All Articles

1. 8 Tips to Leave Your Day Job and Start Your Business Explore under30ceo.com (Feb 21 2012) Marketing One of the scariest things to do is drop your day to day nine to five. The paycheck is steady and it comes with a nice health-care package. Lunch with co-workers provides time to unwind and talk about what’s going on in the world. The hours are steady and while it may be demanding, there isn’t much mystery to what you can expect from work. Venturing out of the workplace leaves a fear of uncertainty. Working for yourself day in and day out is nothing like being in the steady work force. The paych (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Apple

2. How to convince a startup to hire you Explore A Smart Bear (Feb 21 2012) This is part of an ongoing startup advice series where I answer (anonymized!) questions from readers, like a written version of Smart Bear Live. To get your question answered, email me at asmartbear -at- shortmail -dot- com. Buffer Ambitious Sailor writes: How can a former navy officer with twelve solid years of overseas defense contracting experience convince a tech startup to hire him as their business guy? I’m currently talking to at and I have an interview coming up. I have a love of entrepr (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Washington

3. Startup Runway Length Depends on Your Burn Rate Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Feb 21 2012) Cash is the fuel of every startup. Your burn rate is the rate at which that money is being spent, and allows an estimate of how long you can go before refueling (runway). That refueling is when you will need more investment, or when you will break even and begin that steep profitable growth curve. Investors also look at your burn rate to see how efficient and effective you are at running the business. It continually amazes me how two startups, seemingly comparable in stage and objective, can be (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

4. Five Startup Tips From Bill Gates Explore stevejobsvision.tk (Feb 21 2012) Note: This is an installment in the Iconic Advice series. Other installments include: Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, Walt Disney, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison. For more than 30-years, Bill Gates has been at the pinnacle of the software industry. Like Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison, he is one of the few startup Founders who remained at the helm of their respective companies throughout their entire maturation process. In addition, like Steve, Mi (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Jeff Bezos   Larry Ellison   Bill Gates

5. 8 Tips for Highly Productive Entrepreneurs Explore shopify.com (Feb 19 2012) Outsourcing has become a dirty word these days, but there's nothing wrong with outsourcing repetitive and easy to learn computer/clerical tasks, website research/development, telephone duties, basic writing, and (sometimes) customer service. Just be careful as it's easy to get carried away. If you're spending a lot of time tidying up after poor results, it's probably time to bring things back in-house. They say the early bird gets the worm, but don't forger the afternoon hawk gets the prairie do (Read Full Article)

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6. Here is Why You Need a Good Startup Exit Strategy Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Feb 19 2012) Marketing If you startup is your dream, why would you want to think about an exit? It’s going to be so successful and so much fun that you don’t need to think about what comes after. Wrong. There are two very real and practical reasons why you need to plan an exit: * Outside investors want to collect their return. Remember that equity investments are not like loans with interest. The investor sees no return until he cashes out, or the company is sold. Even three years is a long time to wait for any pay ch (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Marty Zwilling

7. 7 Crucial Reasons Why Entrepreneurs Should Travel While They Are Young Explore Welcome to Addicted 2 Success (Feb 18 2012) As an entrepreneur you need a very good grasp of the world’s current trends, and the possible route of events that are unfolding all around you. How does this impact your entrepreneurial pursuits? Well here we feature 8 crucial reasons why you should travel while you can, better yet, while you are still young. Read on and share your comments on what you have learnt as an entrepreneur through your adventures around the globe. Richard Branson is one of the bravest living entrepreneurs today. One o (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Germany   Richard Branson   Mark Twain

8. How to use PR Firms at Startups Explore bothsidesofthetable.com (Feb 18 2012) Marketing If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed, follow me on Twitter, or subscribe via email. Thanks for visiting! One of the most frequent questions entrepreneurs ask about when they raise a little bit of money or are getting close to launching their first product is whether they should hire a PR firm. There is obviously no black-or-white answer, but I’ve tried everything from working a large international agency, to hiring in-house people to doing it myself. This post is a short (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Marc Benioff   Apple   Mark Suster

