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“When we first launched things were going gangbusters. But since then, things have kind of flat-lined. The business seems stalled. What do we do from here?"

Is it a blip or a trend?

Part of the challenge with running a startup is that we simply don't have any history of whether past performance was the future of our business or "just a really good quarter.”

For this reason, it's hard to tell whether we're really stalled until enough time has gone by that we can see the writing on the wall.

We imagine a "successful startup" always has a stout growth trend that runs "up and to the right" on every chart. But that's actually not really true.

Yes, there are some standout companies that smash records, but most companies grow slowly over a long ...

There it is:

That super awkward moment when we're about to turn the conversation with our rich Uncle Mortimer from "Well it's been great catching up on my new startup" to "Hey would you mind investing some of your hard-earned money into this venture?"

So how do we ask friends and family for money without it getting totally weird?

Is there a way to "pitch" that doesn't leave both sides feeling uncomfortable every Thanksgiving?

It's not what we ask, it's how we ask

There are lots of different ways to ask for money, and most of them are really awful.

What we want to do is position the ask in a way that makes it clear we're asking for money, but also clear that it's not more important than the relationship.

Look for buying clues first

Befor...

Hiten Shah, Co-Founder of Quick Sprout, KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg, is a proven sales and growth expert. His years of experience founding, advising, investing in or working with startups have crystallized into a wealth of knowledge about how to grow a successful company.

If you have the time, watch the video below to hear Hiten reflect on how he thinks about sales funnels. To help you out, we’ve outlined the major points below for your easy perusal, as well as provided some foundational information about sales funnels to further illuminate Hiten’s point of view.

Hiten explains that essentially, a sales funnel is the “step-by-step process of things your user or customer does to accomplish a goal.” You may not think that your customers go th...

I have written the post on the 8 reasons that make me different as a millennial boss. I think Millennials are bad asses and can harness their power for good. Remember though that I am on the cusp of generations. I identify about half and half with Gen X and Millennials. I consider myself a bit of a generational fairy….. 🙂

That said, I also have a few bones to pick with my generation after watching and supervising my peers for the last 10 years. Please don’t take it personally, Millennials! I still love you….xoxo.

Here we go:

1. Complaining you worked 70 hours a week once you become salaried.

Every time I hear someone say this I envision myself with imaginary steam coming out of my ears. When I used to hear someone say this I would try to b...

“Sometimes your spidey sense is like, ‘I don’t know if either one of these are right,’ but you have to go somewhere. Spinning your wheels, being in neutral? That’s bad.”

When you hear Founders out in the media talking about their product, most of what you hear them talk about is all the things that went right: the hypotheses that were confirmed, the “ahah” moments where all the pieces fell into place.

Founders Don’t Discuss The things they didn’t know

What you don’t hear most Founders talking about: all the things they didn’t know – the times a big bet didn’t pay off, the times when what you thought was true turned out not to be the case, the times when the market turned on a dime and suddenly everything you’d been working to build was no l...

"I'm seeing these events and groups popping up everyone asking me to network with other Founders, other marketers, devs, growth hackers, or anyone else in the startup community.

Between all the events, conferences, groups and whatnot — should I be spending my valuable time network or just focusing on my startup?"

If you have to ask, the answer is "No"

Most networking is a waste of time.

That's not because having a useful professional network isn't helpful, it's because how we often go about it is really unfocused.

Avoid random networking events

Sure, it's possible that if we go to SXSW we might happen to run into someone that can somehow be useful... someday...maybe.

But wouldn't it make more sense to put that time and expense toward set...

Sometimes the best way to grow our startups is to spend some time doing stuff that has nothing to do with our startups!

It sounds easy to do and yet so many of us have a huge issue with getting outside our own startup bubble.

But what if we knew that time away was the key to actually making our startup grow faster?

The problem with "startup all the time"

Aside from the obvious challenges around things like burnout, being focused exclusively on our startups prevents us from getting some new perspectives that we would have otherwise missed.

Whether it's that passing thought during meditation, that interesting point another Founder made at dinner, or the inspiration we got when we were sitting on a beach staring at the sun — our time away fro...

We've been working around the clock on our side hustle with the dream that one day it'll be our full-time gig.

But now that we're getting some traction, the real question is, when do we go all in?

The best Investor — our current paycheck

There will never be a more equitable investor than our current paycheck.

Full funding, no pitch process, and market compensation from Day One.

Compare that to when we try to actually raise money in a grueling pitch process, spend months with no income, and have to work for half of what we made last year.

While our current investor (our paycheck) has a lot of hours and distractions, it has some really important benefits: it's predictable, it's consistent, and if shit hits the fan, we just focus on that.

Being a Founder doesn't imply one is a good manager. It just means we were around when the company was formed!

Sometimes Founders do grow into great managers — and sometimes they were great managers already. But the real question is: "Do Founders need to be good managers?"

Ideally, yes. But it's not a requirement.

We can fake it for a minute

In the formative years, when we only have a small team, we can usually get by without being great managers.

That's because the team is still small, and mostly operates in a flat "team" structure without a lot of management to be had. That's also why Founders often don't realize they are shitty managers until later on because they ran for so long in an unmanaged structure.

Eventually, though, it catch...

Trying to recruit an extraordinary business developer to get more sales? Or maybe a top-notch developer to create an app that will make you millions? Regardless of who you are seeking, the rules of recruiting have changed.

Essential supplies include:

• A helmet
• Military-level strategies and tactics
• A whole lot of tenacity

It is a war zone. I am not trying to discourage you. Rather, I’m trying to prepare you – to find the very best candidate that will propel your business to the next level and contribute positively to the culture that you’ve worked so hard to create. Not necessarily an MBA, but even “hungry creative kids that want to step up,” says Jason Khan.

Possible hazards you might encounter in the field include:

• Stacks of secretly key...