NFTE blog

What are some habits that all successful bootstrappers have?

Several successful entrepreneurs responded to this very question, posed by the Young Entrepreneur Council. Each entrepreneur elaborated on how one important trait, practice, or skill has proven beneficial to both themselves and fellow bootstrappers.

Invest Wisely

"One of the biggest mistakes you can make is spending your initial cash infusions on things that don't help create more cash infusions.

Congratulations to this year's Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2012 Alumni Fund Scholarship Recipients! Ernst & Young generously supports these young NFTE graduates, and NFTE is sincerely grateful. Some of this year's scholarship recipients have dreams of becoming entrepreneurs, investors and community leaders. Discover the schools they are attending and where they took the NFTE program.

Where are new jobs coming from? NFTE supporter Ernst & Young knows: Entrepreneurs are driving 30% job growth at the more than 600 companies represented by E&Y’s 2012 US Entrepreneur Of The Year® program. That compares to negative overall U.S. job growth. Revenue growth is even greater at 48% compared to an American average of 5.6%.

By: Anjelica Garcia, Development Intern, NFTE NY Metro

The 11 students participating in NFTE’s second class of Startup Summer, despite fatigue, met day 5 looking as professional as they did when they started. For the past few days students have been formulating their

By: Kristen Meredith

Last week, several NFTE interns and I had the chance to participate in a BizBuilders instructor training session. This is a three-day workshop which prepares educators to teach NFTE’s entrepreneurship curriculum. It was a great opportunity for the other interns and me to learn more about the NFTE methodology and to get to know future NFTE teachers from around the country. 

The following are the observations of Anjelica Garcia, a Development Intern in the NFTE NY Metro office, during the first day of Startup Summer.

It is 8:30 on Monday morning in the middle of July. About a dozen public high school juniors and seniors are sitting in a lecture hall at Long Island University in Brooklyn. These students have been selected to participate in NFTE Startup Summer. Instead of earning money at a summer job, these students are participating in a five-month-long intensive business incubator.

Your smartphone is capable of serving more roles than ever: navigator, research tool, newspaper… even financial adviser? Absolutely: with several money management apps already available, the Treasury Department’s MyMoneyAppUp Challenge is looking to both programmers and the public at large for new, innovative ideas that can bring more financial services to our fingertips.

The Kauffman Foundation released a survey earlier this month on the Forbes website for would-be entrepreneurs, including questions such as: “What is your top reason for wanting to start a business?” and “What is your biggest obstacle to starting your own company?”

An interview with NFTE founder Steve Mariotti about how a vision can change a person’s life and the role NFTE plays in helping young people to develop math, reading,