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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.

Nancy Duarte on The Importance of Knowing Your Audience

The below video is the fifth part in a series of 10 in which Nancy shares the key components to making a successful pitch using creativity, critical thinking and how important it is to know your audience. Find out what she has to say:

By this point in Nancy’s “Presentation is Everything” lesson, you know that your presentations revolve around the audience: who they a...

If you'd like to see some samples - we've got 4 awesome business plans for you here.

Marc Andreessen isn’t just an industry legend, because he helped the modern Web browser. He’s not just an industry legend because he’s one the only folks who’ve co-founded two companies that exited for north of $1 billion each. Nor is he renowned simply for throwing a grenade into the cozy way venture capital had worked for decades, when he co-founded Andreessen Horowitz in 2009.

You get where I’m going with this… Andreessen might be “famous” for you for different reasons, depending on how old you are or when you first started paying attention to startups.

Plenty of conferences and magazines feature interviews with Andreessen where he talks about the future. What’s difficult is getting a man so excited about the future to talk about the pas...

For a growing product startup, there is no better triumph than seeing your product on the shelves and online store of a billion-dollar retailer. It provides incredible social proof, validates your concept, and shows you’ve got what it takes to scale into a profitable business.

Unfortunately, for many startup founders, there exists a veil of mystery over what it actually takes to stand out to retailers in a crowded sea of established product companies and competing product startups.

Fortunately for you, we have the inside scoop from Rick Rommel, a partner at Sprosty Network and founder of RetailXelerator. Rick is a former Best Buy SVP, and was founder of its Exclusive Brands private-label business. He spent a decade both selecting and develo...

When Jason Ross packed his bags to make the big move to New York City in 2013, it wasn’t for a girlfriend, or to chase his dreams of stardom to the Big Apple. It was for a company – his company, the one he’d started building more than seven years before.

He’d sold that company, the early apparel eCommerce success story JackThreads, to an upcoming media company called Thrillist about three years earlier. The company was thriving in its new environment in New York. But back home in Columbus, Ohio, Jason started to feel like he was on the outside looking in.

“I started to realize all these meetings were happening in New York,” Jason remembers. “So you start to feel like, ‘Oh man, things are happening at my company that I didn’t put in place. ...

What you’ve heard is true: The robots are coming to take our jobs. But instead of fearing our machine counterparts, should we be thanking them?

In the future, artificial intelligence and automation technology will begin to take over in a big way, transforming the entire way we do business. In fact, that future is closer than we think — automation is already beginning to take over in areas many wouldn’t have thought possible even a few years ago.

It’s taking over mundane tasks, such as in the case of X.ai, which has created automated assistants that can schedule meetings and conduct basic email correspondence without the aid of human beings. It’s also taking over more complex duties, like writing news articles, coding new software, and even ...

Why we love it

Let’s pause – just for a moment – to bask in the revolution that is Creation Crate. For too long, postal delivery box services have been the reserve of fancy fruit and vegetables, small batch wine and beer, and other edible nonsense that we don’t really need. Seriously, how many types of quinoa and kale do you actually want, people? And why must it be delivered, in cardboard and twine, to your houses? Is it to inspire jealousy in your neighbors? Disgusting. Now, thanks to Creation Crate, artisanal products’ tyrannical domination of postal delivery boxes is over.

Creation Crate is a simple enough concept. Aimed at a target audience aged 12 and over (yes, even adults can get in on the action), Creation Crate works on a subscri...

It’s a crazy, multi-device world.

According to one report from Facebook, 60% of online adults in the U.S. and U.K. use at least two devices each day, meaning that mobile is at the epicenter of many brands’ marketing, sales, and product strategies.

This trend creates a window of opportunity for companies that are looking to reach audiences at multiple points in their buyer journeys. The challenge, however, is that mass-market tools and analytics technologies haven’t caught up—basic reports in Google Analytics only provide aggregate-level traffic data, for instance. It’s tough to dissect the steps that your audiences are taking to become customers and repeat customers.

Despite this lack of transparency, one concept holds tried and true: you’r...

When you’re launching a travel business, there are many “what ifs” and “what nows” — especially if you’re a rookie. It’s almost too easy to get caught up in the excitement. Whether you’re trying to build out too many related products before perfecting your core business, struggling to gauge the strength of a potential partnership, or micromanaging your staff, it might be a good idea to take a step back and gain a little perspective from the pros.

After all, those pros started out where you are now, and many are willing and eager to help others get on their feet. So don’t be afraid to reach out within the tight-knit entrepreneurial community to seek advice because almost nothing is more valuable than help from someone who has been in the tre...

“Because you’re worth it.”

The L’Oréal Fallacy afflicts those founders who find themselves faced with an offer for their company and the chance of an exit.

This is the moment many have dreamed of. But life is no respecter of dreams: the potential exit is often smaller than the founder has hoped. The founder finds himself conflicted: wanting an exit, but believing that the offer on the table undervalues his work and the potential of his company.

The L’Oréal Fallacy is the belief that you should hold out for the exit you deserve—because you’re worth it.

This fallacy corrupts decision making at a crucial point—the point when monetary success is actually a tangible prospect.

First-time founders, in particular, should take their exit when they c...