Before GirlBoss was a book or a Netflix show or a hashtag, Sophia Amoruso was running NastyGal and reticent to even sit on stage and be interviewed. She finally relented, and this was one of the first she’d ever done.
This interview was situated almost exactly between a five-year, almost effortless success story of growth, and a five-year slog that ultimately ended in bankruptcy.
But while NastyGal ultimately didn’t work, Amoruso continues to find ways to productize her unique attitude, style and eye. In addition to executive producing the Netflix show based on her life, she’s recently launched a media company for women called GirlBoss Media.
I have mixed feelings on the show and the direction of her media company, as a woman who doesn’t pa...
It is difficult to predict the specific types of startups that will be most successful in 2023, as the success of a startup can depend on a variety of factors such as market demand, competition, and the unique value proposition of the business.
However, here are 20 business ideas to start the brainstorming process:
Virtual events, such as conferences, trade shows, and workshops, have become increasingly popular in recent years due to the rise of remote work and the convenience of participating in events online. A virtual events platform could be a successful startup business model for a number of reasons:
There is a growing demand for virtual events as more organizations look for ways to host events onl...
The most powerful asset a startup can have is simply enough time to operate.
The problem is, most of us don't have that asset — at all. In fact, the very nature of a startup is often fighting the few moments we have left until our startup runs out of money altogether. Since we're all so hyper-aware of what happens when we run out of time, let's talk about the opposite — what happens when we have lots of time to build our startup?
Our internal motto at Startups has implicitly been "Let's stick around long enough to build our dream." That meant constantly fighting to stay profitable so that we could have an unlimited runway. As we celebrate our 11th birthday, I'd like to reflect on what the asset of "unlimited time" has done for us.
Startup conferences can be a great choice for both learning more about your business and meeting more like-minded entrepreneurs. Because when it comes to most things in life — dating, business, and yes, startups — who you know makes all the difference.
While some people are lucky enough to be born into families with connections or go to highly ranked schools, others have to activate that hustle to get in front of the people who will change their lives. And a big part of that startup founder hustle can be found at startup conferences.
But conferences are an investment, of your time and your money. And there are a lot of startup conferences and events these days.
So how do you know which ones are worth it?
TL;DR: "Oh Sh*t!! My competitor just raised a bunch of funding to do exactly what we're doing. We're done for, right? How can we possibly compete with someone who now has the resources to do all of the things we wished we could do?"
Yes, a competitor just raised some funding. No, it probably doesn't matter.
"Wait, what? How could my competitor raising money be anything but my own personal Armageddon?"
Well, it turns out that when the pixie dust settles after those big announcements, our competitors often have a whole new bag of problems to deal with that we don't. We need to look past the upside of that new capital to understand how most funded startups actually sink themselves with an anchor of funding.
The very first t...
Forget Snapchat. One of the most speculated about potential IPOs in Silicon Valley this year is file sharing and storage company Dropbox.
Dropbox was one of the earliest Valley unicorns to seem to defy any logic in valuations, and at its last round was valued at $10 billion making it one of a handful of so-called “deca-corns.” At one time, it and Airbnb made up some 95% of the value of Y-Combinator’s entire portfolio. And it was backed early on by top venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, on their way to raising some $600 million in capital. Its office was so lavish it reportedly spent up to $40 million a year just on employee perks. Its lobby sported a $100,000 statue of a Panda.
Yes, for a while, Dropbox and its co-founder and CEO Drew H...
As a founder or leader in a startup, it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind of running your business. But if you want to achieve real success, it's important to take a step back and consider the bigger picture.
In his essay "Growth," Paul Graham argues that the most successful startups tend to be those that focus on rapid growth.
But what does it mean to have a "growth mindset"? Simply put, it's the belief that your company can and should grow quickly, and the willingness to take on new challenges and opportunities as they arise.
This means being open to trying new things, even if they come with a risk of failure. It means embracing change and constantly seeking out ways to improve and expand your business.
Product differentiation is process used by companies to clarify the differences between their products and other products on the market. Those other products can include competitors but also a company’s own products, to prevent overlap between the offerings. The goal is to find a product’s unique selling point (USP).
Product differentiation is important because it makes your product stand out from the crowd! It’s easier and easier to create a company or sell a product or connect directly with factories in China these days. So what makes your housewares product or dating app or SaaS product different from all of the other housewares products, dating apps, and SaaS pr...
Every single time I look up the value of the AOL Time Warner merger it shocks me. And I’ve covered this industry for nearly 20 years. $350 billion. The biggest merger in history, at the time. Steve Case– the man who was the architect of it, who stepped aside from his CEO job in order to make the deal happen– is not surprisingly a man who got used to be considered crazy.
It took AOL seven years of evangelism and partnerships to get to some 200,000 customers and an IPO of some $70 million. When the company started, it was illegal for commercial entities to be hooked up to the Internet, only 3% of the country was online, and Sears was one of the most innovative Internet pioneers. Sears!
The story of the early days of AOL as told to us by Steve...
To say that Rand Fishkin is the ‘Godfather’ of the SEO industry may not be technically true, but it kind of feels that way.
He’s been a thought-leader in the digital marketing and search space since as long as I’ve been in the game (12+ years for me which is an eternity in anything digital these days), so if there were a Mount Rushmore of SEO (or digital marketing), he’d probably be on it.
He’s been showing people like me how to slay the dragon that is Google for years, and lots of folks owe their ability to have careers in the digital marketing space directly to his efforts.
Not only that, but he also Co-Founded a pretty well-known SaaS company called Moz along the way (with his Mom I might add), and built it into one of the best and most ...