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What is an Inc.?

“Inc.” stands for “incorporated.” If you see it after the name of a company, it means that company is legally incorporated in at least one state. The founders have filled out all the paperwork, paid all the fees, and is viewed as a corporation by the government and the IRS.

How does an Inc. work?

Structure of a Corporation

Let’s look a the structure of a corporation, which most Incs. are. Corporations have three main tiers of management: shareholders, directors, and officers.

Shareholders The shareholders of a corporation are the owners. They’re the ones who “hold” shares of stock. Depending on how much stock they own, they have varying degrees of influence on the corporation — but they don’t make the decisions or run the d...

Just like there are many different kinds of capital round raises for businesses in all stages of growth, there are a variety of crowdfunding types. Which crowdfunding method an entrepreneur selects depends on the type of product or service they offer and their goals for growth.

The three primary types of crowdfunding are donation-based, rewards-based, and equity crowdfunding. This guide looks primarily at rewards-based and equity crowdfunding.

1. Donation-Based Crowdfunding

Broadly speaking, it’s correct to think of any crowdfunding campaign in which there is no financial return to the investors or contributors as donation-based crowdfunding.

Common donation-based crowdfunding initiatives include fundraising for disaster relief, charities...

Leadership is a popular topic these days. To become a true leader, you need a combination of skills and attributes. Some of these are inborn, to be sure. However, you can develop your leadership abilities as well.

Entrepreneurial success stories often tip a hat to the literature that supports busy business owners through the thick of the business building experience so, of course, we wanted to share books with actionable advice that aspiring entrepreneurs will find helpful on their journey to building a successful business.

Business books that have already helped millions of entrepreneurs can guide you along the way to obtaining a sustainable business, and being the best leader you can be. After all, being a great leader takes effort — and a ...

What is Venture Capital?

Venture capital is financing that’s invested in startups and small businesses that are usually high risk, but also have the potential for exponential growth.

The goal of a venture capital investment is a very high return for the venture capital firm, usually in the form of an acquisition of the startup or an IPO.

A venture capital firm is usually run by a handful of partners who have raised a large sum of money from a group of limited partners (LPs) to invest on their behalf. The LPs are typically large institutions, like a State Teachers Retirement System or a university who are using the services of the VC to help generate big returns on their money.

The partners then have a window of 7-10 years with which to mak...

Interest in content marketing has exploded over the past decade, with good reason. It works.

A study from Conductor showed that education content makes consumers 131% more likely to buy. But it’s not just for B2C, with B2B brands seeing value, too. And it works, for less. One estimate claims content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing, while generating approximately 3 times as many leads.

Sounds like an easy decision to get on board with.

What is content marketing?

Before we dive into how to do content marketing, let’s take a step back to rehash what it is. We’ve heard all about content marketing and how awesome it can be for your business (see above!). But let’s be clear on what we are talking about.

Content marketing is st...

What is product-market fit?

While the term “product-market fit” gets thrown around a lot in the startup world, it’s not always very well understood. In fact, we can’t even agree on who created it! Some people say that the concept of product-market fit was first developed and named by entrepreneur and investor Andy Rachleff. Others give credit to famed investor Marc Andreessen, who at the very least popularized term product-market fit when he wrote about in a 2007 blog post. He said, “Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

In other words: You could have an amazing, sophisticated, well-thought out idea — and people just don’t get it. (Think: That first focus group for Pied Piper on HBO’s ...

There's nothing quite like being worth millions on paper and still not being able to afford the shittiest car.

If this sounds familiar, it's because many of us maintain an extraordinary paper worth that's worth absolutely nothing outside of our conference room.

Investors say I'm worth millions. My credit card company disagrees.

It's not uncommon (at all!) for Founders to have all of their net worth tied up in their company without a real dollar to show for it.

That's because the value we have in our stock has zero liquidity — it's a promise of a future payout — without any pay. This dichotomy is maddening to any startup Founder, not to mention almost any business owner since the dawn of time.

Why doesn't a bank think I'm worth something?...

As a startup, it’s not exactly a secret that you need exceptional content in order to stand out from the crowd.

As Gary Vaynerchuk so bluntly puts it, “It literally doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what industry you operate in, if you’re not producing content, you basically don’t exist.”

Of course, chances are you already know this, and are currently putting in the hours to brainstorm and produce top-notch content. Heck, you may have even enlisted some outside help, and already have your own team standing by, ready to turn out articles when you need them.

You’ve probably got a social media presence as well –and try to remember to keep things up to date. But for many startups –and even marketers for that matter, there’s a good chance ...

Ninety to ninety-five percent of startups fail within the first five years. A large majority fail within the first 12 to 18 months. The failure of a startup shouldn’t be a big deal. In fact, finding the hard edges is what startups are all about.

Ideas should be pressure tested to find the ones that don’t survive, the ones that do, and most importantly the ones that could scale.

The problems begin when we conflate startup failure with “this is really bad”.

It’s only bad if the founder and team are over-extended, underwater, out of runway, or whatever analogous phrasing you choose. When all of the resources are marshaled in the wrong direction. When nobody stopped to do the critical work over the urgent. When the founders believed the same s...

What is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is an illustration of how you get from your company’s big-picture, high-level goals to the actual actions you need to take to achieve those goals. It not only shows what you’re building, but why you’re building it.

A project roadmap has two main audiences: External and internal stakeholders. (Like investors and employees, respectively.) You might even want to create two different roadmaps — or, at least, two different versions of your roadmap — for each audience.

For external stakeholders, the goal is to make sure everyone is informed about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. It may also be useful when you’re trying to procure more investment.

For internal stakeholders, a pro...