Educating the New Entrepreneurs

Buy a LinkedIn Premium Account. It’s worth it. — Jules Pieri

A great talk on the Maker entrepreneurs all around us.

Joanne and I decided to build an informative, inspiring, trustworthy place where emerging Makers could “find their people.” We knew that these Makers would have many steep mountains to climb in building their businesses, and that gaining awareness and credibility would be by far the hardest one. New companies do not have built-in audiences or marketing budgets, and if retailers were no longer playing that critical connection role, we predicted there would be a whole lot of worthy products all dressed up with no place to go. We believed that losing those vibrant young companies before they had a fighting chance was an unacceptable cost to our economy and society. It made us spitting mad, and it galvanized us.

So we built a massive community of the very best kind — people from all walks of life who are curious, smart, and looking to support entrepreneurs and innovation. Over time, Daily Grommet became The Grommet, and today we are a powerful and unique market-maker for inspired young products. One of the reasons for our resonance and growth is that our community embraces the age-old human drive to create and invent. Our supporters and customers experience The Grommet as a place to see fascinating passions and talents realized, and to help the intrepid people birthing new companies. And some significant proportion of our many millions of followers cheers for these people because they hope to be one of those Makers someday.

— Pieri, Jules. “How We Make Stuff Now: Turn Ideas into Products That Build Successful Businesses”

For Discussion: Comment on the following HBS case;

The Grommet, an online product launch platform, was at the brink of scaling its business. The Grommet’s daily launch and sale of innovative consumer products, using personal videos created by product makers, had led to its initial success. In 2014, the company launched The Grommet Wholesale, a similar platform targeting retailers. Was this the best way to capture more of the value the company created for makers?

More links;

@TheGrommet @HowIBuiltThis @dalepd @AlexOsterwalder Jules Pieri @ryanjwill @dalepd @biz4kidsio

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