Never before has “fake” been such a household word. But not all “fake” is bad. For entrepreneurs starting out, the right version of “fake it until you make it” is exactly what they should be doing.
An entrepreneur who “fakes it” is someone who takes on challenges even if he has no idea how he’ll solve them, such as accepting an order from a large client without knowing how he’ll get the shipments from China.
That’s the purest form of “faking it,” because it’s aligning his mindset with what he desires while still operating within his means. It’s also biting off more than he can chew but always following through and delivering in the end.
Ultimately, entrepreneurs who don’t push themselves and “fake it” are the ones who aren’t going to make ...
“I just want to tell other entrepreneurs who start at an early age – no matter how hard it is, do not give up, because your dreams are worth fighting for. I do believe that anything is possible with a positive approach and a lot of hard work.”
We’ve all heard, if not had them spoken directly to us, similar words of inspiration. And they never get old. We can never hear them enough. And maybe, just maybe, if we hear these words coming from the right person, under the right circumstances, we’ll accept them not as abstract mantra but living truth. And we’ll find the resolve to bust our tails long enough to one day arrive at a level of achievement where we’ll feel compelled to deliver our own words of encouragement.
It matters that these words ...
What do startup hiring and a Broadway production of Hamlet have in common? No, it’s not the murder, the Oedipus complex, and the existential crisis. (If it is, what kind of company are you running?)
In startup hiring, as in the theater, casting is everything.
When it comes to building a startup, you are who you hire. Not only do the people you bring onto your team determine the direction and destiny of your product; they also shape what it will be like to come to work every day.
Hiring is one of the most essential components of building a startup. But for some reason it’s also one of the least talked about. When you’re a founder, you’re frequently pulling double-duty as your own HR rep. But how many founders have you heard of that actually...
We wanted to find out, were these people telling us they liked the product just to be nice? Or was there something else that was going on?
Jeff Stefanis and his co-Founder Amber Wason were pedal to the metal on development of their electric bike startup Riide in early 2015. They had perfected their design, they had partnered with a top manufacturing company to build the bikes, and they were offering test rides around Washington, DC as a way to introduce DC commuters to the idea and turn testers into buyers.
There was just one problem: nobody was buying.
“Our conversion rate from test rides to buying was about 3%,” Jeff remembers. “Which is not great.”
The low conversion rate confused Jeff and Amber at first, because it seemed to directly co...
It’s one of the oldest truths in marketing: in order to get customers’ attention, you have to live where your customers live. And today more than ever before, where customers live is on social media.
According to a study by marketing firm MediaKix, the average person spends 2 hours per day on social platforms. As the post helpfully points out, that amounts to 5 years and 4 months over a lifetime – enough time to fly to the moon and back 32 times or run 10,000 marathons.
With numbers like that, it’s no wonder that paid social media advertising has supplanted radio and possibly even television as the new darling of the advertising world. Mediakix predicts that social media advertising spend will hit close to $36 billion globally in 2017, and ...
Toward the end of Season 1 of HBO’s incredible Silicon Valley, there’s an amazing scene that this writer has legit watched on YouTube about a hundred times.
The Pied Piper team is at TechCrunch Disrupt, coming off the high of unveiling their compression algorithm to a veritable whos-who of the tech world. Then, disaster strikes. Mega-corporation Hooli is there, and they’re presenting a technology that is identical to the product Pied Piper is building.
Panic inevitably ensues among the Pied Piper ranks. Then, a notably manic Jared, fresh from the traumatic experience of being kidnapped by a self-driving car, has a brainwave.
What Pied Piper needs to do, he thinks, is pivot.
“A lot of successful startups launched with a different business mo...
Running a non-profit can be a tremendous challenge. Those who are deep in the planning and execution of campaigns understand the magnitude of their efforts – and the consequences of poor execution.
Day in and day out, organizations are struggling to move the mission forward, encouraging their volunteers to raise donations and bring in more support. It’s an uphill battle, as evidenced by the steady decline in charitable giving since 2015, per the Blackbaud Index.
Growing an organization in our digital age, when contributions are down, is a challenge that requires a more tactical approach than just marketing. It requires a complete audit of operational processes, while also looking at ways to streamline donor outreach.
Because so much of what...
With Amazon disrupting and dominating more and more industries, how can your business thrive? Unless your name is Walmart, I don’t recommend competing directly against Amazon. Instead of going head-to-head with Amazon, I suggest focusing on how you can out-flank them.
Start by defining Amazon’s strengths so you know what areas to avoid. For example, price.
Due to Amazon’s massive scale and efficient distribution channels, it is generally the low-price leader.
And it has demonstrated its willingness to sell products below cost for an extended period of time in order to kill off competitors that engage them in a price battle. So trying to compete with Amazon by charging less is probably a recipe for disaster.
Another area where Amazon domina...
There's absolutely no way to go through the startup journey and not screw something up — OK, a ton of things. So why, as Founders, are we so bad about admitting our mistakes?
Unlike many other aspects of life, both personally and professionally, admitting we're wrong appears to have much more painful consequences to Founders because so many more people are involved. When I worked at a job and I messed up, the only people that were affected were my boss (who was unsurprised) and potentially my co-workers (who definitely didn't care). The consequences of my mistakes were tiny.
But now I have 200 people that rely on me. If I make a mistake, it affects all of them, and in some cases all the people that they are connected to as well. As Founders...
It’s taken on the allure of the holy grail. Systems would crash trying to count the words devoted to the subject. I’ll bet you don’t need to be told that I’m writing about: productivity.
We’re all in search of greater productivity (even if we define doing less as more, make sense?) One day, the times we’re living in may well be known as the GSD era.
Notes, doodles, end-of-day/beginning-of-day routines, virtual assistants… Buckle up as Startups Live surveys Founders’ different approaches to achieving superhuman productivity.
Wil Schroter wasted no time diving into a conversation that several people proved eager to discuss. “I’d like to talk about time management, but I’d also love to talk about how you all are managing productivity.”
“I lik...