Microloans are small loans that businesses that can't access traditional loans or other finance options. It could be because they don't have any — or great — credit. It could be because their businesses aren't very established yet or they're locked out of the traditional financing options for a variety of reasons. They're usually short-term loans, with low-interest rates.
Microloans started in Bangladesh with economist Muhammad Yunus in the early 1980s. It was primarily to help people in developing countries who didn't have access to traditional small business loans. Access to a microloan program gave them funding to start businesses and raise themselves out of poverty. There are now a huge range of microlending options w...
Millennials have set a high bar in terms of tech and entrepreneurship, but Generation Z could be even more ambitious than its predecessor. The newest generation in the workforce grew up surrounded by Snapchat, YouTube, and Musical.ly — and Gen Zers probably had an iPad before they could walk.
A whopping 98 percent of Gen Zers own a smartphone, and this generation expects to get smartphones at a younger age than any other generation. Research indicates that 45 percent of Gen Zers are on their phones “almost constantly,” and about 62 percent of Gen Z and Millennials would rather leave their wallets at home instead of their phones.
But the differences go beyond tech. Young people in 2018 know how to work for what they want, know how the gig ec...
When you’re confident about a business model, you will have absolutely nothing holding you back.
When I call Miguel Madrid at his Austin apartment, he’s glued to his computer, handling exchange requests in the wake of fulfilling the two massively successful pre-order campaigns his company Comfortable Club ran on Kickstarter last year.
“We shipped about 15,000 items in three days,” he tells me.
Comfortable Club is an online apparel brand that delivers ridiculously cozy underwear and loungewear at half the price of retail. The idea seems to be striking a chord: between those two Kickstarter campaigns, Comfortable Club has taken in more than $350,000 in pre-order revenue from over 5,000 backers — now customers.
All of which means things have b...
There's a ton of risk in taking startup advice from "advisors".
It's not that the advisors themselves are bad people — they tend to be very well-intentioned folks. It's that most advice tends to be dispensed out of context, with very little digging on behalf of the advisor, and delivered in a way to assume what they have suggested is the gospel.
It's time to stop simply taking startup advice, and instead start calibrating whether the advice we're getting is even relevant to begin with. Because more often than not, the advice we're getting from our trusted advisors is just flat out wrong.
And what’s worse? We don’t even think to question it.
The likelihood of finding advice that is absolutely aligned with our situatio...
It's 3:35 A.M. We wake up in hot sweat so wet we've soaked our Night Ranger vintage crop top right through. We had this awful dream that we were somehow fired from our own company.
If you own 100% of the voting stock and have no other shareholders — you can't.
Your totalitarian rule is safe, El Presidente. However, the moment we have additional shareholders in the mix, the game can change quickly.
Multiple shareholders, especially investors, typically introduce provisions in the Operating Agreement of the company that "protect" the shareholders from wrongdoing by the officers of the company.
Does that mean the janitor can initiate a palace revolt and overthrow us? Probably not. But it does m...
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 ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)
Part 6 - Customer Acquisition
Part 7 - Funding
Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets
Part 9 - Traction
Phase Four - Investor Outreach
Let’s dive in!
A company in the early growth stages should concentrate its efforts on a particular segment of customers whose needs most closely match that of their best current customers and not a broad universe of prospects for expansion.
Customer segmentation works for companies that started yesterday, and mature companies as well. In the...
“Leaders who encourage employees to pursue their side hustles can be rewarded for that investment of trust. People gain skills and master new technologies through side hustles, which can end up benefitting their primary employer.”
–Michael Ray Newman, 3 Ways to Support Employee Side Hustles
Is it insane to empower employees when the result may be that they leave your company? What exactly is the story with employee side hustles? A number of different perspectives kick around these very questions in today’s Startups Live session.
What will you walk away with? You may very well leave the conversation reconsidering your employer-employee relations. You might adopt or alter policies to accommodate side projects – to better honor your employees...
Startup culture has gone from glorifying victory to glorifying effort.
"Hustle Porn" has become more and more popular, particularly on social media, where would-be champions of entrepreneurship proclaim their insane personal sacrifices to the Gods of Startups. We're constantly wooed with tales of Founders putting in insane hours, risking it all, and coming away with the spoils of success to show for it.
How much of this is really a celebration of hard work and is how much is just the equivalent of giving ourselves a Participation Award for effort?
Let's start by debunking the myth that working 100 hours in a week is somehow a victory to be lauded — it's not. The intention is that we're SO dedicated to ou...
After you figure out your big idea and before the world is obsessed with your product, you have to find your customers. And in order to find your customers, you have to create customer profiles.
An ideal customer profile — or customer persona — is a way of defining and categorizing your customers so that you can:
That’s the simple explanation. Now, per usual, let’s do a deep dive into the more complicated one.
Ideal customer profiles are important because without one, your startup is going to waste a lot of time trying to attract customers who are, at baseline, just not attracted to your product. They’...
“…especially in the early days of your startup when you are less likely to reject work, when it’s done and dusted, and you assess your invested hours, more often or not you will find you have been underpaid. It is always hard to walk away from a job, but sometimes it is the necessary thing to do to maintain your a) business and b) soul.”
– Stephen Moore, Startup Pricing: It’s Not Always Right
Charging more can earn you less, underpricing can leave your company undervalued… The laws of nature seem to go haywire when we talk about pricing.
An exploration of why we tend to underprice by Stephen Moore, Co-Founder of Roots Furniture, triggered a discussion on how to best approach startup pricing. Did the Startups Live community pin down this sli...