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What's the least we need as Founders to be happy?

For as much time as we invest in building our startups to achieve our goals, we spend shockingly little time in identifying what those goals actually mean. The danger in not defining our minimum viable happiness goals is that we wind up hoping to "find happiness" but never really defining how to get there.

And that's a pretty big problem when we're in the early stages of building a startup when very little helps fill our "happiness meter."

It's easy to make big, lofty, far away goals, but frankly, that's pretty useless right now. What we need to do is identify the shortest term, minimum goals that will make us happy so that we do everything in our power to get there as quickly as possible.

Women are starting businesses at impressive rates — but they’re still not getting as much money to fund those new businesses and startups as men are.

According to research from Kaufman, 40 percent of first time entrepreneurs in the United States are women. Even more impressive? The number of women-run businesses in the US is growing at twice the rate of man-owned businesses.

But women aren’t getting nearly as much money for those businesses as men are. In the startup world, women founders got only 2 percent of VC funding in 2017.

That means women are forced to look to other money sources when they’re looking to launch a startup or small business. And many are looking specifically for business loans for women.

However, there aren’t actually...

Note: Last updated: July 26, 2018

What are the best startup tools of 2018? A great startup idea is exciting, but let’s be real — if that’s all you have, you don’t have much. If your startup is going to go from idea to reality to acquisition, you’re going to need a lot of help along the way. And while some of that help will come from humans — like, you know, your team and your investors and your mom when you call her, crying — others will come from startup tools.

Startup tools are tools created to help startups (and yes, traditional businesses) succeed. They’re almost all online, as that’s where we conduct most of our business in Startup Land. They’re also almost always startups themselves — the ecosystem of startups that were created speci...

“The problem here: a) making a business that didn’t give us money early on, and b) not giving up; we kept putting money into the business without knowing we were already dead.”

The special guest of this Startups Live session, Caya, has some great stories to tell. “Started my first business in 2011 (I was 22) and it failed terribly. I ended up with $15K in credit card debt that I just finished paying up last year. The problem here: a) making a business that didn’t give us money early on, and b) not giving up; we kept putting money into the business without knowing we were already dead.”

Well, this may not sound ‘great’, but even this painful experience, which Caya freely shares, comes with silver linings. You might say that he has a knack fo...

According to research from Kaufman, 40% of first-time entrepreneurs in the United States are women.

Even more impressive? The number of women-run businesses in the US is growing at twice the rate of men-owned businesses. The rate of women starting businesses and startups throughout the country is at an all-time high.

Let’s take a closer look at women-owned businesses, including certification and funding opportunities.

What it is a woman-owned business?

In its simplest form, a women-owned business is a business owned by at least one woman.

But when it comes to qualifying for certain grants, loans, and contracts, a women-owned business is at least 51% owned by controlled, operated, and managed by a woman or women.

What is WBENC Certificatio...

Running a startup is a ton of work as a solo Founder, so much so that many Founders find themselves at a loss trying to get everything done. For those that are non-technical, this proves to be a challenge, as coding is essential in this day and age, so bringing on a technical co-founder is a must. This is also true for technical Founders missing the mark on the creative front, so it's no surprise that one of the most searched terms on the internet is "finding a cofounder."

It seems like it should be easy — find a co-founder (or more) that aligns with your startup idea, mission, and has the complementary skills to do all the things you don't know how to — but it's not that simple. Finding the right co-founder is a complex combination of effor...

Founder: The person who started the company. It is someone who has an idea and creates a business around that idea. They are the “Founding Father” or "Founding Mother" of the company, as the company would have never existed without them creating it. They are often focused on vision and big picture of the start up. They are generally the business owner, or at least one of them.

CEO: The head of the company, responsible for overseeing all aspects of it and making sure everything runs smoothly. The Chief Executive Officer runs it as a business, sets the long term plans and drives towards success. They also communicate directly to the board of directors. A Professional CEO will have the distinction of having risen through the ranks, and brings ...

The Funding Slide in our investor pitch deck summarizes our investment opportunity, including our use of funds, investment amount, and what we want to accomplish in our next stage. Potential investors, from angel investors, to venture capitalists, will zero in on this part of the slide deck to determine their initial investment.

Typically this is the final slide of an investor pitch deck, where we transition from pitching investors to making the big ask.

What do Potential Investors want to know?

Our investor deck should cover three critical factors when we get our "ask slide":

"How much capital? What Round of capital?"

Many investors, from venture capitalists to angel investors, align their investments based on the amount of capital a startup co...

The Pitch Deck Traction Slide helps showcase early traction when we pitch investors. But what kind of traction metrics matter to investors? Let's walk through some common pitch deck traction slide examples showcasing user growth, growing revenue, and scaling active users.

Also, if you're concerned about showing traction in your pitch deck, don't sweat it. We'll show you how to position your traction slides even if you're pre-revenue.

Traction Slide Pitch Deck Formula

The perfect traction slide pitch deck formula incorporates three investor questions into a single slide:

Product Progress + Customer Acquisition + Visible Growth = Traction

The most stunning pitch deck examples incorporate all of these factors into their traction slides. Let's look ...

If you had the idea for Facebook before Mark Zuckerberg, you could have been worth $40 billion like good ol' Mark, right?.

Except, you couldn't. Because the idea alone isn't worth jack.

Not so sure? Ask Jonathan Abrams the incredibly talented Founder who created Friendster in 2002, around the time good ol' Zuck was graduating high school. Friendster was absolutely Facebook before Facebook, as was Hi5 and MySpace.

But unless you're a band from the mid-2000s, you're probably not maintaining a profile anywhere but "the Facebook."

Oh, and technically the idea wasn't Mark's either, but that's a whole other movie.

Why isn't an idea worth mullah?

Think of the idea like a seed.

The seed alone has the potential to be something great, but by itse...