By John Mullins, Randy Komisar Published Sept. 9, 2009 11:26 p.m.
"If the founders of Google, Starbucks, or PayPal had stuck to their original business plans, we’d likely never have heard of them. Instead, they made radical changes to their initial models, became household names, and delivered huge returns for their founders and investors. How did they get from their Plan A to a business model that worked? Why did they succeed when most new ventures crash and burn?
Every aspiring entrepreneur, whether they desire to start a new company or create something new within an existing company, has a Plan A—and virtually all of these individuals believe that their Plan A will work. They can probably even imagine how they’ll look on the cover of Fortune or Inc. magazine. Unfortunately, they are usually wrong. But what separates the ultimate successes from the rest is what they do when their first plan fails to catch on. Do they lick their wounds, get back on their feet, and morph their newly found insights into great businesses or do they doggedly stick to their original plan?"
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About John Mullins & Randy Komisar | John Mullins teaches entrepreneurship and venture capital at the London Business School and in regular workshops on four continents. He is also the author of the definitive work on assessing entrepreneurial opportunities, The New Business Road Test. Randy Komisar is a partner at the esteemed VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a lecturer on Entrepreneurship at Stanford University, and the author of the bestseller The Monk and the Riddle, which was selected as one of the top 100 business books of all time. Together they are the authors of Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model (Harvard Business Press, 2009).
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