How to Create a Founders Agreement for Your Startup

A founders agreement covers everything from ownership structure to intellectual property rights to which the co-founder can make critical decisions over others. In short — every startup needs a Founders Agreement!

But do We Really NEED a Founders Agreement?

Since co-founders are often very familiar with each other, we can easily jump ahead and forget to formalize anything beyond our basic ownership structure. We snap up titles quickly ("You're the Chief Technology Officer! I'll be the Chief Operating Officer!") among all of the founders and go on our way. We're friends, right? That should be enough... right?

Being Friends doesn't Equal a Founders Agreement

And while all that is certainly true, ...

H ave you ever taken a quiz to find out what Disney Princess you are? Or clicked on a listicle on Buzzfeed promoted by [insert brand here]?

If so: Congratulations. You’re a human being.

You’ve also been on the receiving end of one of the most formative marketing trends of the 21st century: content marketing.

Content marketing isn’t exactly new – it’s been sweeping the marketing landscape for a decade or more now. “Content is king” the headlines proclaim – and for good reason. From blog posts and infographics to Youtube channels and branded podcasts, brands today are tapping into an ever-expanding toolbox of tactics and storytelling techniques to get their message across.

But, what about the plan behind the substance? What is it that makes t...

There are no doubt people who enjoy designing presentations, though chances are good that you’ve never met them or employed them at your business. That’s because presentations surely rank as one of the most common, painful, necessary evils.

Email might be a time suck, but at least it involves generating something new. With presentations, on the other hand, so much work goes into dressing up content that’s already been produced. Wouldn’t it be great to bypass the design work entirely?

Slidebean allows anyone to create a professional slide presentation with barely any effort on the design end, so that presenters can devote their energies to the information that matters most.

With Slidebean, templates and other presentation tools essentiall...

What Is Startup Funding?

Startup funding — or startup capital — is the money needed to launch a new business. It can come from a variety of sources and can be used for any purpose that helps the startup go from idea to actual business.

What are the top sources of startup funding?

While we often hear about venture capitalists and angel investors when it comes to startup funding options, it turns out that’s just one of the six top sources of startup capital. Of the $531 billion raised in startup capital each year, $185.5 billion is from personal savings and credit, $60 billion is from friends and family, $22 billion is from venture capitalists, $20 billion is from angel investors, $14 billion is from banks, and $5.1 billion is from crowdfunding....

You never hear of anyone winning an award for Best Receipt Keeper, because you’d never find enough entrants to make a contest in that category. Most of us struggle with keeping expenses in order, personal and business. Add frequent work travel to the mix? We’re toast.

About the only thing that we do find a way to manage reliably when we’re traveling is email, which is why Fyle is such a handy new tool.

Fyle is a Chrome extension that lets you track business expenses from your email, automatically capturing expense data and e-receipts from within Gmail and Outlook. You’re off the hook when it comes to manually entering data on your own, submitting expenses late – and for the inevitable loss of receipts while on the road.

Using what Co-Found...

1. What is seed capital?

The very first money that many enterprises raise — whether they go on to raise more money or not — is seed funding. (Some startups may raise pre-seed funding in order to get them to the point where they can raise a traditional seed round, but not every company does that.)

The name is pretty self explanatory: This is the seed that will (hopefully) grow the company. Seed capital is used to move past the first steps (product development, for example) and to start exploring what the next stages will be (like growth or a pivot).

Seed capital may be raised from family and friends, angel investors, incubators, and venture capital firms that focus on early-stage startups. Angel investors are perhaps the most common type of ...

Every startup founder has to go through a new product development process, whether it’s formalized or not. Broadly speaking, the new product development process is the entire process of bringing a product to market, starting with recognizing a marketing opportunity and ending with product launch. For some founders, that process may look like a haphazard “drunken walk,” but others prefer a more structured approach.

For those founders, here are three new product development processes that can help guide you as you work to take your startup from idea to actual product. And considering the fact that research suggests that following a clear, structured new product development process, it’s probably not a bad idea to pick one of these — or a comb...

I have a confession — I am in a very unhealthy relationship... with my work.

Here's the thing — I absolutely love my job. I get to sit around and bullshit with Founders all day. This is my dream job, by design. We're normally conditioned to believe that our jobs are some sort of liability that we should try to escape from whenever possible. We want to retire so we don't have to work anymore. I think of not doing my job as Michael Jordan would have thought about no longer playing basketball — it's not how I'm built.

But over time this obsession has created some brutally bad habits that have become a massive liability later in life. Fortunately, I know there are many other Founders dealing with the same issues (because I talk to them all the ...

No one will ever create more guilt over startup failure than the Founder.

Startup Founders have an insane ability to manufacture epic amounts of guilt over their own failures. It's almost like we do some magical alchemy that takes every pound of failure or criticism and turns it into a metric ton of guilt.

But should we really feel this guilty over failing at our startups?

There are two answers here. The first is — everyone does it. But that is of very little help. The second answer is just "no." Failing at a startup is painful but should not be a source of guilt. Guilt comes from our misunderstanding of what actually just happened.

Startups Typically Fail

For those that are unaware, most startups fail. Most Founders are doing this for the...

For over 10 years, I lived simultaneously in Columbus, Ohio as well as Santa Monica, San Francisco, and Beverly Hills (don't ask), working in both locations and being very active in the local ecosystems. My family and I were on a plane every 3 weeks for almost 5 years.

A lot of people pontificate on whether a bigger city is better for a startup (and the Founder) but I actually tested it across 4 different startups, raising a family, and genuinely trying to enjoy the best of every city. Here's my take:

Big City Connections are Life-Changing

While living in LA and SF I met with over 1,000 Founders, more than most people will meet in a city they were actually born in. Big cities naturally attract the most ambitious people, so it's so much easi...