To grow or to profit, that is the question!
There we are, with a fistful of profit in our hands (finally!) and an endless list of places to spend it! Do we hire another engineer to get our product shipped faster? How about increasing our marketing budget to scale customer acquisition? Or, and let's just get crazy, do we finally pay ourselves?
I'm going to go out on a limb and spat in the face of startup lore, which suggests that the only way to succeed is to bet the farm and grow. Think of me as the owner of a casino (in this case, that casino is Startups.com) who gets to not only witness a handful of people bet it all and get rich, but 100x more bet it all and fail.
What we miss in our passion for greatness is that...
For a growing product startup, there is no better triumph than seeing your product on the shelves and online store of a billion-dollar retailer. It provides incredible social proof, validates your concept, and shows you’ve got what it takes to scale into a profitable business.
Unfortunately, for many startup founders, there exists a veil of mystery over what it actually takes to stand out to retailers in a crowded sea of established product companies and competing product startups.
Fortunately for you, we have the inside scoop from Rick Rommel, a partner at Sprosty Network and founder of RetailXelerator. Rick is a former Best Buy SVP, and was founder of its Exclusive Brands private-label business. He spent a decade both selecting and develo...
The publishing industry is both volatile and in many ways stuck in tradition, so if you’re trying to get a mention or more for your product or your startup, you need to understand the constraints and go through the right doors.
I’ve led Marketing and Content Analytics at The Huffington Post, VentureBeat, and Federated Media, and have seen the underbelly of the editorial business. And as a startup mentor and advisor, I’ve also seen many promising young companies struggle to break into the publishing world and go about it all wrong. If you’re trying to get media attention for your product or startup, read these tips first.
Work with a PR agency who knows the right people. Tread carefully on this path. PR ag...
Nancy Duarte is a pro when it comes to startup 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 fourth 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:
Walking into a room full of investors and venture capitalists and selling your startup can be an intimidating task. Not only is a clear and well-organized message key to accomplishing the job, but how yo...
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 second 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:
Before you take your place on stage and deliver your message to your audience, you need to have a big startup idea.
What’s a big idea? Well, according to Nancy, a big idea has two parts:
You may be an entrepreneur, but that doesn’t mean you’re running a startup. A startup isn’t just a new company — it’s a new company that’s designed to grow fast. Think about how Google would have made decisions early on compared to a new restaurant in your town.
For startups, this focus on growth should extend beyond setting goals. It should extend into the culture that pervades the business.
Many founders of startups are naturally focused on growth, and they assume this attitude will automatically trickle down to the rest of the company. But developing a growth-focused culture among a team that’s constantly adding new people is something you have to work at.
We went from five people on our team to 35 people in a matter of months, and it p...
Startups run on money but survive by optimism.
The greatest currency in our startup is our wildly insane, totally manufactured optimism that things might actually work out, even in the face of everything taking a giant crap on us. That of course sounds inspiring, but when we're actually living in that position when everywhere we turn things are falling apart, it's hard to pretend we can just put on a happy face and make everything a resounding positive.
This isn't a pep talk though — it's a game plan. The difference between letting our startups implode and bringing them from the brink of destruction is how we plan through this mess. As a 9-time startup Founder myself, I can tell you it sucks every. single. time. There's nothing cool about ...
Let’s face it: Media failures happen to the best of us. Sometimes they’re simple mistakes that go unnoticed, and sometimes they’re catastrophic failures that can ruin a business. The vast majority of the time, though, they’re preventable.
At its core, a media failure is when the value exchange between a marketer and a media company breaks down. This can happen because a marketing strategy was poorly planned, the implementation was rushed, or the media company was unable to actually deliver the audience it promised.
That’s why at New Brave World, I always caution the teams we advise to be careful to consider legal timelines and the time and cost exposure that’s connected to custom content creation. It’s also important to ensure you’ve reserv...
More than 50 years ago, Motown transformed the music landscape forever. Berry Gordy, a music lover who cut his teeth on Detroit’s automobile business, transferred his blue-collar tenacity into building a record label that featured the unique sounds emerging from the so-called Paris of the West: Detroit.
Gordy’s moxie propelled him and fresh artists like Diana Ross and The Supremes, The Jackson 5, and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to superstardom. Today, his legacy is woven into the fabric of Americana, and we all relish the smooth, upbeat, and personal stories those songs told.
Why am I waxing nostalgic about Berry Gordy? Well, I was born and raised in Detroit, and despite its economic ups and downs, it remains a proud city that retains ...
At first, it seemed like a match made in heaven. The book’s big, bold title grabbed your attention. The subtitle promised to solve one of the many challenges you’re facing right now. The glowing testimonials from CEOs and respected peers confirmed that it was the missing piece for anyone who hoped to be successful.
But by the time you got to chapter three it felt like a bad Tinder date. The author was repeating different versions of the same humorless anecdotes and displaying a brazen disregard for your time and attention span.
He was out of things to say.
You closed your eyes and whispered through clenched teeth:
“This should have been a blog post.” 😑
This is the big gripe readers have with business books — that they’re 90% fluff. They’re...