This interview, conducted by Emily Pope, was originally published on the General Assembly blog.
Raffi Khatchadourian is a Mathematical Economics major and incoming junior at Colgate University. A self-starter and talented entrepreneur, Raffi has established himself as the COO of indify, an emerging music startup, before many of his peers have even declared their major. Back in January, Raffi attended GA’s week-long Business Accelerator program in partnership with Colgate University. Since then, he and his co-founders have gone on to win $10,000 in funding from Colgate University’s Entrepreneur Weekend Shark Tank and $15,000 from Colgate University’s Entrepreneurs Fund. Read on to learn how this young entrepreneur transformed his passion fo...
You’d think that by now nearly everyone would be sold on the idea of SaaS, cloud services, and the power and flexibility of a subscription service to meet their needs.
You’d think.
Unfortunately, not everyone is convinced that SaaS is a legitimate model for software usage and purchase.
I’m going to go through their main objections one by one. What you need to know at the outset is that many B2B decision makers view cloud solutions with a heavy dose of skepticism. As many as 49% of companies are concerned about data and the security of their information in a cloud context.
Let me set the stage for what you’re about to read.
Yes, AI is actually going to change everything, and No, we're not all totally screwed.
Why? Because every time we embrace change as Founders, we create exponentially more value than has ever existed before. And every time things change, everyone freaks out and thinks the "old ways" were the only way things should have been done.
I'm an avid carpenter — I build tons of stuff with power tools. Every time I'm zipping through a piece of lumber with my portable saw I think, "Some poor bastard used to have to do this by hand. I bet the moment he saw an electric saw, he figured he'd be out of a job!"
What we're missing with that line of thinking isn't whether we'll be displaced — it's whether we should have been doing that work by hand, to begin w...
Amy Errett wasn’t the likely candidate to reinvent women’s haircare. For one thing, she doesn’t color her hair. For another, she’d never built a company shipping physical goods before.
And this wasn’t lost on her high-powered Silicon Valley network, who couldn’t quite understand why someone so “smart” was wasting her time on such a frivolous category. One they (Usually men whose wives could easily afford $400 salon treatments) just didn’t “get.”
Instead of listening to the Valley elite, Errett listened to her nine-year-old daughter who’d heard her ask countless family friends about their hair routine, whether they colored it, what they used, if they were concerned about the toxins in those treatments, the ammonia that could burn a hole in a...
As your business grows, so does your need to scale sales efficiently. Scale can be your best friend, or the elephant in the room threatening to knock your growth off course. Your sales team needs special attention to scale efficiently. They’re a huge part of why your company is successful, don’t lose the magic that makes you special. Here are the areas to pay attention to when it’s time to scale your sales team.
Training a small team is easy. You know exactly what works and how to communicate it. Communicating the skills and strategies your team needs as a big organization becomes much more difficult. You won’t always get 1-on-1 time with each rep who talks to your customers.
It’s important to develop internal t...
Your website is like a car: if you fail to get routine oil changes, the vehicle’s performance will continue to drop until the engine stalls. Don’t let this happen to your website after all the hard work you’ve invested in getting it up and running. You, your web developer and your hosting company should follow the website maintenance checklist below.
The Airbnb pitch deck from 2009 has become an increasingly popular reference for entrepreneurs around the world. The company founders, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk used this pitch to raise $600K from Sequoia Capital and Y Ventures. The company has since become a giant in the Travel industry, closing a round in early 2015 on a valuation of over USD $20 Billion.
Originally recovered from a 2011 talk by Blecharczyk on Startup Bootcamp in Boston, we got a glimpse at the exact slides that they used to pitch investors on their original fundraise. The deck was incredibly successful at summarizing the company vision and the huge market opportunity they had before them.
We’ve added all the original slides in this article along wit...
If idea validation is about taking your business idea for a test-drive, then pricing your product is where the rubber really hits the road.
This is it. You’re done piloting. You’re done validating. You’re really done living on Ramen in an apartment you share with five roommates. You’re ready to come out and tell the world: “I have a product or service that provides value – and this is how much my product is worth.”
Needless to say, product pricing strategy is an essential piece of the startup puzzle – and it’s a notoriously tricky piece to get right. There are about a dozen moving pieces you have to take into account. Getting them all aligned just right is like unlocking the most complicated combination lock ever.
Britt Crawford knows a thi...
At the top of the organizational food chain sits cynicism, consuming your carefully nurtured culture with an insatiable appetite.
Following my previous company’s acquisition, I saw the seeds of cynicism take root within hours.
I overheard top employees say things like, “The last great company I worked at was acquired. I know how this movie plays out.”
Team members began making assumptions (and voicing them) immediately. About decisions that hadn’t been made yet. Consequences that had yet to develop. And, what they plan on doing if and when their worst fears came true.
I even heard cynical perspectives on the growing level of cynicism.
“Jason, don’t work so hard at this. There’s nothing you can do. I have never seen an organization not becom...
Many leaders start their careers with hopes of reaching the top as quickly as possible, skipping past lower-level positions as they scale the corporate ladder. This is particularly true in the startup scene, where founders essentially choose their own titles and begin their careers in management positions.
My career did not have such a direct trajectory. I meandered through the insurance industry for decades before I finally secured a leadership role. I started out working for my parents’ company, doing the grunt work of the office. I generated invoices, processed mail, and even handled janitorial duties. I was the youngest person in the office and the lowest on the totem pole, so I didn’t have a problem earning my stripes. Some people mig...