Note: Last updated: July 26, 2018
What are the best startup tools of 2018? A great startup idea is exciting, but let’s be real — if that’s all you have, you don’t have much. If your startup is going to go from idea to reality to acquisition, you’re going to need a lot of help along the way. And while some of that help will come from humans — like, you know, your team and your investors and your mom when you call her, crying — others will come from startup tools.
Startup tools are tools created to help startups (and yes, traditional businesses) succeed. They’re almost all online, as that’s where we conduct most of our business in Startup Land. They’re also almost always startups themselves — the ecosystem of startups that were created speci...
“The problem here: a) making a business that didn’t give us money early on, and b) not giving up; we kept putting money into the business without knowing we were already dead.”
The special guest of this Startups Live session, Caya, has some great stories to tell. “Started my first business in 2011 (I was 22) and it failed terribly. I ended up with $15K in credit card debt that I just finished paying up last year. The problem here: a) making a business that didn’t give us money early on, and b) not giving up; we kept putting money into the business without knowing we were already dead.”
Well, this may not sound ‘great’, but even this painful experience, which Caya freely shares, comes with silver linings. You might say that he has a knack fo...
According to research from Kaufman, 40% of first-time entrepreneurs in the United States are women.
Even more impressive? The number of women-run businesses in the US is growing at twice the rate of men-owned businesses. The rate of women starting businesses and startups throughout the country is at an all-time high.
Let’s take a closer look at women-owned businesses, including certification and funding opportunities.
In its simplest form, a women-owned business is a business owned by at least one woman.
But when it comes to qualifying for certain grants, loans, and contracts, a women-owned business is at least 51% owned by controlled, operated, and managed by a woman or women.
Running a startup is a ton of work as a solo Founder, so much so that many Founders find themselves at a loss trying to get everything done. For those that are non-technical, this proves to be a challenge, as coding is essential in this day and age, so bringing on a technical co-founder is a must. This is also true for technical Founders missing the mark on the creative front, so it's no surprise that one of the most searched terms on the internet is "finding a cofounder."
It seems like it should be easy — find a co-founder (or more) that aligns with your startup idea, mission, and has the complementary skills to do all the things you don't know how to — but it's not that simple. Finding the right co-founder is a complex combination of effor...
Founder: The person who started the company. It is someone who has an idea and creates a business around that idea. They are the “Founding Father” or "Founding Mother" of the company, as the company would have never existed without them creating it. They are often focused on vision and big picture of the start up. They are generally the business owner, or at least one of them.
CEO: The head of the company, responsible for overseeing all aspects of it and making sure everything runs smoothly. The Chief Executive Officer runs it as a business, sets the long term plans and drives towards success. They also communicate directly to the board of directors. A Professional CEO will have the distinction of having risen through the ranks, and brings ...
The Funding Slide in our investor pitch deck summarizes our investment opportunity, including our use of funds, investment amount, and what we want to accomplish in our next stage. Potential investors, from angel investors, to venture capitalists, will zero in on this part of the slide deck to determine their initial investment.
Typically this is the final slide of an investor pitch deck, where we transition from pitching investors to making the big ask.
Our investor deck should cover three critical factors when we get our "ask slide":
Many investors, from venture capitalists to angel investors, align their investments based on the amount of capital a startup co...
The Pitch Deck Traction Slide helps showcase early traction when we pitch investors. But what kind of traction metrics matter to investors? Let's walk through some common pitch deck traction slide examples showcasing user growth, growing revenue, and scaling active users.
Also, if you're concerned about showing traction in your pitch deck, don't sweat it. We'll show you how to position your traction slides even if you're pre-revenue.
The perfect traction slide pitch deck formula incorporates three investor questions into a single slide:
Product Progress + Customer Acquisition + Visible Growth = Traction
The most stunning pitch deck examples incorporate all of these factors into their traction slides. Let's look ...
If you had the idea for Facebook before Mark Zuckerberg, you could have been worth $40 billion like good ol' Mark, right?.
Except, you couldn't. Because the idea alone isn't worth jack.
Not so sure? Ask Jonathan Abrams the incredibly talented Founder who created Friendster in 2002, around the time good ol' Zuck was graduating high school. Friendster was absolutely Facebook before Facebook, as was Hi5 and MySpace.
But unless you're a band from the mid-2000s, you're probably not maintaining a profile anywhere but "the Facebook."
Oh, and technically the idea wasn't Mark's either, but that's a whole other movie.
Think of the idea like a seed.
The seed alone has the potential to be something great, but by itse...
A few years back I was having lunch with a fellow Founder who had started a company that was #1 on the Inc 500 list. He had launched the startup from the basement of his girlfriend’s house with zero capital and had built into a massive company.
We were eating lunch at an exclusive country club he had just joined and were walking out to the parking lot where his shiny new Ferrari was parked. Clearly things were going well for him.
I asked him a simple question “What do people say now when they see you in that new Ferrari?”
He said “They say: ‘It must be nice.’”
Ahhh! “It must be nice” – The most popular refrain us Founders get when the outside world sees what we have – without seeing what it took to get there.
This isn’t for the people who h...
The past few years have seen an explosion of podcasts — it seems like everyone wants to get in on the audio. And startup founders (many of whom have probably been listening to podcasts since they started in the early aughts) are no exception! But how do you know what to listen to in this vast sea of startup podcasts?
Don’t worry — we have you covered. Here are the top 20 best startup podcasts as we head into 2020. Grab your noise cancelling earphones — and get listening.
Hosted by Startups.com founders and serial entrepreneurs Wil Schroter and Ryan Rutan, Startup Therapy is an inside perspective on issues startup founders really care about. From what to expect in your first year after launching to how to deal with the e...