We help you figure out what to do next to be successful.
Running a business is stressful. Whether you're opening a coffee shop, growing a contracting business, running a salon, or figuring out your next move for your tech startup, we offer free tools, blueprints and coaching built by people who’ve actually been through it.
Start with whatever is hardest right now.
Ben & Derek’s combined achievements:
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Nine-figure startup exits
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Over 1,000 students, 100+ successful entrepreneurs and CEOs mentored
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4 Award-winning classes
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3 Books and 100 articles published
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Public company CEO & CDO
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Princeton professors
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Ben & Derek’s combined achievements: 〰️ Nine-figure startup exits 〰️ Over 1,000 students, 100+ successful entrepreneurs and CEOs mentored 〰️ 4 Award-winning classes 〰️ 3 Books and 100 articles published 〰️ Public company CEO & CDO 〰️ Princeton professors 〰️
OUR WORK HAS BEEN FEATURED BY
WHY WE’RE HERE
Our mission is to help you succeed.
We’ve been where you are, more than once. We know, the hard parts of running a business – finding customers, making payroll, knowing when to grow and when to hold – don't come with instructions. We built companies, lost money, made it back, and figured out what actually works. Now we've turned everything we learned into free tools and coaching frameworks you can use today, wherever you are in your journey.
HOW IT WORKS
Sprints built for the decisions you’re facing
Every sprint covers one specific challenge — finding ideas, pricing, hiring, finding customers, managing a co-founder — with tested frameworks and real exercises you can use the same day. All sprints are free. (We mean it!)
Step 1
Pick your challenge
Browse by topic or start with whatever is most pressing right now. No order required.
Step 2
Get the blueprint
Each sprint coaches you to that specific problem — what works, what doesn't, and why.
Step 3
Put it to work in real life
Every sprint ends with a practical exercise you can complete on your own, at your own pace.
INVEST IN YOURSELF
Start free, get coached when you’re ready.
Free
always will be
Bite-sized Sprints
Every blueprint, system, and playbook. No paywall.
Personalized Exercises
Audio, video, and written formats so you can learn on your schedule.
Weekly Coaching Tips
Subscribe here to get free actionable insights from Derek and Ben delivered straight to your inbox. Real experience, zero fluff.
Become a Member
$99/year
For those who want more:
Live Group Coaching
2 x per month: Live coaching with Derek and Ben. Bring your actual problem and get it worked through.
1:1 coaching with Ben or Derek
15 minutes video coaching with Derek or Ben at $90/session.
Private Discord Community
Connect with Ben, Derek and other business owners at the same stage, asking the same questions.
Exclusive Webinars & Events
Every month: deep-dive workshops on critical decisions you'll face.
Early Access to new content
Tell us what you’re missing and be first to get our latest tools, frameworks, and insights.
What people are saying about Ben & Derek
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![A portrait of Claire Cullen: A woman with brown hair and light eyes, wearing a cream-colored sweater, resting her head on her hand, looking at the camera with a slight smile.]()
“I’ve built and run businesses for nearly a decade, and working with Ben has brought a level of clarity and perspective I genuinely wish I’d had earlier. He focuses on building something sustainable, with strong systems and real support behind you.”
Claire Cullen, CEO TFF Food Ltd.
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“Derek and Ben have created an inspiring and accessible way to build ventures that matter. I wish The Entrepreneurs had been around when I was starting out as a social entrepreneur!”
Manish Bhardwaj, Co-Founder and CEO of Innovators In Health
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![Portrait of Majora Carter]()
”I wish that this platform existed when I first started thinking about and doing my work, which was long before I understood that it could be considered entrepreneurship. It would've exposed personal and professional vulnerabilities, but with a scaffold that allowed them to be strengthened.“
Majora Carter, Founder Sustainable South Bronx Corporation
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“Ben Lehnert provides the rare combination of high-level strategic vision and the tactical grit needed to survive the early days. If you want to build something that matters, listen to him.”
André Biehl, CEO Flyway Health
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![Portrait of Marianne Cherney]()
“Derek taught me the realities of business, along with brilliant tools for how to be successful. Many years later, I still successfully put these strategies to work every day. What an opportunity that his expertise is now available to entrepreneurs globally!”
Marianne Cherney – Founder & CEO GogoTraining
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“Working together, Ben’s insights and hands-on approach helped my company across team, process, culture, product, and marketing. He became a trusted partner who deeply understood startup dynamics and was a sounding board I relied on.”
