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Most products start out as a response to a problem. An inconvenience is slowing people down, a situation is diminishing quality of life, and either no solution exists or the one that does exist is insufficient.

Something new is needed. So creative people come up with an original or improved way to fix the problem.

All product development teams start with the problem. But many become so enamored with their solution that they lose sight of the problem they’re solving during the development process.

They come up with new ideas to work into the product and functionality that’s “cool,” and they build the product the way they think users want it.

But the end result is a product that, while mostly meeting the need they set out to fill, misses the...

The truth is most startups get acquired based on relationships they have built with trusted partners that evolve over time into something more substantial.

It's the equivalent of going from a first date to living together to full-blown marriage.

The trick is to understand how to develop that process over time versus waiting for an acquiring company to show up with a big check!

Should I be waiting for a company to call me?

Definitely not!

While it sounds amazing to have your dream buyer call you and talk turkey, we'll likely be sitting around for a long, long time waiting for the phone to ring.

Instead, the right move is to build relationships with all of the potential acquiring companies you can think of — whether as customers, partners...

During last week’s Startups Live, we talked about developing your pricing strategy, and how asking customers for money is an important step in building an actual grown-up company.

If only it were as simple as flipping a switch on a revenue stream and then watching the sales pour in. That would be a beautiful world to live in. But we don’t live in that world, we live in this world – and in this world, if you want customers, you have to go out and earn them.

We tend to think of lead generation strategies as this very rote, transactional thing: you herd as many people as you can into your funnel, and then you shake the funnel and hope that enough people fall through to paying customer.

“Driving traffic is different than turning someone into a...

There has never been a better time to build an online retail business. For one, shopping landscapes are becoming more fragmented. What that means is that big conglomerates are in danger of losing customers.

And where are those consumers going?

They’re headed to places like Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and independent, new-to-market ventures that offer unique, personalized value propositions.

In the coming years, economic researchers expect e-commerce fragmentation to increase in momentum—which means that if you’ve ever dreamed of launching your own e-commerce store, the time to start is now. Fragmentation means lower barriers to getting started and an increased ability to reach customers who will love your store. The market dynamics, opening doors ...

If you’re running a business or a department in a growing enterprise, then you probably face productivity challenges on a regular basis. You’re not alone in that. Over the past decade, I’ve had to juggle a number of projects at the same time, which has stretched my focus to its limits.

There’s plenty of research that says multitasking on a micro level can harm your productivity. When you’re trying to manage multiple projects or businesses, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and let productivity slip. You take on too much work and wind up doing more harm than good.

I recently had the chance to interview Noah Kagan, founder of SumoMe, to find out how he and his team manage to stay so productive (and increase productivity) amid tremendous growth an...

For some Founders, their "job" at their startup isn't necessarily something they want to keep.

There can be a ton of factors at play, whether it's "I can't afford to do this any longer" or "I'm more passionate about something else."

No matter what the reason, it is, in fact, possible to quit our own startup. There are just some creative ways we need to approach it.

If I quit, who runs this thing?

Depending on the size of the company, there may be quite a few people who are interested in our jobs.

For example, if it's a 10 person company that's doing OK (not great), our CEO job might be something we're totally over but someone else in the company may find it as an incredible opportunity to be the CEO for once.

That same opportunity may co...

##What is a general partnership? A general partnership is a business agreement where two or more people (partners) agree to share all of the profits, liabilities, and assets of a business.

General partnerships don’t have any liability protection, so both partners are legally and financially liable for the actions of the other. That means, for example, that if one partner is sued by an upset client, then the other partner’s personal assets — like their home, car, savings, etc. — can be forfeited as payment.

In order to become a general partnership, you need at least two people who agree to take on each other’s liabilities. While oral agreements do count, it’s always a good idea to get everything written down and signed in an articles of pa...

"What's your plan for selling this business? What's your exit plan?"

Ah, the popular refrain from investors, employees, advisors and just about anyone else that's banking on our stock to make them a few dollars. We all know that there's a possibility of selling our company, but how much planning can we really do to make that happen?

Does it matter if I don't "prepare to sell?"

While it's possible to consider specific acquisition targets, that's really only a small part of the plan.

The real plan simply maps back to the execution of our idea. Knowing that we might be a good fit for a big company is great, but unless our product has incredible value (that came through execution) then "preparing to sell" doesn't mean much.

What if I don't wa...

There’s something weird going on at Conversio. The team is spread out, not just across cities, but across continents. They get together as a team about once every six months. And they just might have one of the strongest company cultures out there.

Their secret: the entire Conversio team is intensely, radically, maybe even fanatically committed to their company culture.

Not that that’s a bad thing. Quite the opposite. If startup culture comes down to what’s in the water at the company water cooler, we could all stand to take a sip of what the Conversio team is drinking.

And that formula has its roots with the company’s Founder, Adii Pienaar.

Startup culture is something of a passion of Adii’s. When he first started Conversio, he began deve...

What is product design?

Product design/a> is the entire process of taking a product from idea to customers — and everything in between.

“There’s a widespread misconception that design is all about aesthetics,” product designer Eric Eriksson [writes](https://uxdesign.cc/what-is-product-design-d95cd5339f5c). “Most people don’t seem to understand that it’s about solving problems instead.”

There’s another, more limited, definition of product design which we’re not going to explore in detail here. But basically, that other definition is talking just about how a product looks and functions. For the sake of product design for startups, we’re focusing on the more holistic, process-oriented definition.

What’s the difference between product design a...