8 lessons from successful founders this global entrepreneurship week
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Key takeaways
- Global Entrepreneurship Week runs from November 16 through 22, 2026, with around 40,000 events across roughly 180 countries.
- The most useful advice usually comes from founders a few years ahead of you, rather than household names.
- Most failures trace back to preventable mistakes like building without validation, underpricing, and focusing on revenue rather than cash.
Everybody who has built a company has a list of things they wish somebody had told them earlier. Not the polished origin story that gets told on stage, but the unglamorous stuff: the hire that went sideways, the product nobody wanted, or the month payroll almost didn’t clear. The lessons that stick tend to be expensive ones.
“The best founder advice is specific enough to act on,” said Titania Jordan, CMO of Bark Technologies, a company that provides a safer phone for kids called the Bark Phone. “Anyone can tell you to follow your passion. What helps is hearing exactly which decision cost somebody months and what they’d do instead, because that’s the kind of thing you can use tomorrow morning.”
Global Entrepreneurship Week is built around that kind of exchange. Here’s what founders who made it wish they’d known sooner.
When is Global Entrepreneurship Week?
Global Entrepreneurship Week runs from November 16 through 22 in 2026. It started in 2008, when the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation launched it from Kansas City, with events in the US and the UK. The idea was to give aspiring business owners a week of access to mentors, investors, and each other. The Global Entrepreneurship Network now runs it, and it has grown from 77 countries in its first year to roughly 180, with about 40,000 events happening annually.
“Most people who want to start something never do, and it usually isn’t for lack of ideas,” noted Erin Banta, Co-Founder and CEO of Pepper Home, a company that offers custom curtains. “They don’t know where to begin or who to ask. A week like this exists because a single conversation with the right person can turn a maybe-someday into a real plan.”
The events range from pitch competitions and investor meetups to workshops for people who haven’t started anything yet, and many are free or online.
Why listen to successful founders anyway?
Most business mistakes aren’t original. The pricing that left money on the table, the first sales hire who couldn’t sell, and the contract signed without reading the renewal clause. Somebody has already made every one of these and paid for it. Hearing about it beforehand costs you a conversation instead of a quarter.
“Your lifetime will not be enough to learn only from your mistakes,” said Jay Vijayan, founder of Tekion and former CIO of Tesla. “You have to learn from other people’s mistakes.”
The most useful person to learn from is usually someone a few years ahead of you rather than a household name. They still remember the specifics of the stage you’re in, like what they paid their first hire or how they landed the client that changed things. That kind of detail is what you can use on Monday, and it’s the reason a room full of local founders often beats a keynote.
What can you learn from founders who made it?
If you can’t make it to an event this year, that’s okay. Here are eight lessons that recur when founders talk about what it took to get where they are.
1. Talk to customers before you build anything
The most expensive year in business is the one spent building something nobody asked for. Prevention costs nothing but nerve, since you have to ask people whether they’d pay before you’ve built the thing you want them to pay for.
“The cheapest research you’ll ever do is a conversation,” said Brianna Bitton, Co-Founder of O Positiv, a company that offers boric acid suppositories. “Founders skip it because asking feels like handing your idea to a critic before it’s ready. Then they spend a year and their savings learning what one phone call would have told them in week one.”
Have 20 conversations before you write a line of code or sign a lease. Ask what people do about the problem right now and what they’ve already spent trying to fix it, because money already spent is the only honest signal you’ll get. Listen for the gap between “that’s interesting” and “when can I buy it,” since only one of those is a customer.
2. Ship before it feels ready
Waiting for the perfect version is never the way, and is often driven by fear. A week of watching real people use a rough product teaches you more than three months of internal debate, and every month you wait is another month of unchecked assumptions.
“The version you’re embarrassed by is the one that tells you the truth,” highlighted Alexa Buckley Roussel, Co-Founder of Margaux, a company known for its heeled boots. “Every extra month of polish is a month of paying rent on a product earning nothing. The founders who launch a rough draft are running experiments while everyone else is still decorating.”
Decide the smallest version that solves one problem completely, then put a launch date on the calendar and treat it like a client deadline. Give yourself permission to launch to 20 people rather than the whole market. Small launches let you fix what’s broken before anyone important is watching.
3. Solve a problem you’ve personally had
Founders who lived the problem have an unfair advantage. They know the vocabulary, they know where the real frustration sits, and they can spot a bad solution immediately. Founders working from a market report have to learn all of that at full price, usually while burning runway.
