"Is 60 hours of work per week enough? 80? 100? Do I just work ALL of them?"
In startup culture, we've developed a pretty broken mantra that "more hours equals more growth". We believe we can kill ourselves to success, and if we're being fair, there's a bit of that requirement in building something from nothing, but the real question is — how many hours should we devote to our startup per week?
Before we get into the number of hours we work, let's first focus on the quality of hours we work.
Remember the 40-hour baseline was established at the turn of the 19th century, popularized by the Ford Motor Company in an era where the number of hours that were worked directly drove the growth of the company.
Nowadays, the correlations are rarely t...
If we all had the opportunity to go back to where we were at just a few years ago, I imagine we would have at least one piece of advice to share with our past selves that would eliminate unnecessary mistakes and wasted time. When you’re in the moment, you don’t really think about how certain actions (or a lack of actions) are really impacting you. Hindsight is always 20/20, though.
I recently had an opportunity to talk with Rob Walling about Drip, an email marketing automation platform launched in 2013 in an increasingly-competitive space, and how his productivity has increased over the years as he grew and learned from his errors.
Sujan: How about a quick introduction, Rob?
Rob: Sure. I’ve starte...
“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 ...
Marketing and business models might not be the same as they were decades ago. But one thing hasn’t changed: Customers are still any business’s greatest asset. That seems obvious, right?
It should be, but brands can forget that fact all too easily. In the race for the newest shiny things and the largest caches of data, it’s not hard for marketing teams to forget to tailor campaigns toward what customers actually want.
Chatbots are a great example. As sales associates, they can make shopping much more convenient. But as customer service reps, they kind of suck. In fact, when nearly a third of U.S. brands began shifting to automated customer service, the American Customer Satisfaction Index took the steepest dive since the 1990s.
Convenience i...
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...
You know as a startup founder that it takes a lot of time, energy, and skill just to get the train to leave the station.
School didn’t cover things like sourcing and vetting manufacturers and suppliers, handling customs for international business, marketing, customer onboarding, developing consumer and wholesale funnels, or payroll taxes.
And if they did, it was glossed-over textbook knowledge, not necessarily practical information meant for real-world application.
As you’re building your business, you’ve got to adapt, learn new habits, and teach yourself things you never thought you would spend time learning – let alone trying to master.
That’s just the way it is, whether you’re a cash-strapped startup or you’ve got deep-pocketed investors...
Getting taken seriously as a Founder is real work.
It's not some entitlement that's handed to us when we've achieved some career milestone. No matter who we are, we all have to fight for our ability to get taken seriously.
That would be fantastic, but the world just doesn't work that way. Especially among Founders whose credibility is tested on so many fronts — from acquiring customers, to pitching investors to hiring staff.
Our ability to establish our credibility early and often is critical to our success from the moment we found the company.
Believe it or not, body language sends huge signals.
A well-presented Founder ...