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One of the things that makes running a startup so tough is that you have to attract some of the best and brightest employees, and get a heroic amount of productivity out of them, all while bigger, better-funded companies are offering them more money and better benefits.

In this environment, it’s tempting to spend a lot of money on perks — like yoga classes, fitness bootcamps, and gym memberships — to entice employees to not only work for you, but work longer hours. A corporate wellness program for a ten-person startup can easily end up costing two or three thousand dollars a month. At that point you’d be better off just hiring another employee.

However, it is possible to provide fitness & wellness service to your employees at an affordable...

Startup failure statistics vary widely, but even the rosiest numbers show more than 50 percent failing within five years. Startup founders often have obligations to many stakeholders, including family, employees, investors, and perhaps customers. So when they are forced to face the reality of their business’s failure, they have a responsibility to these groups to do everything in their power to optimize the process of exiting. This starts with understanding the various paths available to you before you have $0 cash in the bank. By that point, many potential exit opportunities will be off the table.

It all starts with communication. It is critically important to communicate regularly and consistently with your stakeholders from the day you l...

If starting a company is a race (and it is – it really, really is) then launch day is the starting line.

Everything you do before your product launch is the warm-up. (The very essential, very unskippable warmup). Everything that comes after? It’s the frantic, mad dash to the finish line, whatever and wherever that might be.

Your product launch is the inflection point. It’s the point to which everything before it leads up, and everything that comes after comes out of. And a successful product launch starts with a successful product launch strategy.

We all want our product to start out of the gate strong. But what exactly goes into a successful product launch? Stuart Brent, Co-Founder of MapPlug, has an idea or two on the subject. Not only h...

Your typical angel investor is going to have been a successful businessperson or entrepreneur that is looking to put some of their earnings to work in an investment they really feel passionate about.

Since angel investors were often successful in their own careers, having access to their experience and rolodex is sometimes even more valuable than the capital they invest.

Make no mistake, the business of an angel investor is to make money. But there is a very personal attraction to each deal that makes working with an angel investor different than going to a nameless, faceless bank.

High Net Worth Individuals

The typical angel investor is someone who’s net worth is likely in excess of $1 million or who earns over $200,000 per year. Incidenta...

Traction is the very heart of a startup. When you’re building from scratch and trying to convince the world that your idea has merit, the proof of your ability as an entrepreneur to be successful is in the traction you generate for your business.

The excitement of a deal, particularly to investors, is always around the momentum of a business.

There are many types of traction: forming your company, hiring staff, and of course signing up paying customers. All of them are critical to building the business, and by way of that, generating interest from investors.

Ideally you want to create traction on as many fronts as possible. The excitement of a deal, particularly to investors, is always around the momentum of a business.

It’s one thing to sa...

You need a social media team that can absolutely nail it. That doesn’t happen by just putting warm bodies in front of computers. You need a team of innovators, mold-breakers, thinkers, organizers, brainstormers, collaborators, and strategists who are wicked smart, insanely skilled, and ready to push your business to an extreme level on social media.

In other words, you need a social media dream team.

How do you wrap your mind around the social media scene?

Social media has seemed to spiral out of control. It’s bigger than we ever thought it would become. It grows and changes on a daily basis. We’re all done talking about its “meteoric rise.” That’s cliché. We already know that more than a quarter of the world’s population uses social media,...

The following post is an excerpt is from Chapter 2 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 specifically talks about the importance of finding traction for your startup, even at the earliest stages of building a product and raising seed capital. Further, this chapter discusses specifics on what entrepreneurs can do to build up that traction at these early stages.

CHAPTER TWO
The Only Chapter You May Need to Read

Traction: It’s what investors everywhere are looking for in order to determine whether to anoint your startup “the next big thing” and inject the cold, hard cash needed to accelerate your business. If you can’t fin...

Brian Chesky’s dad wasn’t thrilled he had decided to go to art school. Chesky promised him he would not move back home to live in their basement, and that when he was done, he’d get a real job with health care benefits.

And he did. But at age 22 he was overcome by a “weird feeling of mortality.” A sense of “this is my life”: Commuting in LA traffic alone to a job in a design company. It was a let down after he’d started to believe the high-minded rhetoric from Rhode Island School of Design that designers could “design the world around them.”

He quit that job, rolled up a foam bed into his crappy Honda Civic and moved in with his old design pal Joe Gebbia in San Francisco. In a bid to pay rent, they opened up their home to attendees of a des...

Like any other business situation, your first impression with a potential investor goes a long way. There are a few ways to get it right and endless amount of ways to get very wrong!

You won’t get a ton of introductions so make the ones that you do get count.

In order to understand why your pitch will resonate with investors, you need to understand a little bit about the person you’re contacting.

Understanding the Investor

Let’s assume you’re an investor. You’ve hung your shingle out to the world that reads “I write checks to people with great ideas.” That’s a sign for every person who has ever sought capital to come seek you out and pitch you.

Soon you’re getting an endless stream of ideas pitched to you—most of them horrible—that you have...

Most startups don’t fail because they lose money. The downward spiral starts much sooner when entrepreneurs let managing their financials fall by the wayside. In fact, a CB 2018 Insights report found that 29 percent of small businesses failed because they ran out of cash, perhaps a result of poor money management by leadership.

Not everyone has the aptitude for financial management. Still, startup owners agree it’s a necessity.

Why your bottom line could bottom out

Over the years, my company has seen a pattern with startups: Just as they hit their stride and growth takes off, they begin struggling with financials. There are many reasons for this paradox, including expanding into new verticals too quickly and failing to acknowledge the fina...