“Have a plan and lay it out clearly before they begin. Copying interns on emails prior to their start date has proven to be helpful. Also, ensure they have someone to shadow so they can hit the ground running.”
— Ashley Mady
Brandberry
@KickAshMady
“Provide interns with complete transparency on company initiatives, even if it doesn’t relate to their job spec or day to day tasks. I’ve found companies hold back on what they share with interns. But if you provide the same level of transparency you provide employees, interns tend to learn quicker, feel more tied into the organization and empowered to work harder...
Question: I need to completely rebrand my startup. What is one step I should not overlook (in terms of marketing, customers, or any other area of the business)?
The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
Start From the Heart
As we all know, people make buying decisions based on how they feel. So don’t create an intellectualized version of your brand that isn’t emotionally accessible to your customers. Start your rebranding by planting a flag in the gr...
The following answers regarding how to balance responsibilities, lay out co-founder job descriptions, and define co-founder roles and responsibilities are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC).
Co-founders are vital to the business but can get lost as the company evolves. We evaluate our co-founder job descriptions yearly to ensure that the written expectations are in line with the work the company needs done. Don’t be afraid to reassign co-founder roles and responsibilities so that business goals can be met.
You shou...
Michel Feaster is not a woman you’d expect to be scared of anything. Her company, Usermind, is taking on the massive market of customer relationship management (CRM) software by providing a truly personalized customer service experience. Their focus? Millennials.
“Millennials have zero tolerance for companies that are not personalized,” Michel tells Startups.co. “Pretty much every business is facing this world where they’re going to win these hearts and ears — or someone else is going to win the Millennials.”
But Usermind isn’t Michel’s first time on the startup merry-go-round. Her first foray into the startup world was as employee #19 at Apptio. She joined Apptio with the goal of learning firsthand the ins and outs of building a company fr...
We're going to update our financial statements using a simple accounting process that requires zero professional accounting experience or accounting software — it's just our income statement spreadsheet.
Click here to download our template to follow along.
The next step after we've captured all of our financial transactions in our spreadsheet accounting system will be to process each of the financial records in order. Earlier we began recording transactions from our bank accounts and credit card statements, so now we'll drop them into the Tabs we set aside for business expenses and revenue.
We've broken our spreadsheet accounting system into a handful of useful tabs to populate.
Here's the quick list, then we'll go ov...
Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:
Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise
Phase Two - Investor Selection
Phase Three - The Pitch
Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch
Part 2 - Market Size
Part 3 - Revenue Model
Part 4 - Operating Model
Part 5 - Customer Definition
Part 6 - Customer Acquisition
Part 7 - Funding
Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets
Part 9 - Traction ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)
Phase Four - Investor Outreach
Let’s dive in!
Startup Traction is your opportunity to tell investors how far you've taken the business up until this point. Just having a great idea is wonderful, but generating traction is what truly differentiates you from the pack. Especially in the early days, the only thing better than traction is more traction.
While the novelty of creating the next Facebook sounds amazing, the truth is we don't need to necessarily invent a product to bring a new innovation to market.
If we look closely, we'll see that some of the fastest-growing companies out there — Uber, Casper, Dollar Shave Club and dare I say it, WeWork — are all based on ancient business models with a new twist.
Look, Uber didn't invent taxis — they just simply asked, "What's broken about the taxi business?" (Well, the limo business initially but who's tracking?) Any of us would be hard-pressed to find an existing product or service that couldn't use a ton of improvement.
What customers care most about is the improvement. Maybe that's ...
A market analysis is an assessment of any given market that includes both qualitative and quantitative research. Conducting a thorough market analysis as a key piece of your business plan ensures that you know everything there is to know about your market.
Coincidentally, it reassures any current or future investors that you know what you’re doing, that you’ve done you’re homework and that you’re the right entrepreneur to address the gap in this particular market.
But — in order to conduct a thorough market analysis — you need to cover a wide range of topics. Before diving into the specifics, remember that at its core, a market analysis is about learning the most you can about your market.
You’ll discover w...
When you're in charge of a business, you're all too familiar with that feeling of racing to catch up. But no matter how hard you push or how much you work, you never seem to reach the finish line.
There's always more marketing to do, more emails to send, another meeting around the corner, more prospects to qualify…
Terminal “behinderness” is an affliction that generates heart-pounding stress and makes you wonder how the most successful founders and leaders manage to be so productive while you feel like you're constantly drowning.
A lot of it comes down to how they structure their days.
Curious about how some of the top business leaders spent their time, John Rampton (CEO of Due) and Chris Stowell (VP of the International Center for Management a...
The acquisition of new donors is important, but you can’t neglect past donors and the support they bring. While the retention rate of first-year donors is only 23.7%, the retention rate of multi-year donors jumps to just over 58%.
Build a relationship with those supporters and keep them engaged outside of fundraising. That will keep your retention rates up and they’ll be more likely to respond when you call on them.
Email marketing is a great, non-invasive, and non-interruptive way to stay in front of supporters while also providing value. Even better, the ROI is significant. As your list grows, a single email to your supporters could trigger an influx of donations, greatly reducing the time it takes to hit fundraising targets.
Here’s how ...