9. Hired a friend...may need to fire him : startups Explore reddit (Feb 18 2012) Marketing , Recruiting I need some advice. I've been working alone on a startup for the past two years and got some funding (to last two more years). I wrote that I'd hire an engineer into the plan and hired a friend. He's been working with me for about 5 months. From the start he asked me to match his salary at his previous job in marketing (I said no and paid him 90k instead of 110k), he wants stock, got me to buy him a computer, and has taken a couple vacations all ready. I feel like he's ... (Read Full Article)

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10. LLC vs. S Corp: Which Is Right for Your Startup? Explore mashable.com (Feb 17 2012) Choosing the right business structure can be a daunting task for the small business owner or entrepreneur. You may have heard that the traditional C Corporation is overkill for most small businesses, and results in higher overall tax payments through something known as double taxation. But if the C Corporation isn’t right, then what is? In my last post, I discussed how the LLC (limited liability company) and S Corporation are popular structures for small businesses since they avoid this double t (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   IRS

11. How To Close The Books on Your Startup Explore mashable.com (Feb 17 2012) Marketing This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. In the life cycle of an entrepreneur, shutting the doors on a business isn’t necessarily a gloomy situation. The end of one venture often signals the start of something new and the beginning of the next exciting journey. This is particularly true in the fast-paced high-tech and software world, where only a small percentage (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   IRS   Nellie Akalp   Mashable

12. My Thesis vs. My Startup: Advice for Student Entrepreneurs Explore BostInno (Feb 17 2012) Startup legend is full of founders who dropped out of school to pursue their companies, including a couple of big names from Harvard. And last year PayPal co-founder and Facebook investor Peter Thiel launched a foundation to lure students away from college to found their own companies. But the debate between staying in school and skipping to startups obscures a third path taken by many student entrepreneurs: balancing the demands of starting a business while finishing a degree. After interviewin (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Harvard   Facebook   Massachusetts Institute of Technology

13. Five Tools for Naming a Startup Explore Business & Small Business (Feb 17 2012) Think about it: Most customers will hear your business name before they know anything about your products or services. Like all first impressions, you only get one, so you better make it count. Leonard Green, professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, suggests that a name be quick, unique and easy to remember. “You have 10, 15, 20 seconds to catch people’s attention,” he says. “Just get in there and do things differently than what everybody else is trying to do, because that’s where the ho (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Babson College   Google

14. 8 Pieces of Advice Every Entrepreneur Needs Explore inc.com (Feb 17 2012) I don’t like listening to smart people when they pretend they developed the wisdom they impart all on their own—like a Stephen Hawking fairy flew down and touched them on the head with a Wand of Wisdom. It doesn’t work that way for most of us. Everything I know I was told by people who are smarter than me. Like the following advice, some of which has stuck with me for years: "Go ahead and be an 'individual.' Just do it on your own time." For a long time—longer than I care to admit—I let ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Stanford   Jeff Haden

15. 9 Steps to Write Your Ultimate Home Page Headline Explore The @KISSmetrics Marketing Blog (Feb 17 2012) A mere 6 to 12 words stand between you and a lower bounce rate. A mere 6 to 12 words stand between you and a higher click-thru rate, a higher task completion rate, and even a higher conversion rate. What are these 6 to 12 words? They’re the words that comprise your home page headline. David Ogilvy told us that 5 times as many people read the headline as the body copy. Robert Stone taught the same. So did Eugene Schwartz and Gary Bencivenga – both insanely brilliant marketers. A/B testers prove t (Read Full Article)

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16. It’s a Big Step from Engineer to an Entrepreneur Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Feb 17 2012) Marketing Every engineer who has invented some new technology, or is adept at creating solutions, believes that is the hard part, and it should be a short step to take that solution to market as an entrepreneur. In reality, that short business step embodies far more risk, and a poor technology solution is not near the top of most lists of common reasons for business failures. In fact, a recent Duke and Harvard survey of over 500 technology companies showed that only 37% of their leaders even have engineer (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Oracle   Larry Ellison   Microsoft

