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I know a lot. Or rather, I know a lot more than I should naturally know. Specifically, I know a lot about people before I meet them – not through clairvoyance, but through artificial intelligence.

There is nothing strategic in this post. Just some practical suggestions about three tools I am using – Accompany, Notion.ai, and Sende.rs. – to artificially enhance my intelligence.

As I have written about before, I spend a lot of my day networking with entrepreneurs and VCs about their ventures and prospective investments. And sometimes I lose track. Where did I connect with this executive? or, Who asked me to speak with this founder? I no longer lose track. In fact, I am usually ahead of the curve. Here’s how:

Accompany is a tool from one of l...

The SBA helps small businesses that may not be eligible for traditional bank loans by guaranteeing large portions of the loan on the entrepreneur’s behalf.

These loans are generally available through your local bank who relies on the SBA to back the loan in order to make it easier for them to take the risk of lending a new business without a significant amount of collateral.

Who’s eligible for a SBA loan?

Although the loans are backed by the SBA, they still require some basic underwriting by the bank to make sure the borrower can manage the loan similar to a standard bank loan.

What about poor credit?

The SBA may be underwriting the loan, but they still want to make sure it can be paid back. Standard credit risk factors (such as your score)...

When beginning a crowdfunding campaign, it’s important to evaluate your network and establish exactly who will make up your base of support. The success of your crowdfunding campaign will largely rest on how effectively you communicate your launch within your various networks. Once you’ve identified a group of potential backers, take into account what is most interesting to your group and structure your rewards tiers in the most compelling way possible.

Your network can be divided into five main groups: friends, family, customers, professional contacts, and audience.

Friends

Your friends include those you see on a regular basis. You can reach out to this group in a variety of ways. Try a combination of social media updates, emails, and pers...

Thelonious Monk was a fantastic jazz musician, and an amazing band leader. Did he run a tech startup? No. But he could have with all these words of wisdom.

It’s a no B.S. manifesto. Each gig, each song, and each band mate was mission critical to Monk. And our startups need to be treated the same way. It’s easy to get caught up in the busyness. But as founders we have to gather, support, and grow great teams or risk losing the whole endeavor.

Below is Monk’s complete, original list of advice for band members. But let me break it down for you and swap a few musical references with the proper modern startup terminology.

JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT A [JOB TITLE], DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO UNDERSTAND IT.

So many of us founders debate ov...

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 ninth 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:

Nancy Duarte’s First 3 Clients

In 1987, after working and saving money for a whole summer, Nancy Duarte”s husband bought a Mac. He had a vision: he was going to get behind the technological movement and use his newly acquired equipme...

Email is not your friend. Email is like your obnoxious neighbor Chad who enjoys playing the bagpipes early Sunday morning. But, worse because on top of being kinda annoying, your email is cleverly disguised as a productivity enhancing super-buddy. It slowly drains you of all your time, focus and output by constantly distracting you with other people’s demands, no matter how ridiculous they may be.

You want to spend time with your spouse, your kids, your dog, your best friend, your animatronic clown – but no, you’re spending time with email.

When you woke up this morning and checked your inbox, did email tell you that you it had saved you a bunch of time and you had the day off? Did email do your work for you?

No!

Email asked if you’d be int...

Don’t miss out! Check out the previous chapters here:

–Chapter One
–Chapter Two

CHAPTER THREE: Appear Super Responsive All The Time

In This Chapter:

• Write stock templates for frequent scenarios
• Tips to master the art of deflection
• Create an auto-responder to deploy for specific filters

Have you ever had one of those days where you wish there were two of you? You could finally unglue your fingers from your iPhone and maybe grab lunch with a friend? Or, go on a long run without feeling like things are falling through the cracks?

Well, what if I told you that we have the technology? We can clone you!

You get to be “fun clone”. The other clone—The other clone is “robot clone”.

While you’re out having fun, robot clone is going to do all of...

When a startup is bootstrapping, every last penny counts. Those early days of no or minimal funding are fraught for founders watching the number in the bank account get smaller and smaller but, unfortunately, most things that startups need cost money.

But what if they didn’t? What if, instead, you were able to trade your services for the services you so desperately need to get your startup off the ground?

Bringing Bartering Into The 21st Century

That’s the idea behind Currency, a new site that takes a very old concept — bartering — and make it totally 21st century. The site lets companies trade their “currency,” which they can define themselves, for other things that they need. So, for example, maybe you have a company that does stationary...

Imagine for a moment if you could shape every minute of your life to work exactly as you wanted it to.

Well, you can’t. Not exactly. Sorry about that.

But you can actually control more of your daily schedule than you ever thought possible, creating more time to do the things you enjoy or at the very least spending less wasted time on pointless meetings.

“Free time you say? No pointless meetings? Woohoo! Sign me up!”

Well now, that’s the spirit!

Take Command of your Calendar

The problem we tend to face with our calendars is that we let others control it for us.

Sometimes that’s necessary – like when a client or your boss insists on meeting right away at their offices. But often our calendars are left simply to fate and serendipity which soun...

There are five main types of business loans that are relevant for startups: SBA small business loans, business credit lines, short term loans, invoice financing, and merchant cash advances. Let’s take a closer look at each one.

SBA Small Business Loans

A SBA small business loan is a loan that is backed by the Small Business Administration (SBA). Founded in 1953, the SBA is a federal government program that provides support to small business owners in the form of mentorship, workshops, counseling, and small business loans.

While the loans are backed by the SBA, they don’t come directly from the SBA. You’ll have to find a local lender who provides SBA loans in order to access the funding.

Who qualifies?

There are three main types of SBA small...