here is a audio interview that I did with Josh a few demo conferences ago
[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2006/10/PID_001185/Podtech_Josh_Howard_Sounds_of_Demo.mp3&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/entrepreneurship/technology/1266/venture-capital-josh-kopelman-and-howard-morgan-of-first-round-capital-at-demo&totalTime=438000&breadcrumb=3F34K2L1]
Silicon Valley Technology Blog - John Furrier 
thanks for sharing the interview, great content.
now the real question – did pottech follow the advice/guidance from the second half of Josh’s post where he outlined validating as many assumptions as possible before raising larger rounds with a mitigated level of risk?
Fraser: when we looked at raising money we did validate working base assumptions that drove the opportunity. There will always be scenarios (or assumptions) that need to be accessed at many different levels of ‘checkpoints’. I believe that the best entrepreneurs have a built-in ‘risk mananagement’ capability – fear of failure. For me the big issue facing companies is the singular focus on the business model and overlaying that with where the market is and the stage of the venture (entry, build out, growth, scale,..etc). The business model becomes the key focus to the entire venture.
Business Model: ”The totality of how a company selects its customers, defines and differentiates its offerings, defines the tasks it will perform itself and those it will outsource, configures its resources, goes to market, creates utility for customers, and captures profit…. It is the entire system for delivering utility for customers and earning profit from that activity.”