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Venture capital (VC) is an important driver of the U.S. economy, spurring both economic growth and employment. But traditional VC rewards shareholder profit over shared prosperity, accumulating the benefits of that economic growth in just very few hands. Instead, can we leverage the upside of VC financing to fight poverty where economic growth and employment are most needed both at home and abroad? Some of us think that we can.

How much does VENTURE CAPITAL drive the U.S. economy?

This is the question that two scholars set out to answer. They quantified the long-term impact of venture capital in the economy of the United States, considering only publicly traded companies — those for which reliable information is available.

As of 2013, VC-b...

What is an angel investor?

Angel investors are typically high net worth individuals who make investments very early into the formation of a new startup company, usually in exchange for convertible debt or equity. The role of angel investors serves as a critical bridge between the early stage startup financing needs of a company and their larger capital needs later on from venture capitalists, corporate investors, all the way to becoming a publicly traded company.

Who can be angel investors?

In order to be an angel investor, a person does not have to be an accredited investor. However, a lot of angel investors are accredited investors.

In order to be an accredited investor, according to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), a person must:

• Hav...

What exactly does bootstrapping your startup mean?

For the uninitiated, a bootstrap startup basically means that you self-fund your business, i.e. using the existing resources and internal revenue to drive your business, instead of raising any external funds. Given the wide scale availability of angel investors and venture capitalists, it’s hard to resist the chance to build a steady business without accepting external funds.

In fact most startups today forget the importance and the advantages of starting out on a shoestring budget. At this point, I can almost feel the startup founders scoffing at the idea of starting out with a minimal budget, but hear me out. Granted, bootstrapping your startup isn’t exactly a bed of roses. It’s rather a...

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

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: starting a company is hard work. Growing a startup from scratch is like jumping out of an airplane and trying to make a parachute using a thread and needle as you plummet towards the earth. Needless to say, when it comes to startup growth, there’s a lot that can go wrong – as Sean Sheppard knows firsthand.

“Growth needs to be done in a way that makes it safe for humans to tell you the truth. And that requires humility and a growth mindset.”

As the co-founder of Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund and market Development Accelerator GrowthX, Sean has seen hundreds of companies come through the door. Some of those companies have gone on to big wins – and others have stalled before they even g...

When you’re leading a business, you want to be viewed as extremely competent, fair, and as someone who demonstrates effective leadership skills.

But did you know that research has found that less than 50% of employees trust those in leadership roles? Not a great track record, overall.

Being an effective leader is no easy task, and sometimes, even the qualifiers for that “effective team leader” title feel a bit elusive.

Leaders–especially new ones–find themselves wondering, “What actually makes my team see me as a leader they can trust, respect, and take direction from?”

In this guide, we’ll look at some of the data, research, and findings that help add clarity to the defining characteristics of effective leaders.

Psychologists Say Effectiv...

Some of you may be too young to remember, but the physical Yellow Pages was one of the main ways you could find local businesses. Those meaty books were a mainstay and saw frequent usage in many many households around the world. But since the late 90s and early part of the 2000s, for good measure, the books have been disappearing. Google had a big part to play in that.

Google is the de facto search engine of choice. But there was space for better discovery of local services. So Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, Yelp and others were born.

Going beyond discovery

To start, as an example, let’s take a look at all of Yelp’s local services categories in San Francisco:

Under each of these categories, you’ll find hundreds if not thousands of local busin...

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...

The conventional wisdom in the startup community these days is that to create a successful startup, you need to move at breakneck speed in everything you do.

And, to facilitate this, you should consume as much money as you can get your hands on along the way to make sure you’re removing all obstacles from getting to market. The perception is that if you move too slowly at the beginning, you’ll miss the market and, even worse, you won’t get funding.

But, is this correct?

While we completely support the idea that getting a great product to market as quickly as possible is a cornerstone of startup success, we just don’t buy that frenetic speed is the best way to do it. It’s not what has worked for us, nor for any of the successful startups we’...

You'll hear the terms “founder” and “co-founder or cofounder” thrown around a lot in Startup Land. But what, exactly, do they mean? What's the difference between the two? And how do you find a good one? It's not very easy to find cofounders that properly fill the business needs and help in the early stages of a startup. So, where do founders even start?

We'll answer the above questions and six more in this breakdown of everything you need to know about founders and co-founders in order to ensure your company's success.

1. What is a founder?

A founder is a person who comes up with an idea (hopefully a profitable idea) and then transforms it into a new business or startup. Founders can set up a business on their own, or they can do it with other...