Business grants for women is a popular topic — and no wonder. According to research from Kaufman, 40 percent of first time entrepreneurs in the United States are women.

Even more impressive? The number of women-run businesses in the US is growing at twice the rate of man-owned businesses. The rate of women starting businesses and startups throughout the country is at an all-time high.

But women aren’t getting nearly as much money for those businesses as men are. In the startup world, women founders got only 2 percent of VC funding in 2017.

That means women are forced to look to other money sources when they’re looking to launch a startup or small business. VC money is the “free” money of the startup world. (Well, not “free,” exactly. But, u...

When you’re working on an early-stage startup, figuring out what your business goals should be — like what you should be achieving and at what stage — is difficult. It’s not like school, where there are clear steps that lead to the next level. Or even like traditional businesses, which have clear business goal templates. No — early-stage startup founders often struggle with the nebulous nature of their business goals.

Lucky for you, there are experts in this who have great advice about what should be achieved — and when — for early stage startups.

Here are seven business goal posts you should be aiming for as you grow your early-stage startup.

Business Goal #1: Minimum Viable Product

TIMELINE: AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Your minimum viable produc...

As I’m writing, it’s the day after Apple’s Special Event. The Steve Jobs Theater has a public event under its belt. We’re past figuring out how to pronounce iPhone X, and we’re done caring what happened to iPhone 9. Even the Face ID demo fail is already yesterday’s news.

If you watched the live stream of Apple’s Keynote as a normal part of your job like I did, you need to know that customer centricity is under attack.

I have a few suggestions how to respond:

“One more thing”

I have to say I’ve always enjoyed Apple’s Keynote events. I’d bet you agree. There’s a fun element of the big reveal. Were our predictions right? Were the leaks accurate?

And the events suit our sense of humor too. There’s a fine line between the reality of Apple on st...

Everything around us is changing—how we communicate and express ourselves, how we connect with other people, how we order food, how we live our lives.

When it comes to how work is done, everything is changing as well. At Servixio, we decided to make our company a 100 per cent virtual company—from top to bottom.

Why did we do that? We strongly believe that remote work has lots of benefits to our clients and people.

Here are the top 10 benefits of remote work:

1.) Remote workers are more productive

Remote workers are lazy and they will just slack around, right? Well, wrong! According to a ConnectSolutions survey, 30 per cent of workers said that they accomplished more in less time when they started working remotely.

Working remotely can avoid...

WHAT IS SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP?

A sole proprietorship is an unincorporated business owned and run by one individual with no distinction between the business and the owner.

Sole proprietorships are the simplest and most common form of small business ownership, representing 73% of all small businesses in the United States today (a total of 23 million were reported by the IRS in 2010 and again in 2018 by the small business administration (SBA)).

The business owner is entitled to all profits and is personally responsible for all of the business's debts, losses, and liabilities, and pays personal income tax on profits earned from the company. The owner is not required to formally register their business with their state as corporations or LLCs do.

With...

Whether you’re a business, freelancer, or a PR agency, you’re going to have stories that you need to tell. Hopefully, lots of them – press releases, articles, interviews, blog posts and more.

Of course, there are professionals and plenty of online tools to help with every step of the process, from creating content to publishing, from sharing on social media to tracking results of a campaign. But before you shell out you’re hard earned money or attack each project bit by bit, you should have a look at Prowly.

Prowly is data-driven PR software and content marketing CRM for creating interactive content, distributing content, and measuring results. And the tools work so well that thousands of PR teams have embraced them, including those working...

If the depictions of startups in popular culture are to be believed, working for a startup is basically like hanging out in a clean version of a frat house basement. There are pool tables; ping pong tables; kegs that you can drink whenever you want! There are communal workspaces, free food and nap spaces. We have Nerf gun fights spontaneously every day!

And while some of that is true, sometimes — go check out Airbnb’s office in San Francisco for an amazing example of what can be done with startup unicorn money — the reality of working at a startup is a bit more… complicated.

“I’ve worked for a few startups now (Zirtual Inc. [pre-acquisition] for three years, WeWork for six months, and TrendKite presently for over a year),” Kristopher Louie...

People often automatically put small and large businesses into completely separate categories, even when they share the same space in the same market. Their logic is often that a small business can surely never compete with the resources and the horsepower of its corporate peers.

But (as you’ll know if you own a small business yourself) while small businesses seem to be at a disadvantage when it comes to resources, their ideas are just as good as the big guys. It’s just that these ideas often don’t have the same space and support to grow. Without big budgets, it’s harder to make investments in marketing, research, and hiring, so they can’t create the same kind of testing ground that large companies take for granted.

This lack of a lab in wh...

Unicorns are a beautiful myth — but are unicorn startups a myth, too? At first glance, the answer is “no.” The definition of a unicorn startup is a company with a $1 billion valuation. Uber is a unicorn startup. Airbnb is a unicorn startup. Facebook is a unicorn startup. So are WeWork, Spotify, Stripe, and a couple hundred other companies you probably haven’t heard of. Those are real companies that have achieved “unicorn” status, so that means unicorn startups are real, right?

Well, not quite.

First, let’s talk about how we get to that $1 billion valuation. There are a few different ways to determine the valuation of a startup but, basically, it’s what your investors believe your company is worth, based on the metrics your company has compi...

What are angel investors?

Angel investors are wealthy individuals who invest in startups, usually at the early stages. Sometimes angel investors pool their money with other angel investors, forming an investor pool.

The typical angel investor is someone whose net worth is likely in excess of $1 million or who earns over $200,000 per year. Incidentally, those look a lot like the credentials of an accredited investor.

Realize, though, that the angel investor is playing with their own money — not invested capital — so even though they may be a high net worth individual, they are still looking at money coming out of their personal bank account.

Federal angel investment tax credits

When you’re talking about federal angel investment tax credits,...