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We've been working around the clock on our side hustle with the dream that one day it'll be our full-time gig.

But now that we're getting some traction, the real question is, when do we go all in?

The best Investor — our current paycheck

There will never be a more equitable investor than our current paycheck.

Full funding, no pitch process, and market compensation from Day One.

Compare that to when we try to actually raise money in a grueling pitch process, spend months with no income, and have to work for half of what we made last year.

While our current investor (our paycheck) has a lot of hours and distractions, it has some really important benefits: it's predictable, it's consistent, and if shit hits the fan, we just focus on that.

A lot of people want to start a startup — but they don’t know where to start. And where there’s plenty you can do to get the ball rolling, there’s actually one place that everyone has to start: The idea.

But, what are the best startup ideas? What are the worst?

Before we dive into that big question — one disclaimer:

This is not a plug-and-play list of startup business ideas that you can cherry pick from in order to create the next unicorn startup. (That doesn’t exist. If it did, everyone would actually be killing it, all the time.)

Instead, we’re going to talk about some general categories of startups that are more or less difficult to start, help you figure out how to pick your best startup idea, and talk to some founders about their expe...

Looking for minority business loans? You’re not the only one. It’s no secret that the tech world is overwhelming male and overwhelming white. Study after study has shown that not only do underrepresented groups pitch less to angel investors and venture capitalists, they also receive less money when they do pitch. And when it comes to loans? Same problem. Underrepresented groups consistently receive less money than white men on loans.

For example, a 2014 study from researchers at Brigham Young University recruited nine “mystery shoppers” to go and seek small business loans. Three were black; three were Hispanic; and three were white. They all wore the same clothing, had nearly identical backgrounds, and asked for $60,000 for identical busine...

Software startups, especially in their early stages, can be rough. As a founder, it’s easy to get lost in a world of opportunity. You could build anything — but you need to build just one thing. When you finally figure out what that one thing is, you know that you’re a million iterations away from that magical product/market fit moment.

“It’s interesting because I think there’s an obligation as an entrepreneur to always have to say that we’re killing it—but the reality is always, always, always very different. In the same day you’re taking over the world, then going bankrupt, then taking over the world, and then going bankrupt again. You’re going back and forth between and that low three or four times a day. It’s quite bizarre. Every positi...

This moment matters.

Matter has always set out to create a more informed, connected, and empowered society, and that mission has never been more important than today. Media is an integral part of democracy, but it faces unprecedented opposition. Even the core idea of truth itself is under attack.

When Matter launched in 2012, media was already struggling with falling revenues. We were inspired by Clay Shirky’s call — “now is the time for lots and lots of experiments” — and we built a place where those experiments could happen. But today, these existential problems are joined by new ones. Just 32% of Americans say they trust the media — an all-time low. Our media discourse is now dominated by fake news and even direct attacks from the gover...

Founders are really bad at asking for introductions.

On a daily basis I get a request that looks something like this: "Hey Wil, I see that you know (some investor), would you mind introducing me to them? I just had this idea 9 seconds ago and I'd love to see if they'd invest in me!"

Now, mind you, I make a living by helping Founders (my dream job) so making introductions is a huge part of my job. The problem isn't my willingness to make them, it's the inexperience of Founders in how to ask for an introduction.

As Founders, our ability to get introductions is the lifeblood of our growth. Here's how to do it incredibly well — and what to avoid like the plague.

Understand what Social Capital is

Every time I make an introduction to someone, I'm...

In today’s world information spreads so quickly that it changed the way companies compete. We, at the Standuply team, believe that for an online company the most crucial thing is the product’s quality. And therefore, one of the most important persons in a company is the Product Manager. Being fans of Slack, we decided to investigate.

What can Slack offer to Product Managers?

It turns out that managers can satisfy almost all their needs using Slack and its apps. Some of the apps are still raw, others are just plain integrations with 3rd party services. But there are already a lot of well made, useful products designed purely for Slack, for example Growbot, and we too are doing our best with Standuply to be among the best as well.

Here is ou...

That's not how this works. We don't get the benefit of sitting on our thrones and commanding our armies until much, much later in life — and in many cases, never. What we are guaranteed along the way is a wraith-like drain on our life force (D&D reference there, fellow nerds) in every possible facet.

What we need to understand, and accept, is that our startup's future can very easily come at the expense of everything we hold dear. It's very much hard-coded into how the Founder Journey works, and damn, do we pay a lot of bills along the way.

First, We Pay With Our Savings

Long before we raise money or earn some revenue, 100% of our "income" is just our personal savings. We use terms like "sweat equity" as if working for free somehow magicall...

More often than not, what we avoid saying to investors is as valuable as what we do say.

With our best intentions, we often shoot ourselves in the foot making lofty assumptions or declarations that investors hear all the time and just start shaking their heads.

Let's avoid that.

These are conservative forecasts

The moment we open ourselves up to saying our estimates are "conservative" we risk the conversation pointing to whether our assumptions are actually "conservative", "aggressive" or just "wild-ass guesses."

All estimates are guesses.

Let's avoid giving them a label at all, and instead say "These estimates are based on our best assumptions across our entire business." Investors would rather know the assumptions are based on what we ...

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...