Wake up entrepreneurs! Here's why you should care about Senator Dodd's Financial Reform Bill

Senator Dodd's Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010" passed the Senate Banking Committee on March 22nd and the bill will now move to the Senate floor. If this bill gets passed there will be some serious repercussions for the start up ecosystem - entrepreneurs, angels and VC investors. Its time to take action NOW.

Introducing the Pecan Commons

Hobbypreneurs

I recently wrote an Entrepreneur Evangelist post on WorkingPoint called Canines, Trains and Really Great Parties. The post was a response to an article by Daniel Kehrer of Business.com about the new trends of hobbyists-turned-entrepreneurs, and their increasingly noteworthy impact on the small business space.

In reading the original article, the notion specifically reminded me of three friends who have been on this same hobby-turned-entrepreneur journey, in some cases for several years before they even realized it.

Entrepreneurship 101: Learning to Love Selling

There is nothing harder for a non-salesperson than building a sales pipeline. In Bagging the Elephant I highlight a post about a recent event in NYC, in which entrepreneurs discussed how to build strong enough relationships with larger businesses in order to be taken seriously enough to close deals with them.

This is part of a much broader issue, though, and it's one that is a constant struggle for most small businesses: how do we keep new sales coming in the door, when that's not our background?

Tis the Season for Entrepreneurs

In Deck the Halls with Pink Slips I discuss the November round of layoffs at several big companies, including RealNetworks, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Time Warner / AOL, Sprint Nextel, Electronic Arts and Pfizer. Of course, part of what brought these to my attention is that a dear friend of mine got caught in the pre-holidays cut-backs that also took place at Adobe.

Even worse, however, was the fact that my friend loved working at Adobe. It was the first time she'd worked for a large company, so some of the perks that big company people take for granted -- training, resources, perks, etc. -- were all relatively new to her, and she was taking advantage of as many of them as possible.