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Show me a startup Founder and I'll show you someone with a boatload of health issues.

But why? Why is nearly every Founder who is neck-deep in the trenches of their startup suffering from physical, mental, and emotional issues? More importantly, why do we feel like these sacrifices are justified?

We are surrounded by tons of Founders all essentially making the same mistakes at exactly the same time, particularly with our health, at which point we assume that must be "how it goes." And yet, the reason we're all blowing ourselves up is that collectively we're doing it all wrong.

Are Sacrifices the Cost of Being a Founder?

To an extent, yes, we do have to make sacrifices to build a startup. We need way more resources than we can possibly pay f...

How do I…? How do I…? How do I…? How do I…? How do I…? Trying to start up an internet business raises endless questions. Understandably, Founders like to focus on the questions related to making great products and services and growing their company. I’ve yet to meet the Founder who’d rather concentrate on concerns related to banking, taxes, paperwork.

Stripe Atlas helps entrepreneurs start their businesses faster by handling the boring essentials.

For a one-time $500 fee, here’s what you get:

• Incorporation
• First year of registered agent fees
• Tax ID (EIN)
• Bank account opening
• U.S. Stripe account
• Conversation with lawyer & accountant
• Free post-incorporation templates

Atlas spares you the pain of filing paperwork, making trips to the bank a...

According to research from Kaufman, 40% 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 men-owned businesses. The rate of women starting businesses and startups throughout the country is at an all-time high.

Let’s take a closer look at women-owned businesses, including certification and funding opportunities.

What it is a woman-owned business?

In its simplest form, a women-owned business is a business owned by at least one woman.

But when it comes to qualifying for certain grants, loans, and contracts, a women-owned business is at least 51% owned by controlled, operated, and managed by a woman or women.

What is WBENC Certificatio...

Running a startup is a ton of work as a solo Founder, so much so that many Founders find themselves at a loss trying to get everything done. For those that are non-technical, this proves to be a challenge, as coding is essential in this day and age, so bringing on a technical co-founder is a must. This is also true for technical Founders missing the mark on the creative front, so it's no surprise that one of the most searched terms on the internet is "finding a cofounder."

It seems like it should be easy — find a co-founder (or more) that aligns with your startup idea, mission, and has the complementary skills to do all the things you don't know how to — but it's not that simple. Finding the right co-founder is a complex combination of effor...

The Solution Slide in an investor deck explains exactly how our startup company will solve the issue we set up in our Problem Slide. We'll walk you through the formula of the best decks in a single slide you can easily replicate.

Why does the Solution Slide Matter?

The Solution Slide takes our entire business model and distills it down to 1 or 2 sentences in our pitch presentation. If we did a good job to convince investors in the Problem Slide that we're tackling a big market of potential customers with severe consequences, then our Solution Slide will make us sound like a hero.

A Good Solution Slide is Focused

We want the investor to be crystal clear on this explanation of the business. We don't want them to go in multiple directions, so we'r...

There's a lot of talk these days about "Work/Life Balance" within a startup.

We're supposed to believe that we can build a world-changing startup from nothing while simultaneously traveling to exotic places and enjoying our "best life".

For most of us, that just doesn't add up. What's blowing us up, though, is how we approach the problem.

Is "Work/Life Balance" just a myth?

It can be.

While it sounds amazing to build something from nothing with plenty of time to spare, that's rarely the case. A startup is an all-consuming torrent of time, which means if we let it, it will absolutely take every second we have available.

Those of us that are beating the system are doing it by brute force hacks on life.

What's one thing I can do to get mo...

Today’s Favorite Find: GoDaddy Logo Design Service

Elevator Pitch

GoDaddy’s new Logo Design Service is “professional web services offering that enables GoDaddy customers to refine their online image with a logo professionally designed and customized to their requirements.”

Why We Love It

I’ve spent a good portion of the past four years on the internet. Scratch that — I’ve probably spent the majority of the past four years on the internet. As a professional blogger and a startup-focused professional blogger, specifically, I’ve looked at way more than my fair share of company logos over the years. There have been some good, some bad, and some terrible (looking at you with that new nonsense, Uber). And I’m here to tell you that your logo de...

I grew up ridiculously poor.

By the time I was 19, I founded my first startup, with less than $20 in the bank. I chose the one career that could somehow make me way, way poorer.

Within the first year I had racked up over $100,000 in personal debt, which took me from "poor" to "infinitely poor.” Today we call that college debt.

Sometimes "The Bet" Pays off

Within a few years some of the startup bets I had made began paying off.

Before I knew it, I was shopping for exotic cars, a new home (I was still living in a campus apartment at the time) and writing a single check to payoff all my college debt (a smaller check since I dropped out so quickly).

In my mind, I had made it.

But then a funny thing happened... nothing. Nothing at all. I woke...

What if this very moment is our last - and best - shot at success?

It's kind of hard to think about, actually. We tend to think about our careers as a whole in a progressive way, where we start at the bottom and climb our way to the top. But our startups are more like a job where we can be the mailroom clerk one year, the CEO the next year, and the doorman the next year.

It puts us in a tough spot because we're constantly wondering whether this is our moment. For those of us that haven't been around long enough, it's worse, because we may not realize yet that those peaks and valleys even exist — all we've seen is the come up.

Striking Lightning

Most startup Founders get one glimpse of "striking lightning" when all of the pieces of momentum ...

The most impossible task for a Startup Founder is to "invent a big idea."

It's not because we lack creativity, it's because we wind up focusing our energy on the wrong thing. Big ideas, by themselves, are nearly impossible to corral in our minds because they are inherently either "not big enough" or "too big to tackle."

We tend to go about this all backward. We assume that once an idea is incredible enough, it will guide all of our actions thereafter. But that is like putting a map down on a table and saying "We want to go west!" without making this is the most reasonable path.

"What Do I Want This Idea To Achieve?"

Any idea can become a "big idea" if you work at it hard enough. What we should be more focused on is a step beyond that — wha...