You can’t throw a rock these days without hitting a company that practices corporate social responsibility. You want proof? The Harvard Law School study “CEO Materialism and Corporate Social Responsibility” revealed that Fortune 500 firms spend more than $15 billion on philanthropy and CSR.
On a personal note, giving back has always been part of my company’s DNA; it’s a policy that my father started and that I’ve continued during my own leadership tenure. CSR is near and dear to me because I’ve seen the amazing work we’ve done affect communities and influence and change the culture within our own offices.
For businesses looking to make a philanthropic mark, implementing CSR strategies won’t be an overnight overhaul. For small businesses and...
Sometimes our greatest liability is our own experience.
We often look up to executives who have incredible experience in their fields, rightfully so, as these "Gods of Wisdom." We assume their years of hard-earned experience allow them to make forecasts and decisions that the rest of us would just be guessing at.
But what if that same experience worked against them? What if their pattern recognition actually created a dangerous bias that prevented them from innovating on past success?
Founders are pattern-breaking machines by definition. Our whole DNA is based on upending the patterns of the past and creating new products to replace them. So what if the least experienced Founders were the greatest assets of innovation?
Welcome to Phase Four of a four-part Funding Series — all about Investor Outreach:
Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise
Phase Two - Investor Selection
Phase Three - The Pitch
Phase Four - Investor Outreach
Part 1 - Investor Outreach ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)
Part 3 - The Investor Email Pitch
Part 4 - How to Contact Investors
Let’s dive in!
Investor outreach strategy is an art form. Many founders will think about their investor outreach program as simply "carpet bombing" prospective investors with the same company story — which never, ever works for startups.
Instead, let's talk about how to build any investor outreach strategy that is customized toward highly specific target investors in a way that will make ou...
Welcome to Phase Two of our four-part Funding Series — all about Investor Selection!
Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise
Phase Two - Investor Selection
Part 1 - Introduction to Startup Investors (←YOU ARE HERE 😀)
Part 2 - How to find Startup Investors
Phase Three - The Pitch
Phase Four - Investor Outreach
This article is an Introduction to Startup Investors. Let's dive in!
Whatever stage your business is in when you launch your fundraising efforts, you can find the investor support that you’re looking for. Now that you’ve determined the fundraise structure that matches your needs and goals, it’s all about finding the investors that make sense.
They may all have capital, but the vast majority of investment profe...
When I (Jonathan) read the book Exponential Organizations 3 years ago, a whole new world opened up for me. Up until then, I didn’t know Salim Ismail that well—just like a lot of other people, I guess.
Today, Salim Ismail is one of the hottest names in the business world. He has spent the last 7 years building Singularity University as its founding executive director and current global ambassador. Prior to that, Ismail was the vice president at Yahoo, where he built and ran Brickhouse, the company’s internal incubator. His last company, Ångströ, a news aggregation startup, was sold to Google in 2010.
Salim Ismail has founded and/or operated seven early-stage companies, including PubSub Concepts, which laid some of the foundation for the real...
The following is a piece of really bad advice. If you follow it, there’s a large risk that you’ll be cheated, deceived, run over, and on the whole look like an idiot. I’d regret that, of course. But it is also really bad advice to urge good people to become entrepreneurs, as it’s almost dead certain you’ll fail. So if you nevertheless have taken the chance and thrown yourself into a new adventure, you may just as well place all your jetons on red and follow my advice: Trust everyone.
In 2002, I was a young, newly trained journalist with a blank CV and without much chance of a job in that branch. I, therefore, chose to change direction, and I called Morten Lund, a well-known Danish entrepreneur (co-founder of Skype), and a...
I have a confession to make: I’ve left my one-time beloved SoulCycle for a younger bike. For a Peloton.
It’s fitting that the two places I keep seeing Peloton ads are on cable news commercial breaks and in my social feeds: Because that’s where all my unhealthy election angst is generated, and there’s no greater way to deal with that angst than 45 minutes of balls-to-the-wall intense cardio.
“Y’all came to slay!” my favorite Peloton instructor likes to say as if he can see my sweat through the tablet screen. Yep, slay my workplace stress and slay my fear of Donald Trump being president—all in one spot. That marketing can’t be an accident.
Peloton– in case you don’t spend as much times in those mediums as I do– is the in-home answer to the...
When you’re working on an early-stage startup, figuring out what your business goals should be — like what you should be achieving and at what stage — is difficult. It’s not like school, where there are clear steps that lead to the next level. Or even like traditional businesses, which have clear business goal templates. No — early-stage startup founders often struggle with the nebulous nature of their business goals.
Lucky for you, there are experts in this who have great advice about what should be achieved — and when — for early stage startups.
Here are seven business goal posts you should be aiming for as you grow your early-stage startup.
For years I’ve been having one-on-one meetings with my employees. These meetings are invaluable for building trust, providing feedback, and sincerely understanding how I may help each employee. They’re my favorite meetings as they’re also the most productive.
During each one-on-one meeting I go over the questions provided by Lead Honestly. These questions ensure we’re continually discussing new topics, creating new insights, learnings, and feedback.
There is also one question I ask during every one-on-one meeting. Given the nature of a one-on-one meeting, and it’s focus on an employee’s emotions, many are quick to guess that this question is “How are you feeling?” It’s not.
I’ve tried this question without m...
In the early days of my career, my definition of success was pretty run-of-the-mill. It was all based in corporate metrics while I managed to build three profitable startups. But then my middle child, Teddy, was born with a life-threatening congenital diaphragmatic hernia, and everything changed.
My wife and I started the Incredible Teddy Foundation to help raise awareness about CDH and give financial assistance to families. After a difficult period, our son is doing well now. But his struggle brought me to completely redefine what success meant to me. No longer is it set just by business achievements, but by giving back — the classic “doing good while doing well.”
The experience of building a charitable fou...