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They came, they crowdfunded, they conquered, and now it’s time to get to know them better. While the winners of the inaugural Crowd2Shelf contest come from different parts of the country and from different industries, they have one thing in common: they’ve created amazing products that are helping people do more.

We sat down with the winners and got some background into how they’ve grown into the incredible startup product companies they are today.

EVA
Wilmington, DE

Designed by LEDified, EVA™ is the world’s friendliest recessed light. They’ve combined the most efficient LED technology with an everyday practical element of a home: the remote control.

They’ve already pre-sold over 50,000 EVA™ units. Before EVA, LEDified’s founding team devel...

Private equity is a type of investment typically reserved for companies that have already grown to a larger size and are looking for a particular growth or exit strategy that isn’t available through traditional financing.

When private equity makes sense

Most startup or small businesses have little use for private equity. Technically, venture capital is considered private equity, but for the purposes of this explanation let’s leave venture capital out of it.

If you’re a startup with just an idea, you’re likely way too early for private equity. Typically private equity firms are looking for later stage companies that require much larger sums of money, usually at least $5 million, in businesses that already have some sort of assets to leverage...

Ben is currently VP Product at GoInstant, a venture-backed startup focused on changing how we share and experience the web with co-browsing technology. GoInstant was recently acquired by Salesforce.com. He is also a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, which is an early stage accelerator in Montreal. They’ve invested in five startups: Localmind, Massive Damage, HighScore House, qidiq and Happy Stuff. Three of those companies have gone on to raise follow on capital.

Prior to that Ben was the CEO and co-founder of Standout Jobs, which sold in 2010. He’s been an entrepreneur in the web space for 15+ years. Ben is also involved in a number of different projects as an advisor, consultant and mentor. His main interests include: Web/mobile startups...

Venture capital funding is both the most commonly referenced and yet commonly misunderstood form of investor capital available.

Unlike banks or more traditional investment sources, venture capital funding is all about big risks and big rewards.

Simply put, venture capital funding involves a venture capital firm investing a large sum of money (typically starting at $2 million or more) in exchange for an equity stake in your company.

Venture Capital Funding Risks and Rewards

Unlike banks or more traditional investment sources, venture capital funding is all about big risks and big rewards.

Venture capital firms specifically look for companies that offer an exceptionally large growth opportunity, which you can think of as the type of company t...

The following post is an excerpt is from Chapter 10 of the book Startup Seed Funding for the Rest of Us: How to Raise $1 Million for Your Startup – Even Outside of Silicon Valley, by Mike Belsito. This chapter focuses on the steps that people can take to build up their network, even if they don’t already have a strong set of connections within the venture community. Using tools available to everybody along with a little bit of hustle, any entrepreneur can build a strong network.

Some people quickly dismiss the idea of raising capital for their startup because of a saying that they’ve heard time and time again: “It’s all about who you know.” They make excuses such as:

“I’m not that well connected, I don’t even know any investors.”

“I don’t ...

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.” It’s inspirational, always calling the team to try harder and do better. It works to undermine excuses for poor or shoddy work. And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. Especially in teams that are managing by objectives (or OKRs), the pressure to deliver is intense. Under such pressure, the temptation to cut corners, to quit prematurely, or to hand off shoddy work to another department is overwhelming. It requires courage to stand up and say: “this work is simply not good enough. Sure, we could get away with it, but that’s not how we work.” Good managers work hard ...

The rise of the Growth Hacker
The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After pr...

The business of buying or selling a startup is a murky world that most folks have no concept for. We hear about the end result – one hot company gets bought by another. But we rarely know what goes on behind the scenes to get to that point.

Let’s talk about just that.

I’ve had a fair bit of experience on both sides of this equation, as I’ve sold a few companies and have also purchased a few (Launchrock, Clarity.fm, and KillerStartups) quite recently. At Startups.co we talk to a lot of companies about potential acquisitions. (If you’re in the startups space and have a great product, feel free to email me about it.)

In the past six months, I’ve explained our process of acquisition to dozens of companies, and it has become clear that people do...

Question: What is one tip you have for keeping your personal and professional life separate?

Don’t Use Your Facebook Profile for Work

“Use a Facebook page to promote your business, and keep your Facebook profile for actual friends and family only. Many people make the mistake of blurring the line and they’re left with the worst of both worlds: They can’t promote on Facebook because they’ll annoy their friends, and they can’t be too personal for fear of coming across as unprofessional with prospects. Separate the two.”

— Laura Roeder
MeetEdgar.com
@lkr

Schedule Your Life, Too

“Reserve personal time in your schedule for activities that allow you to recharge and that add value, such as daily exercise, a weekly date or social night, family acti...

As an expert SEO, you have to be a jack-of-all-trades.

You need to understand link building, marketing, public relations, psychology, and technology.

At a certain point, there’s just not enough time in the day to do everything you’d like to do.

But you can save quite a bit of time and effort on small things by using browser extensions.

You can install them with one or two mouse clicks and access them with ease to the right of your address bar.

They will help you:

• analyze website performance quickly
• examine code behind websites
• build links better
• save time by improving your task efficiency

I’ve put together a list of 28 browser extensions I consider to be the best. I encourage you to give a few of them a try.

A quick heads-up: most of thes...