When we want to achieve a certain goal or go somewhere, we plan for it. Why? Simply because taking action and not thinking of the consequences that goes along with it produces chaos and a waste of resources such as time, effort, and money.
For instance, our lives. I’m pretty sure we all have a plan for our own lives. We want to achieve this and that by a certain age. We look forward the next day because we have a plan to fulfil.
Why do we do this? It’s not because we’re bored or nothing better to do but because we value our life. We want it to be meaningful. We don’t just want to survive, we want to live.
And for this same thing, we need to have a startup business plan. We didn’t think of building i...
Founder success is almost never what we picture it to be.
When we think of wildly successful Founders our minds easily jump to billionaires like Branson, Blakely, and Musk, balancing a life of magazine cover story photoshoots with keynote presentations and TV interviews. Our most "successful" Founders often have this air of glamour around their success.
But as it happens, Founder "success" feels way less glamorous. In fact, the most exciting success milestones are often so mundane when they occur that we don't even realize they happened. But this success is a culmination not of a single event, but a series of tiny events that we later look back and realize was when our success was truly defined.
For most of our journ...
Search engine optimization is an area of digital marketing that involves using certain tactics to help your website climb the search engine results pages for queries relevant to your business.
Focusing on boosting your SEO should be a key part of your plan to build an audience, as it can help you to reach a lot more of your target customers.
In this guide, we are going to outline 7 different tips for improving your on-page SEO and improving your site’s search engine visibility. Read on to find out more.
When we talk about on-page SEO, we’re referring to changes you can make to your own website in order to boost your search engine rankings. This can involve writing optimized copy, creating SEO-friendly content, and e...
As the founder of a start-up and new app, I’m in the position of being in a brand new position over and over again.
Pretty much daily, in fact, like all entrepreneurs, I’m confronted with a barrage of new questions that require research, testing, intuition, and unforeseen obstacles that keep me up in the wee hours of night.
“What’s the right minimum viable product? Which feature will drive active users most? How do I get event insurance? Do I have the right ASO? Which marketing spend is most efficient? Can I remain mission-driven while monetizing?”
So many new things to learn, so much to navigate.
It’s those endless beginnings, however, those unknown situations when I’m standing on the edge of foreign terrain with no roadmap that keep me ...
Welcome to Phase Four of a four-part Funding Series — all about Investor Outreach:
Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise
Phase Two - Investor Selection
Phase Three - The Pitch
Phase Four - Investor Outreach
Part 1 - Investor Outreach ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)
Part 3 - The Investor Email Pitch
Part 4 - How to Contact Investors
Let’s dive in!
Investor outreach strategy is an art form. Many founders will think about their investor outreach program as simply "carpet bombing" prospective investors with the same company story — which never, ever works for startups.
Instead, let's talk about how to build any investor outreach strategy that is customized toward highly specific target investors in a way that will make ou...
I have a confession to make: I’ve left my one-time beloved SoulCycle for a younger bike. For a Peloton.
It’s fitting that the two places I keep seeing Peloton ads are on cable news commercial breaks and in my social feeds: Because that’s where all my unhealthy election angst is generated, and there’s no greater way to deal with that angst than 45 minutes of balls-to-the-wall intense cardio.
“Y’all came to slay!” my favorite Peloton instructor likes to say as if he can see my sweat through the tablet screen. Yep, slay my workplace stress and slay my fear of Donald Trump being president—all in one spot. That marketing can’t be an accident.
Peloton– in case you don’t spend as much times in those mediums as I do– is the in-home answer to the...
When you’re working on an early-stage startup, figuring out what your business goals should be — like what you should be achieving and at what stage — is difficult. It’s not like school, where there are clear steps that lead to the next level. Or even like traditional businesses, which have clear business goal templates. No — early-stage startup founders often struggle with the nebulous nature of their business goals.
Lucky for you, there are experts in this who have great advice about what should be achieved — and when — for early stage startups.
Here are seven business goal posts you should be aiming for as you grow your early-stage startup.
In my tech career, I had the opportunity to experience hackathons from many different angles: as a participant, an organizer, a sponsor; a process advisor and technology provider; in plenty of cases as a winner or leader of winning teams; with both startup and corporate contexts.
I’ve experienced the challenges in leading talented teams under the time pressure of a hackathon; the stress levels of pitching ideas to leadership teams. Here is my advice to those ambitious hackathon participants:
No matter the type (corporate or public one) a hackathon is always a great opportunity to showcase your talent and skills: yes, hackathons are also about team spirit, collaboration and fun but the primary motivation of the typical participant is to win...
When times are good at our startups, we think it will never change; when times are bad, we think it will never change.
Yet the only constant with startups is change.
The challenge for many Founders is that this is likely the first time we've had good or bad times, so we have yet to see a full cycle. That makes it difficult to know whether this is a short-term blip or a long-term trend. As such, we tend to grossly overcompensate by spending too much in good times and running for the hills in bad times.
We all have this fantasy that our startups constantly grow "up and to the right!" on our beautiful charts. The reality is way different. The best way to think about our startup journey is a constant cycle of "feast o...
Building a weekend side project or an MVP to validate your startup is not as hard as you think. Whether you’ve never written a line of code in your life or your GitHub profile link is in your Twitter bio, there are existing tools that you can use to build your initial product in a day and sometimes even a few hours! I’ll share some of these with you that make up my MVP toolkit.
First, let’s focus on what I think is one of the most important considerations and that is validation. Your whole goal when building an MVP is to either validate so you can continue down the path you are assuming is correct (with added conviction), make changes with new learnings (pivot idea, product, and or approach), or realize that what you assumed is not worth y...