Here’s a basic truth about founding a startup: You don’t know everything you need to know. In fact, you probably only know a fraction of what you need to know to be successful. But don’t worry — you don’t have to go it alone. This is where a startup mentor comes in.
“For a really early stage company, mentors are a great source of industry advice and expertise, particularly if you don’t have direct expertise in that particular area,” Sapna Shah, Principal at Red Giraffe Advisors and startup mentor for XRC Labs, The Monarq Incubator, and TrendSeeder, tells Startups.co. “As well as executive coaching advice — perhaps you’ve never been a CEO before, and you’ve never had to manage people in this way.
Knowledge is one of the greatest things a sta...
Growth expert Steve Patti joined us for a Clarity Live webinar last week to share some of his key lessons for growth. We’re sharing his top tips to keep you on the right track for startup success.
Steve’s three steps for startup growth are outlined below.
Step One: Understand the Approach for Becoming Customer-Centric
Get the Story Right: Be clear about why buyers should care about what you have to sell. Nail your positioning statement and then quantify it in terms of business outcomes that matter to customers.
Apply It: Once the brand positioning is defined and quantified, apply it to your messaging strategy, content production, lead generation tactics, and in your sales process so that you become your positioning.
Keep It Relevant: Audit ...
It turns out middle schoolers may be some of the best Founders I've ever met.
A little backstory. My kids go to a small school in Ohio that only has 208 students in the whole Middle School (grades 5-8). The school is very innovative, but one of the things that they do is allow the teachers to each pick one topic they would love to teach, no matter how weird, and pitch it to the entire Middle School.
I got invited to this pitch, totally unprepared as usual, and watched all of the other teachers pitch their classes. It was everything from "How to be a Pirate" to "How to Create your Dungeons and Dragons character." There were some seriously academic ones in there, but I was "sold" on the D&D course for sure! Where was this stuff when I was a kid...
Google AdWords is a heavyweight when it comes to understanding and monitoring the desires and questions of Google searchers, and ultimately understanding what affects the overall decision making that drives clicks.
By digging through and analyzing data, one can find explanations for budget leakage, and reasoning for campaign renovation. Using AdWords, in combination with multiple tools, users can conduct an accurate analysis of a campaigns current performance, both to discover strengths to continue taking advantage of and areas to improve.
For those of you looking to discover new ways to analyze your campaigns and make large and small scale changes to your account, join us for this ultimate PPC account analysis.
I...
Fail fast. Fail forward. Those are just two of the mantras you’ll see hanging in startup offices and incubators across the globe. In the startup world, a failure is considered a learning opportunity, at the least; a feather in the cap of the Founder, at best. We fetishize failure. We normalize it.
But as much as we talk a good game about failure, the reality is that failing sucks. Just as no one goes into their wedding day planning for divorce, no one starts a company thinking, “Yeah, this one will just be my starter. I’ll get it right next time.” No wants to fail, and yet the majority of startups do fail.
According to an examination of startup businesses (by which they mean new companies in general) in the United States conducted by Stati...
David Hauser is the entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. As the Founder of two companies — Grasshopper and Chargify — that serve the needs of his fellow entrepreneurs, David has spent most of his adult life focused on creating great businesses that not only solve his community’s problems, but also provide a great living for him.
If you’ve started a company in the last decade, you’ve probably heard of Grasshopper, a virtual phone system that turns existing cellphones into primary business numbers.
David and his co-Founder Siamak Taghaddos targeted startups when they launched Grasshopper because of how incredibly expensive business phone services were for budding entrepreneurs.
They knew ...
Startup Founders love the idea of full transparency when it works for them.
At first glance, it's hard to argue against the idea of "full transparency" in our startups. Who wouldn't want the inside information about what's really happening at a startup? Doesn't that make everyone feel more informed, safe, and supportive?
But try running a startup for long enough, and you'll quickly start to see that the concept of full transparency only works when things are good. The reality of running a startup quickly devolves into lots of shitty situations where going "full transparency" is more likely to sink our startups than improve them.
Startups often love the idea of full transparency in the early days when ...
Finding the right pool of beta testers isn’t as easy as it sounds. Our startup founders share their personal experiences and best practices to find beta testers for your new product or service.
The answers below are provided by members of FounderSociety, an invitation-only organization comprised of ambitious startup founders and business owners.
At Salty Girl Seafood, we’ve chosen to categorize our potential customers by interest. We reach out to specific groups in our community, such as yoga studios, university programs, alumni networks, job-posting listservs, food bloggers and athletic teams to use their contact lists. When people hear t...
I started angel investing almost by accident, which sounds strange to say. Who “accidentally” invests tens of thousands of dollars into highly speculative ventures? Well, I did.
A friend introduced me to Clayton Christopher who was raising money for his new liquor company Deep Eddy. Their first product, a sweet tea vodka, was amazing and he was an experienced entrepreneur, so I went in.
Investing was an exciting, interesting process. Then the company took off, and I got to tell everyone I know that I invested in that new vodka that everyone in Austin was drinking. Winning is the ultimate intoxicant, and from there, I was hooked.
I started investing in companies left and right. I became a huge cheerleader for angel investing. I wrote about h...
Nancy Duarte is a pro when it comes to presentations. Not just giving presentations, but starting them, finishing them, and every step in between. Author and co-founder of Duarte Designs, Nancy Duarte is a seasoned veteran when it comes to incorporating storytelling into speaking and creating connections with an audience.
The below video is the third part in a series of 10 in which Nancy shares the key components to making a successful pitch using creativity and critical thinking. Find out what she has to say:
When Nancy identified a gap between storytellers and presenters, she was determined to figure out what caused the disconnect.
Referring back to Step 2 of her talk, Nancy formulated her big i...