We all dream about it. Cashing out, getting The Big Check™ and going on a shopping spree with “Bentleys and Benjamins”. But, once the fanfare wears off — What actually happens to all of us?

Do we walk away with a perma-smile until the day we die? Or do we just trade one set of problems for another? Are we actually happier?

As a Founder with a few exits of my own, I’ve had this conversation with dozens of Founders post-exit who have had anything from a $1 million exit to a multi billion dollar exit. What’s fascinating is that all of our outcomes tend to tell roughly the same story — and it’s rarely what anyone thinks it is.

Everyone has their own version of their outcome, but if I were to generalize my observations after some very deep ...

Often when the chips are down and we're not getting paid, racking up debt, and wondering whether our startup has a future at all, it's easy to forget how valuable that freedom is.

So, let's talk about it.

What kind of freedom are we talking about here?

We're talking about the freedom to do whatever the hell we want.

If we want the whole company to work from home in our pajamas — that's what we do. If we want to take the product in a 180-degree different direction, we do. If we want to hire, fire, or promote anyone for any reason, we do.

We created this freedom so that no one could ever tell us what to do. It's amazing, and easy to forget about until we don't have it.

That said, freedom is damn expensive.

How many ways are we paying for ...

How To Write A Business Plan: A Comprehensive Guide

A comprehensive, step-by-step guide - complete with real examples - on writing business plans with just the right amount of panache to catch an investor's attention and serve as a guiding star for your business.

Introduction to Business Plans

So you've got a killer startup idea. Now you need to write a business plan that is equally killer.

You fire up your computer, open a Google doc, and stare at the blank page for several minutes before it suddenly dawns on you that, Hm…maybe I have no idea how to write a business plan from scratch after all.

Don't let it get you down. After all, why would you know anything about business planning? For that very reason we have 4 amazing business plan samples ...

We're so damn distracted by "growth" that we rarely ask ourselves what it is about growth that even matters.

You know who cares about growth? Our investors. The media. Our sewing circles of other Founders.

You know who cares about quality? Our team. Our customers. Our partners. You know, the people that we should be solely focused on.

There's a time and a place to focus on growth, but all too often our focus on growth comes directly at the expense of our focus on quality. And that's a dangerous place to be.

We need to have a discussion around making our startups better, not just bigger.

Size Doesn't Equal Quality

A couple of years ago, Basecamp Founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson said something that always stuck with me when ...

Time and time again, I run into mid-continent entrepreneurs who think sales should be a personal experience. Out in Silicon Valley, I have found that a lot of startups stick to self-service platforms rather than human salespeople.

So who’s right? Well, it depends on what’s for sale and who’s buying.

METRICS MATTER: CAC AND ACV

Both approaches can work, but the key factor isn’t where your startup sits on the map. Instead, to choose the right sales strategy, take two things into account: customer acquisition cost and annual contract value.

Let’s start with CAC, or Customer Aquisition Cost, which describes the cost of acquiring a single customer. To calculate CAC, divide the cost of acquiring customers by the number of customers acquired. For...

What is Quiet Quitting and Why is it Important?

While it isn’t a new phenomenon, many of us might be familiar with the behavior but not have a term connected to it, that is, until now. You may have heard the term "quiet quitting" recently as the latest workplace trend, many thanks to influencers on TikTok, but it has been around long before social media ever existed. Generally, there are multiple definitions floating around as to what quiet quitting is, and what it means for the workplace.

Upon first hearing the term, many might mistake quiet quitting as slacking off at work, but that is not entirely true. Some people define it as not taking on more work and setting boundaries with employers to avoid burnout, while others say it’s simply not...

The year I turned 37, my heart stopped. Not figuratively, I mean it actually stopped beating.

We were in the early days of launching Startups.com, and I was at lunch with our team. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something just didn't feel right, so I told the team I was going to head home and lay down. As I was driving home, I called my wife and told her "I'm heading home, something feels off..."

And as I said those words, my heart stopped — while driving. My world went black.

For anyone that has had their heart stop, you can't ignore it because, well, you're sorta dead. In my case, I came to quickly, recovered the car, and drove the next few minutes home. As soon as I got home I phoned my co-workers (who were 5 minutes away) and...

They say nothing worth having comes easy – and that definitely holds up when it comes to acquiring customers for your startup.

Customer acquisition doesn’t just happen. Customers don’t just fall into your lap, ready to hand over their money. A customer’s business isn’t something that is owed to you – it’s an honor that has to be earned.

In a lot of ways, says growth marketer and Ghost Influence Founder Brian Swichkow, customer acquisition is a lot like going on a date. “The internet is the bar. Your website is your house. Your email list is your bedroom. Customer acquisition is, well… you know,” he says.

Cue the Marvin Gaye song.

So what does it take to, ahem, close the deal with respect to acquiring customers? Brian joins us to explore jus...

Startup equity is one of those things that it's fair to say every startup founder without an MBA struggles with, and even those with a high degree of financial modeling education won't have been through this before. Most people don't have to think about this stuff until it's really important. But if you're starting to freak out about who gets what slice of your startup pie, take a deep breath, calm down, and get ready for Startup Equity 101 (your official startup equity guide).

Equity. Stocks. Shares. Vesting. Fair market value. The minute you dive into figuring out startup equity compensation, you're slammed from every side with a bunch of words that you might have heard in the past and you might be able to fake knowledge of at a dinner par...

There are weapons, and there are weapons made with plutonium. Well, there is competitive intelligence, and there is the competitive intelligence made by Knowlium.

Knowlium is the maker of the competitive intelligence software called Reveal – a product that “accelerates your digital strategy with real-time competitive insight.”

Here’s a quick rundown of what the Reveal competitive intelligence software covers:

• Brand Monitoring
• Content Marketing
• SEO Analysis
• Benchmarking
• Social Media Analysis
• Influencer Analysis

Which is to state matters very very simply. You must have a look for yourself to appreciate the comprehensiveness and sophistication with which Reveal processes data. If you want simple scores to understand your market position com...