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“Make yourself at home.” It’s what we tell our guests when we want them to feel comfortable in our space. We say it as a courtesy. But if we really mean it, we’ll add information. We’ll tell our guests that there’s a pool table in the basement, snacks and refreshments out on the island in the kitchen… To immediately feel at home in new environments, most of us need to find our bearings first, to be shown around the place.

The same holds true for web-based applications, where invitations to make ourselves at home are pretty lackluster across the board. To be fair, a lot of energy is devoted to creating intuitive user experiences, but this isn’t the same as being shown around.

If you truly want your guests to feel at home in your app, you mig...

What is customer segmentation?

Customer segmentation is the process of dividing a large group of customers into smaller groups, based on certain characteristics. It’s also sometimes called “market segmentation.”

Why is customer segmentation important?

Customer segmentation is important because it helps companies market more effectively to their customers. If you want your marketing budget to go as far as it can, it’s essential that you know who you’re marketing to and what they respond to when it comes to advertisements.

For example, if your company had a customer base that included both 14-year-old boys and 45-year-old men, you wouldn’t use the same marketing techniques with the two groups, would you? But you can’t even know that you have ...

I had never heard so many f-bombs in my life. That’s saying a lot, considering I’ve watched my fair share of Martin Scorsese films. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and my 2-year-old and I were walking through the mall. A group of young people followed close behind, not even attempting to censor themselves.

Hey, I get it. I was young once — many years ago. The absence of parental authority allowed these youngsters to enter an uncensored, primal place of freedom. When the cat’s away, the mice play. The same thing happens with the employees in your organization when you’re not around — albeit with fewer f-bombs. Who knows, maybe more.

“Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work with my 2-year-old, it didn’t work with me as a teenager, and it doesn’t w...

"Oh look! Someone just sold a company similar to ours for a million billion trillion dollars. And look at that, they raised a bunch of money along the way. I bet if I had raised money I would be a huge success too."

Whether or not we think about it daily, many of us have this nagging thought in the back of our minds of the "what if?" of raising capital. We picture this alternate universe where we took on investor funding and grew to become the next great darling of our industry.

The problem with that thought process, though, is that it puts "raising capital" in the same bucket as "executing properly" which is very different.

There's a time and a place where raising capital absolutely makes sense, but often we're either not there or we misu...

A business model canvas is a method for determining a company’s business model in a visual, straightforward way. It can be used to develop new business ideas or to sketch out the business model for an existing business. It was developed by Alexander Osterwalder in 2008 and is part of the lean startup methodology.

Every company needs to be able to clearly and concisely outline their business model. Not only does it serve as a guide for moving the company forward, it also helps when approaching investors and partners. However, figuring out a business model can be tricky, especially for first time founders. And that’s where Osterwalder’s business model canvas comes in.

The business model canvas can be printed out in large scale, so that an ent...

If you’ve been in the startup world for more than five minutes, you’ve heard the term “venture capital.” Maybe you even know founders who have raised VC money themselves. But you might be wondering: How does venture capital work?

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.

How does venture capital work?

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 ...

Seneca once said that “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” I truly believe that we can help luck along by being prepared for opportunity when it knocks.

And one of the must-have tools in our storytelling arsenal is the infamous Elevator Pitch – or the “Quickpitch” as I often dub it. And you never know where the opportunity might knock – at a networking event, in an Uber Pool, or even in line for coffee at Starbucks.

If you find yourself conversing with someone who could be a potential investor/user/partner/connector – are you ready to pitch them in a fast, powerful way?

I heard the amazing Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube speak this year, and she said that it usually takes people about 15 minutes to explain to her what they do and w...

Your team can make or break your startup. Seriously. This is so true that is has become a cliché.

Think about it. You’re going to be spending a lot of time together. You’re going to go through a lot of super stressful situations. You may or may not go broke at some point — together. So, when you’re forming your startup team, it’s really important to make sure you’re asking the right startup interview questions.

Sure, we all know the standards. What are your greatest weaknesses? Why do you want to work here? What was your biggest accomplishment in your last job? And a bunch of those standards made it onto this list. (After all, they’re standard for a reason.) But there are other questions you can ask applicants to your startup team that real...

I don't remember going to college. I know I went, but I don't remember anything about my college experience, because unlike everyone else, I was too busy working on my startup.

I remember rollerblading (1990s!) across the quad to class on a beautifully sunny day and watching a bunch of my friends playing volleyball and having an amazing time. I wanted to play so badly, but I didn't. I had to get through class so I could skate back to the office for an all-night coding session on a new client project.

This isn't a story about how that effort paid off (it did), this is a story of how badly I regret never having played that day. It's a story of how so many of my life experiences were mortgaged for the sake of building my startup, and how looki...

We're all freaked out about sharing our flaws.

We're worried that employees, investors, customers, and just about anyone else will think less of us. Maybe they won't invest, maybe they won't buy our products, or maybe they won't come to work for us.

Sharing our flaws is terrifying. But it's also one of the most liberating things we can do not just as Founders, but as the weirdo humans we all are.

What I've learned over the years is that part of being a CEO is learning how to be comfortable sharing your flaws. In fact, sharing your flaws can actually be extremely helpful to your team because it helps them know that you're human too (which is good news because we all are).

When it comes down to it though, there are a few main reasons why we don...