Omar Shaya, Founder and CEO Please.ai
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![A portrait of Alexis Sursock: A young man with curly brown hair wearing a light blue sweatshirt.]()
“I had the immense privilege of taking Professor Lidow’s class at Princeton. His practical insights became foundational to how I approached building Luvu, and still use those learnings for major decisions. For anyone serious about entrepreneurship, his guidance and mentorship shifts your trajectory as a leader - don’t miss out.”
Alexis Sursock, Co-Founder Luvu
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“The foundation of my leadership style was established in Professor Lidow’s courses at Princeton. So many of his frameworks have come up weekly in the decade since. I so hope you'll have a chance to apply them to your work and life as well.”
Guillaume Delepine, CEO Longeye
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“The Entrepreneurs does an exceptional job of breaking down what is often abstract advice into clear, practical thinking you can actually apply. The focus on mindset, real-world examples, and disciplined customer discovery makes it feel less like a course and more like a trusted operating system for founders navigating real decisions.”
Steven Blocker, CEO Muru
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![A portrait of Gene Sheridan: A man with short, styled hair, smiling, dressed in a suit and collared shirt.]()
“Derek has been instrumental in my development and my career. The ability to create quantified value propositions is surprisingly challenging and non-intuitive, but also the most critical element of any new company’s success. His insights on the topic are essential and invaluable to any entrepreneur.”
Gene Sheridan, CEO, Entrepreneur, Investor
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![Portrait of Tyrone Ross Jr.]()
“Ben has played a pivotal role in my entrepreneurial journey. His gift for world-class design and product has added immense value to both of my companies. While he himself has been a successful founder turned investor, more than anything he is a best in class human being.”
Tyrone Ross Jr., CEO Turnqey Labs, Inc. & 401 Financial, Inc.
WHO WE ARE
We’re leaders in the world of entrepreneurship
We’re Derek Lidow and Ben Lehnert. We’re not motivational speakers. We’re experienced leaders and company builders on a mission to help as many people as possible to be successful entrepreneurs. Both of us have been the person staring at a spreadsheet at midnight wondering if we were going to make payroll. We built our coaching platform and sprints so you don't have to figure it out the hard way.
Derek went from running a global semiconductor company (NYSE) to founding and selling iSuppli for nine figures. Now he teaches entrepreneurship at Princeton where thousands of students have taken his award-winning classes. He has written three classic books on entrepreneurship and startup leadership and received the “Distinguished Educator Award” from the Academy of Management.
Ben has also built and sold a startup called Wunderlist for nine figures to Microsoft and was the Chief Design Officer at SAP. Now he advises founders and CEOs on how to unlock business value through world-class design and emotional experiences, and teaches Entrepreneurship & Design at Princeton. His award-winning work has been featured in publications around the world.
Together, we have:
Started from zero (multiple times)
Made money, lost money, and made it back again
Weathered every crisis you're about to face
Learned that success is about the journey, not the idea
FAQs
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Yes it does. The key concept underpinning our work is The Fundamental Principle of Entrepreneurship: Successful entrepreneurs make some group of people so happy that they are gladly given money in return.
Non-profits startups should consider their donors to be their customers and the people who receive their services as their users. This is different from most* for-profits where the customer is the user.
Relative to the Fundamental Principle of Entrepreneurship: non-profit entrepreneurs must make their donors so happy about how they take care of their users that the donors gladly give donations for them to do so.
* Note that the non-profit business model is also the same as an advertising funded business model. Advertisers pay firms like tv stations and entrepreneurs such as influencers to make their viewers happy enough that they gladly engage with their content that features their product or service.
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AI gives you generic advice based on what worked for someone else. Generic advice is the one thing that will never give your business a competitive edge. What you actually need is specific guidance for your specific situation: your business, your customers, your strengths, your blind spots. That's what the sprints are built to do, and it's what Derek and Ben do in office hours and 1:1 coaching. No AI can replicate that human to human connection.
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Yes! We've worked with coffee shop owners, contractors, salon owners, consultants, tech founders, family businesses, and non-profit entrepreneurs. The challenges change depending on your industry (pricing, hiring, finding customers, managing partners) but the frameworks apply across all of them. Start with whatever is most pressing right now and go from there.