17. Where's the Boss? Trapped in a Meeting - WSJ.com Explore Business News & Financial News (Feb 16 2012) This graph is pretty representative of where my time goes every day: The key advice that I took away is: He recommends executives substitute the word 'money' for 'time' when deciding how to schedule their week. "With money... you'd be more careful and judicious about it. If someone asked you for some, you'd be more likely to say no," says Mr. Kaplan. (Read Full Article)

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18. 10 People Who Will Drain Energy From Your Company Explore Startup Professionals Musings (Feb 16 2012) Every organization, no matter how small, has one or more people who are quite simply obnoxious, and they drain energy from everyone and can strangle your company. Sometimes they are also intellectually brilliant, or closely related to the boss, so there is no easy way out. In fact, they may even be the boss. So if you find this article taped to your desk, it may be time to look in the mirror. At any rate, if you are stuck working in an office, at least you deserve some clues on how to recognize (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Bill Gates   Marty Zwilling

19. Looking To Hire And Keep Great Innovators? Focus On The 3 Rs Explore Tue, 01/10/2012 (Feb 16 2012) Recruiting Developing a culture of innovation depends on having and keeping the right people, and you do that by recruiting, retraining, and rewarding. * 5 Notes * 500 Tweets * 9 Likes The following is an excerpt from Relentless Innovation: What Works, What Doesn’t--and What That Means for Your Business by Jeffrey Phillips. Innovation relies on people more than other processes. This reliance on employees, management, and executives in an organization requires that the “right” people are attracted, and then (Read Full Article)

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20. Build mastery through failure Explore hey amber rae (Feb 16 2012) My guy friend in New York is newly out of a long-term relationship. He wants to date, thinks he doesn’t know how, and feels afraid of rejection. Him being an incredibly compassionate and sharp man, this false belief is all in his head. Instead of telling him this, I decided to let him experience the answer for himself. I encouraged him to ask five women out in one week. The first five women who he felt genuinely attracted to. I told him to be honest about why he felt attracted her (i.e. “I notic (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   New York   Pittsburgh   Richard Branson

21. Tips for Hiring Your First VP Sales at a Startup Explore SalesSchool by SalesCrunch (Feb 16 2012) Recruiting When do you hire that first VP of Sales at your Startup? Who should that person be? Are you looking for that seasoned professional that has done it all at every type of company, or is it better to find that eager fresh face ready for a bit of adventure and trailblazing? Steve Blank, “father of customer development”, veteran of Silicon Valley and author of “Four Steps to the Epiphany, shares what he has learned in his 20 years as a serial entrepreneur and founder of numerous startups. Transcript: (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Oracle   IBM   California

22. How to Make Your Startup More Attractive to Potential Clients Explore smartbusinessguides.net (Feb 16 2012) Marketing As a startup you lack the same leverage as an established business. You don’t have a big client base, tens or even hundreds of testimonials, awards, recognition amongst peers, reputation, connections and more. Because of that you have to work really hard to get noticed, treated seriously and considered worthy to be given work. It is an unfortunate reality of every new company. Until you get to a certain level, had worked on a certain amount of projects and enjoy a steady client base, things will (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Yahoo

23. 3 Tips for Start-up Producers - Essentials to Survive and Grow Explore Barefoot Wine Founders (Feb 15 2012) As much as you may love your product and know that everyone else will love it too, you still need to master these three essentials to survive and grow. 1) Cash Flow Management Reduce your costs by how you buy. Extend your credit by how you pay. Get paid faster by how you sell. Here are a few suggestions: * Treat your vendors like you treat your customers. They can cut your costs and extend your credit. Sell them on your product and its future. Make them strategic allies – if you grow, they grow. (Read Full Article)

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24. 8 Job Search Tips From the Co-Founder of LinkedIn Explore mashable.com (Feb 15 2012) Early on in The Start-up of You, Reid Hoffman takes on the sacred cow of career advice books, making it clear that the timeworn exhortations of What Color is Your Parachute? won’t fly in this economy. “That’s the wrong question,” Hoffman, the co-founder and chairman of LinkedIn writes (with the help of coauthor Ben Casnocha). “What you should be asking yourself is whether your parachute can keep you aloft in changing conditions.” Hence the central conceit of the book. Just as Detroit’s dinosaurs (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Reid Hoffman   Ireland   New York

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