All salespeople — even top stars who seem to have innate abilities to close deals — can benefit when they have reliable selling tactics; so can their employers. Yet far too many startups are filled with starry-eyed salespeople operating like lone wolves. As each goes his own way, the sales experience becomes fragmented and less attractive to prospects and clients.

Don’t think it’s just a small business problem, though. The issue faces even longstanding behemoths like Sears Holdings: It’s big, but it’s not immune to problems associated with crumbling, chaotic, and undependable sales strategies. According to CNN Monday, by the final quarter of 2017, Sears Holdings reported a $558 million loss, cementing annual consecutive losses since 2010. I...

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, ...

Look, we love blog posts as much as the next person. (Maybe even a little bit more.) There’s a lot of knowledge startup founders can find on the internet. But when it comes to real deep dives, you can’t beat a good startup book.

“Imagine your personal network was filled with titans of industry — from marketing mavens to business moguls,” Benjamin Evans, startup founder and lead designer on Airbnb’s Anti-Discrimination team tells Startups.com. “How much easier would it be to level up in business and life if you had the best insights available to you whenever you needed them? Well, I believe that’s the value of books. In my ideal world, I’d have a network filled with my role models — from Seth Godin through to Richard Branson — on hand to hel...

There is one category of consumer tech that’s being built largely outside Silicon Valley: E-commerce. Fab, NastyGal, ShoeDazzle, Birchbox, Bonobos, Honest, Dollar Shave Club, JustFab, Warby Parker and so many other once-hyped (and in a few cases, still-hyped) “e-commerce 2.0” companies were centered in fashion and celebrity hubs of LA and New York.

This interview with Warby Parker co-founder Neil Blumenthal shows that the geographic distinction isn’t just about the weather. It’s about how the company is built. I’ve never before spoken with a Web founder who put more thought into his PR hire than his…. developers.

Warby may wind up out surviving other ecommerce roadkill because they got what they were early: A fashion and lifestyle brand, no...

Question: How can I distinguish my startup Pricing Strategy from a lower-priced competitor?

Can’t figure out how to beat your lower-priced competitors? Don’t let predatory competitor pricing strategy destroy your business.

The answers below are provided by members of FounderSociety, an invitation-only organization comprised of ambitious startup founders and business owners.

1. Specialize Further

There’s one thing a client will always privilege over low cost, and that is specialization. If a client has the choice between a cheap offer and an offer that is specifically geared towards them, they will choose the latter nine times out of 10. Find a way to tailor your product or service to sub-groups of customers. You can still hit the entire ma...

A study by the Relational Capital Group revealed that 87 percent of consumers say they’ll stick with a brand after a recall if the company handles it well. People understand that mistakes happen, but they also prefer brands that demonstrate honesty and responsibility when dealing with those mistakes.

Of course, the scope of the fallout of a product recall depends on the nature of the error itself. A single faulty part requires significantly less damage control than a software bug that affects every user. In some cases, a product recall can even mean losing millions of dollars.

However, if a problem isn’t a critical function of your business, you can easily turn it into an opportunity. Even when dealing with a more widespread issue, acceptin...

No marketing budget to speak of. At best, basic video, photography and editing skills. This doesn’t sound like a winning recipe for launching a successful ad campaign. Not by a long shot. But, if you fit the profile, you’re probably not at so great of a disadvantage as you might think.

Thanks to StoriesAds.

StoriesAds is a tool that lets you make Instagram Stories ads in just a couple of minutes. It’s currently free to use, and pretty much anyone capable of uploading a video has sufficient design chops for success.

Created by online video maker Shakr in collaboration with the inbound marketing and sales platform HubSpot, StoriesAds supplies templates that make building a stories ad extremely easy. You select a template, then customize visu...

Congress passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act way back in April of 2012 — and the startup world rejoiced. Finally, we’d be able to raise money through non-accredited investors, just like all of our friends were doing to pay for their EPs and trips to South America and medical procedures! Crowdfunding — which the startup world invented — was finally a legal option for startups.

So what’s so great about the American JOBS Act, anyway? The ability to raise equity crowdfunding without having to make a public offering is probably the most significant change that the JOBS Act made, of course. Any startup founder can tell you that raising money from friends and family — or, if you have the right type of product, running a crowdfund...

Our minds approach solving big problems — or big business goals — differently. Some people are analytical; some people are logical; some people are creative; others are visual.

Visual Mapping

Visual mapping is a straightforward strategy that takes your largest business goal and breaks it down into chunks that you can easily act on.

If you’re the type of person who needs to see how everything connects, and the thought of putting everything into a spreadsheet makes you feel like sleeping — Well, you’re in luck, you visual learner, you. This business template is perfect for the way you think.

Alright, grab a pen and paper (or download our handy template here)

Go ahead and write your “ultimate business goal” right in the center. Then, write d...

We’ve all read the articles, seen the reports, heard the advice: one-on-one meetings are key to running a startup effectively. So why is it that only a third of managers actually follow that advice and meet with their employees on a weekly basis?

In my experience, it’s because most one-on-one meetings are bad. They’re difficult in the best of circumstances, and that difficulty is often compounded by managers at startups being less experienced on average. The result is meetings that are poorly run, poorly planned for, and really, really awkward.

As humans, when we’re faced with an uncomfortable situation that will theoretically help us succeed in the long term but will be painful in the short term, we’re just not going to do it. This is tru...