“The best businesses tend to come from someone who got tired of dealing with an issue,” pointed out Andy Khubani, CEO of Copper Fit, a company that provides back brace support gear. “They already know what the workaround costs, who else is suffering through it, and what a fix would be worth, which is information that takes an outsider a year and a lot of money to gather.”
Make a list of everything that frustrated you in your last job or industry. Cross off anything you only heard about secondhand. For what’s left, ask yourself what the workaround costs you in hours or dollars, because a frustration you can put a number on is one that other people will pay to remove.
4. Charge what it’s worth from day one
Underpricing feels safe at the start and gets expensive fast. Low prices attract the customers who complain most and pay slowest, and raising rates later means renegotiating with every person who signed on at the old number. Pricing mistakes show up over and over in the research on why companies fail.
Price against the value delivered rather than the hours worked. If nobody ever pushes back on your price, it’s too low, because a healthy business loses some deals on cost. When you’re ready to raise, start with new customers only and let existing ones roll over at renewal.
5. Move faster on people decisions
Founders hesitate in both directions, waiting too long to bring someone on and even longer to let someone go. The regret data is striking here. Many founders wish they’d hired key team members sooner or parted ways with underperformers earlier.
“Every founder can name the hire they should have made six months before they did,” pointed out Sanford Mann, CEO of American Hartford Gold, a company that helps you buy gold. “They can usually name the person they should have let go, too. Both delays have the same cost, which is a year of the company running below what it was capable of.”
Write down what success looks like at 30, 60, and 90 days before anyone starts, then hold the actual conversation at 90 days instead of hoping it resolves itself. For roles you’re unsure about, hire a paid trial project first. It’s cheaper than a bad year for both of you.
6. Don’t forget to track liquid cash
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Plenty of profitable businesses have died with a full order book. Revenue tells you what you earned, and cash tells you what you can spend this week. The gap between those two, sitting in unpaid invoices and slow-paying clients, is where a lot of companies quietly run aground.
“A business can be profitable on paper and have an empty bank account on the same day,” warned Emily Greenfield, Director of Ecommerce at Mac Duggal, a company that offers wedding guest dresses. “Founders track revenue because it feels like the scoreboard. Then payroll comes due before the client pays, and suddenly, the number that mattered all along was the one nobody was looking at.”
Build a rolling forecast that shows money in and money out by week, not by month. Know how many weeks of runway you have without doing arithmetic first. Invoice the day work is delivered, take deposits on anything substantial, and chase late payments before they turn into awkward conversations.
7. Pick one number and ignore the rest
Early businesses drown in dashboards. Followers, page views, downloads, and email opens, and none of them pay rent. Tracking everything means noticing nothing, and it lets a founder feel productive while the number that actually determines survival drifts in the wrong direction.
“Most founders can recite ten metrics and can’t tell you which one is closest to money,” observed Justin Soleimani, Co-Founder of Tumble, a company that specializes in washable rugs. “Pick the one that means the business is working. Paying customers, repeat orders, whatever it is for your model, and then judge every week against that instead of the vanity numbers that never turn into revenue.”
Choose the single measure closest to cash for your business, then put it somewhere you see it daily. Check it weekly on the same day each week. Everything else can be reviewed quarterly, because a metric you look at every day starts influencing what you do that day.
8. Know when to change direction
Founders fall in love with the original idea and hold on to it well past the point where the market has spoken. The business rarely dies from changing course. It dies from waiting too long to admit the first version wasn’t working.
“Persistence and stubbornness look identical until you check the numbers,” said Terry Davison, CEO of Juvonno, a company known for its physiotherapy practice management software. “The difference is whether the evidence is improving. Founders who change direction early still have money, customers, and a team. Founders who wait until it’s obvious usually have none of the three.”
Set the decision in advance. Name what you need to see by a specific date, write it down while you’re still calm, and hold yourself to it when the date arrives. Remember that changing the product doesn’t mean starting over, because the customer relationships and the market knowledge come with you.
Ready to build something of your own?
None of these lessons requires funding, a network, or permission. They require asking questions before building, pricing with some nerve, and being honest about what the numbers are telling you. That’s a list any founder can start working through this week, whether the business already exists or is still a note on your phone.
“This is absolutely the single greatest time to start a company,” said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, adding that he envied the opportunity ahead of younger founders.
Plenty of people agree with him, judging by the record number of new business applications filed this year. Global Entrepreneurship Week is one week on the calendar, but the conversations it exists to spark can happen any time you decide to ask someone who’s a few steps ahead of you. The worst that happens is you learn something before it gets expensive.