A Startup's financial health isn't just about updating financial statements and balance sheets — it's about understanding basic business financials, and guess what? It's not that hard. This primer is designed for Founders and operators who know little to nothing about startup financials.
The fundamentals of startup finance are this simple – we record every income item (our goods sold) on one side and then record every cost (operating expenses) on the other side of our financial statements. We subtract the income from the costs – and voila! – profit (or a loss... in the early days it’s usually a loss.)
There’s no special black magic to recording income and expenses.
Unicorns are a beautiful myth — but are unicorn startups a myth, too? At first glance, the answer is “no.” The definition of a unicorn startup is a company with a $1 billion valuation. Uber is a unicorn startup. Airbnb is a unicorn startup. Facebook is a unicorn startup. So are WeWork, Spotify, Stripe, and a couple hundred other companies you probably haven’t heard of. Those are real companies that have achieved “unicorn” status, so that means unicorn startups are real, right?
Well, not quite.
First, let’s talk about how we get to that $1 billion valuation. There are a few different ways to determine the valuation of a startup but, basically, it’s what your investors believe your company is worth, based on the metrics your company has compi...
With such high stakes and low standards, it's not hard to imagine many startup Founder/CEOs are sitting around wondering "Shouldn't someone else more qualified be better at this job?"
The answer is "Yes" — and yet you should probably be the one doing it anyway.
If we're looking at just resumes, yes, our resume would probably not make the cut. We don't have that MBA in Finance, we've never grown a big brand, we've never hired a full staff, we've never raised money for a company before.
Wow, now that we think about it, we're more unqualified than when we asked the question!
But that's not what qualifies a startup CEO in the formative years.
In the formative years, the qualification to be a s...
The words “successful startup” seem pretty straightforward at first glance. But, what do you picture when you hear them? A unicorn? A world-famous company, like Twitter or Facebook? A small company bootstrapping and grinding through the night, with steady growth? A lifestyle business? A thriving brick-and-mortar shop? A string of failures, followed by the perfect product/market fit?
Like so many things in the startup world, the definition of what a successful startup truly is can be elusive — and frustratingly subjective. While some founders might strive for that billion dollar valuation, others measure their success by how happy their customers are or the biggest impact they’ve made on the world. When we dig past the visions of unicorns da...
Entrepreneurs know the truth of the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” The right relationship can make the difference between a struggling startup and an overnight success.
But there are a lot of people in the world, and most of them don’t know who you are. You can’t sit back and wait for your audience to find you. To help your company succeed, you need to make the first move.
Savvy founders know that thought leadership is the first step to earning trust among a specific audience. And the trust you earn through a thought leadership strategy can help you build valuable partnerships, attract amazing talent, secure funding, earn press, increase sales, and more.
Grow Your Business Through Thought Leadership Content
Thought lea...
We’re living in a world where customer expectations are higher than ever. The traditional one direction advertising flow has been replaced by audiences that demand highly personalized content and valuable experiences.
To answer this demand, create more relevant messages and foster a two-way dialogue between a business and its customer, more and more marketers are implementing interactive content in their strategies.
Here is what you need to know to jump on the interactive content bandwagon and start creating content that increases engagement, generates more conversions and provides valuable customer data.
NG Data points out that the term interactive marketing encompasses dynamic and personalized content and l...
Whether you’re a business, freelancer, or a PR agency, you’re going to have stories that you need to tell. Hopefully, lots of them – press releases, articles, interviews, blog posts and more.
Of course, there are professionals and plenty of online tools to help with every step of the process, from creating content to publishing, from sharing on social media to tracking results of a campaign. But before you shell out you’re hard earned money or attack each project bit by bit, you should have a look at Prowly.
Prowly is data-driven PR software and content marketing CRM for creating interactive content, distributing content, and measuring results. And the tools work so well that thousands of PR teams have embraced them, including those working...
Growth won’t happen without some sacrifices. One of those sacrifices that has to be made is surrendering your ability to do it all (that is, all aspects of your business) by yourself. Tim Ferriss summed it up well when he said, “Focus on being PRODUCTIVE, instead of simply BUSY.”
Productive founders know that in order to scale their businesses, they need to be able to get out of the daily details, and into big picture thinking. But in order to do that, they have to outsource.
From Virtual Assistants, to freelance support, to hiring an expert to handle specific tasks, outsourcing means less hours spent tearing out your hair over tedious tasks, and more time pushing your company forward into the future.
You can do that, too. To help get the ...
Fundraising is the lifeblood of any non-profit. Unfortunately, it also takes a significant amount of time and volunteer effort to make outbound calls and knock on doors. Since most of your volunteers aren’t professionally-trained fundraising experts, it can be difficult to solicit donations and support.
Traditional channels for fundraising are also less effective than they once were. You’ll need to pivot and try new avenues to gain donor support in a digital age.
Today, much of the marketing and advertising done by major brands and successful nonprofits is based on content. Content marketing takes a variety of forms, and for the nonprofit it offers a great way to share the ...
What happens when the people who helped start a company are no longer qualified to work there?
▸ What about Kimberly who became CFO because she was the only person at the time who had taken an accounting course?
▸ How do you find a home for Willis who was the jack-of-all-trades …but now is the master of none?
▸ Should Arnold still be leading the engineering team even though he has less experience than the entire team now?
As our startups mature, we are quickly faced with the harsh reality that the folks that were critical at one stage of our growth are woefully under-qualified for our current state of operations. Things get weird. We can feel the tension mounting as we try to wrestle with our own evolution and how it impacts each team membe...