It’s tempting for young companies to put “getting involved in the community” on the to-do list for the future. They wait until the company is more established, more employees are on board, or a few more clients are locked in.
But carving out precious time to help the community, especially in the early days, can be a defining moment in building your company.
I’m not talking about the grand gesture of a big donation. Who can afford that, especially in your company’s early days? I’m talking about real grassroots involvement that engages your company and your employees in the community.
At Rocksauce Studios, we set out to establish core values that gave us a road map to consistently deliver happiness for our employees, customers, and the world ...
Let’s talk about the “f” word. No, not that “f” word. Let’s talk about startup fundraising.
We’re living at an exciting time for startups and funding. For a long time, access to capital was restricted to the elite “in-crowds” in marquee cities like New York and Silicon Valley. If you didn’t live in one of those select few areas, you basically didn’t have a prayer of seeing a check from an angel or a VC.
But the tide has started to turn. Innovation can come from anywhere, and now, thanks to the Internet, the JOBS Act, and the rise of crowdfunding, so can startup funding. Even VC’s are getting wise to the fact that the best investments may not all come from the same zip code.
So now that we’re living in this brave new world of democracy in st...
Warren Buffett, at the ripe age of 18, learned to grow his wealth in a way many young startups couldn’t. Buffet and a high school friend bought a pinball machine to put in a barbershop, hoping to make a few bucks. However, he didn’t run out and spend his earnings on new sneakers or a cool car: He reinvested them.
Buffet and his friend bought more pinball machines, eventually stocking eight local barbershops. When they sold the fledgling business, he used his profits to buy stocks and start another company. Today, Warren Buffet — who once was nothing more than a kid with an arcade game — is worth more than $67 billion.
Regular reinvestment has huge benefits for startups. Reinvesting increases working capital and leads ...
Kelly Cornell, Founder of the clothing and accessories line Seaton Cornell, never had to wonder what it was like to be a entrepreneur. The youngest son of April Cornell — who made her name in the ‘90s and early aughts with her lines of watercolor and travel-inspired clothing and housewares — Kelly grew up in a household bustling with the energy of a burgeoning business.
But while some kids might have felt deprived or left out growing up with parents who had so much else going on, he took it as an inspiration and an opportunity.
“I grew up with a lot of nannies,” Kelly says, laughing. “But that was a good thing! They exposed me to a lot of different people and cultures.”
In addition to the people who helped raise him, Ke...
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Vacation. A concept that sounds nice in theory, but is a total bitch for startups to pull off. Or is it?
For a startup founder, the logistics are terrifying. Who’s going to meet with those investors? Who’s going to start that COO search you planned a month ago? Who’s going to run your next evaluation? (Heaven KNOWS Jim can’t do it.) That generously crafted vacation policy that you dangled as an incentive to your early employees doesn’t apply to you, right?
According to a report from Project: Time Off, created to cast a new light on our country’s view of vacation days, we leave an astounding $224 billion in unused vacation time on balance sheets each year. The workaholic tendencies are even worse for startup founders, who have no “vaca...
About time we had a little word on siloed organizations—many departments and sometimes even frontiers! Does this look familiar?
Nodding head? Ok!
What does this look like to your customers?
They don’t see silos—they see content!
It starts with perspective — different teams have a different idea on the role of content. Let’s look at a typical marketing team — lots of people with a tendency to wear black. And then there is the guy who runs the show and is responsible for content marketing.
This role did not exist 5 years ago because something has radically changed. As Lori from Forrester said: “74% of business buyers told Forrester they conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline...
We are a team of 4 Founders and friends: two business people and two techies. I need help to clearly define the role of my other business co-Founder. I came up with the idea and convinced him to join me. Has anyone launched a startup with a similar kind of team? Your experience will be helpful.
“I think it would be vital to the company’s survival that startup roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. If there’s grey area, I’ve found that work tends to gravitate toward the more motivated party, and the social/power structure gets weird.
I started a company with...
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Once you’ve selected a target audience how do you value market size?
Let’s say I have defined a target audience for my startup, defined a clear problem to be solved and the type of customer I want. How do I go from there to calculate the market size? Are there any good free tools out there for entrepreneurs and investors to figure out the monetary size of the market or to estimate the number of potential users?
Serena De Maio, Brand Builder, Marketing Strategist, & Entrepreneur, answered:
Let’s take the example of Uber, shall we? You have defined the following target group: 30-40 who use taxis but that are dissatisfied with the current taxi offer.
You could est...
From time to time I find myself working with a Founder who's in the unfortunate position of having to shut down a startup. It happens way more often than people realize, yet each and every time it leaves the Founder very alone, wondering what the hell they just put themselves through.
They feel dejected. They feel ashamed. They run countless "what if" scenarios that consider what the startup would have been like if they had chosen a different path. In the end, they just regress further and further into a position of failure and all the shitty emotions that come with it.
I only know this because I've done it — it sucks — and I don't wish that soul-crushing epilogue on anyone. What I have learned, however, is that from that pile of rubble the...
Like any relationship, sometimes the spark gets lost and we want to move onto something else. The problem is, we're often incredibly tethered to what we've built.
What do we do about it?
Nope.
There's nothing that says just because we invented a job that it has to be our favorite job of all time. We love pizza, but that doesn't mean it should be the only food we eat for the rest of our lives.
Our interests absolutely change over time, and there's no reason our interest in our startups shouldn't change too.
It depends on the quality of our team (if we have one).
The strongest move would be for us to level up all of the people around us so that they can have more ...