“While culture might eat strategy for breakfast — cynicism will devour your carefully-nurtured culture for lunch, dinner, and snacks in between.”
–Jason Eckenroth, Cynicism: Predator Of Your Company Culture
We all know what cynicism looks like. It isn’t hard to spot. It’s all around us. Maybe what’s hard to accept is that it can’t be stopped, to admit the scary truth that it’s highly contagious. Anyone can succumb to it who isn’t willing to examine oneself. Or step outside of a group that has been infected and begin the hard conversations that can cure the poison.
But where does it come from? What causes cynicism? How can you protect yourself and your company from it’s corrosive effects? In today’s Startups Live, Founders fearlessly confron...
When you're in charge of a business, you're all too familiar with that feeling of racing to catch up. But no matter how hard you push or how much you work, you never seem to reach the finish line.
There's always more marketing to do, more emails to send, another meeting around the corner, more prospects to qualify…
Terminal “behinderness” is an affliction that generates heart-pounding stress and makes you wonder how the most successful founders and leaders manage to be so productive while you feel like you're constantly drowning.
A lot of it comes down to how they structure their days.
Curious about how some of the top business leaders spent their time, John Rampton (CEO of Due) and Chris Stowell (VP of the International Center for Management a...
The acquisition of new donors is important, but you can’t neglect past donors and the support they bring. While the retention rate of first-year donors is only 23.7%, the retention rate of multi-year donors jumps to just over 58%.
Build a relationship with those supporters and keep them engaged outside of fundraising. That will keep your retention rates up and they’ll be more likely to respond when you call on them.
Email marketing is a great, non-invasive, and non-interruptive way to stay in front of supporters while also providing value. Even better, the ROI is significant. As your list grows, a single email to your supporters could trigger an influx of donations, greatly reducing the time it takes to hit fundraising targets.
Here’s how ...
You probably know the saying: It costs money to make money. And with 50 percent of new businesses failing within five years — and 70 percent failing within 10 — marketing is more important than ever. Marketing is what fuels business growth, and it’s one of the most important things to consider in a business plan. Without a solid marketing strategy in place, you’ll find that you’ll be spending a lot of time and money on trying to grow your business with little to show for it.
As a new business owner, it would be great to see high-impact results immediately. Without millions of dollars from venture capitalists, though, gaining results can be a long road. However, while there is no magic formula to marketing, there are some easy, high-impact ...
Crowdfunding may seem like a new idea, but it actually has a long and rich history with roots going back to the 1700’s.
However, modern day crowdfunding — where people and businesses raise small amounts of money from a large group of people, usually online — has its origins in 1997.
In this infographic, we look at some of the historical movements that led to the development of crowdfunding as we know it, as well as major events over the past two decades that have shaped modern day crowdfunding.
Infographic text transcript:
The Irish Loan Fund was established by author and Irish nationalist Jonathon Swift in the early 1700’s as a way to provide loans to poor but creditworthy people in Dublin.
The Fund was succes...
We all want to do right by the people connected to our startup, but when do our sacrifices ever get paid back in kind? Or more specifically, do they?
I recently had a tough heart-to-heart with a fellow Founder where they talked about having to move on personally from the startup. They were burnt out, they had diluted all of their upside in multiple rounds of investment, and they felt "stuck."
They were stuck because they felt that if they left, they would first need to do right by all the people around them — their team, their investors, and their customers. All of these people were incredibly hard to convince to work at their startup, so the idea of "leaving them" seemed like an impossible leap.
My advice was blunt: "Do you really think an...
The competitive analysis section of your market analysis in your business plan is essential. Knowing your competition is as important as knowing your product and your customer. Market gaps tell you where to develop your product and internal weaknesses tell you where you’re vulnerable to losing customers.
A solid competitive analysis is your way of showing that you know exactly where you stand among your fiercest competitors — and that you have a way to out-maneuver them. The best way to think of the argument you’re trying to articulate is:
“Here is where we can gain the most customers (offense) and here’s where we could potentially lose them (defense).”
Your competitive analysis should start with your SWOT Analysis — Strengths, Opportunit...
A few years back I was driving through a windy street of Bel-Air with my wife, looking at houses. If you ever want to feel ridiculously poor, I encourage you to do the same.
During our home tour we drove up beside a house under construction that was so big, we thought it was a hotel. We just kept driving around the perimeter of the house, and it just kept going! Our realtor told us it was the future home of Elon Musk.
A younger version of me would have said "Someday I'm going to have that house!" and believed wholeheartedly that there were some future series of events that would lead to that outcome. It's the blessing and curse of being a Founder I think.
I turned to my wife and said "I can't have that — and that's OK." Let me explain why t...
Paying people with equity is synonymous with startups.
Founders love being able to buy things with Monopoly money and newly granted shareholders dream of a huge windfall someday. And that sounds awesome.
But the problem is that equity isn't like cash — it's far more valuable, yet we tend to spend it like it's free. We later come to learn that equity is not only expensive now, it's way more expensive later as the company grows, and we now hold less of it.
It's not a bad idea if we value it properly. But that's the problem. Equity, especially in the early days, is often spent with little consideration for it's long term value.
"I'll design your mobile app for 10% of the company" might sound like a dea...
A few months ago I announced that we were going to go to Breckenridge together for a leadership retreat. We were going to sleep in bunk beds and get cozy and REALLY COMFORTABLE with each other. Thirty managers together for 3 days in a Villa in the mountains…. I wasn’t sure what to expect.
Here is what I learned:
This pleasantly surprised me, actually. In a team of 30 managers — EVERY SINGLE PERSON showed up. They drove in the snow up the mountain, they took time away from their newborn children, their families, and their other responsibilities.
The fact that everyone “showed up” is I think the most important part and says the most about our team engagement. I love this part the most.
Figurative...