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As a Founder, no one really understands WTF we do other than another Founder. Our lives are basically attending a bunch of events where the conversation goes something like this:

Friend: "So, how is that startup thing you're doing?"

Founder: "It's going well (not true), but our burn rate is pretty significant and I don't know if we'll be able to raise another round of cash."

Friend: "Oh, OK. So what is it that you do again?"

Does this sound familiar? Look, I've been a startup Founder for nearly 30 years and to this day most of my family thinks "I do something with computers." This is pretty standard fare, but for first-time Founders, it often feels like this bizarre version of the Matrix that we're living in where we're the only people that...

We’re excited to see how communities on Slack are steadily growing day by day. People from different countries and backgrounds discuss a various range of topics in these communities. It is a source of valuable information and contacts we use every day at Standuply while building a Slack bot for remote Agile teams.

We decided to compose a list of Slack communities for your own good. It took us several weeks and after we the list contained more than 400 communities. You’ll see number of members in brackets.

I. Product Talks

🚀 Startups and Product Development

• Startups Live (n/a): Twice-a-week chat with Founders of startups.
• MindTheProduct (6201): International product community. A good one!
• Startup Study Group (6014): Growing community of he...

The gender gap that persists in Silicon Valley and throughout startups in general needs no introduction. Fewer opportunities, fewer CEOs, less pay, less respect – to name just a few issues familiar to women. Laundry lists of ails and acknowledgement of the gender gap are common. What you encounter less frequently are solutions in progress, conversations that go beyond paying lip service to the obstacles women face.

Not so in this morning’s Startups Live Coffee Hour with special guest Lisa Wang. Here she walks us through her projects designed to empower women and talks us beyond the initial difficulties of discussing gender, making it easier to effect change for all who genuinely want it and moving us closer to healthier startup ecosystems.

Startups use their elevator pitch to quickly communicate their startup idea and value proposition in one or two sentences.

In our previous idea validation lessons, we focused on the importance of taking your initial idea and defining your problem, particular market, advantages, and customer needs. Now it’s time to refine those learnings into a polished Elevator Pitch and continue our startup idea validation.

The heart of every great Elevator Pitch includes 4 essential components:

ONE Nail The Problem

As we learned, great business ideas start with a well-defined problem and the ability to identify how painful that problem is. Now, we’ll concentrate on how to effectively articulate it in your elevator pitch.

TWO Explain The Solution

You’ve zeroed i...

According to the Small Business Association, veteran-owned businesses make up 9.1 percent of all US businesses — and they all need capital to get and keep them going. But securing financing for a startup or a small business is almost never easy. And it can be even more difficult for veterans, who may have gaps in their financial history due to time on active duty.

Luckily, there are a few options for business loans for veterans. Some are government-funded, while others come from the private sector. Let's take a look first at government-funded small business loans for veterans and then dive into the private sector.

Government-funded business loans for veterans

The Small Business Association (SBA) administers the most well-known small business l...

What is a business grant?

A business grant is a sum of money given to a business in order to help them further their business. They’re usually distributed by governments, corporations, foundations, or trusts. Unlike many other types of business funding, grants don’t have to be paid back and business owners aren’t required to give up equity in exchange for a grant.

However, most small businesses probably won’t qualify for a small business grant, as they’re tied directly to US government agencies that have specific goals. There are some categories of business that are an except, though, including research and development companies, as well as some high tech companies.

State level grants are also tied to the direct economic or social needs and...

Imagine getting married to someone you hardly knew just because you "really needed to get this marriage thing going, and they seem qualified enough at the time." Does that sound like the recipe for a healthy long-term relationship? Probably not. But that's pretty much how most of us select our future spouse for our startups (aka "The Cofounder").

At some point, we inevitably step back and ask "Is this really the right person to be my long-term co-founder or did I just do a shotgun wedding with this weirdo?" Which invariably leads to "How can I tell if this is the 'right' co-Founder, and if it isn't — how do I unwind this thing?

To be fair, these are questions most Founders will end up asking, and if we're not, it doesn't mean our co-founder...

If I hadn't been a Founder, I'd be an awful parent.

Now, I'm already giving myself too much credit here because it's assuming I'm not an awful parent, which let's be honest, many of us just might be. But I've definitely come to appreciate over the years raising my 5-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter how my best parenting traits are directly mapped back to what I've learned as a Founder.

Surprisingly, it really has little to do with "building a startup" and more to do with how I've come to think like a Founder.

The Power to Question Me

The day my son Wil was born, I wrote him a long letter. In it, I gave him all of the advice I had in me about preparing him for the world. The one piece that's always resonated the most was "Question every...

What do you do if you have a great idea for a tech startup, but no technical knowledge about how to build it? Well, there are usually three options: find a technical Co-Founder you can work with, outsource to an expensive dev shop in the States or in Europe, or outsource to a cheaper (but often lower quality) dev shop overseas.

Hicham Amine and his company Hidden Founders are out to add a fourth — and better — option to that paradigm.

The Hidden Founder Difference

Hicham describes Hidden Founders as “halfway between an incubator and a dev shop.” Dev shops, for example, traditionally complete the technical specifications of a project — and then leave. They have no investment in the company and, usually, are more like hired hands than member...

Like The Dude in The Big Lebowski, PowerPoint abides. It’s a great tool for assembling presentations and pitch decks. Lively conversations and entire industries surround the PowerPoint – trying to make slides better, helping people prepare materials, debating that the tool is outdated and boring… And at the center, PowerPoint abides.

There is no shortage of templates available online, but the Quickstart PowerPoint Template sticks with the fundamentals, aiming to help people “create amazing powerpoint presentations in minutes.”

Using standard fonts prevents any snags or downloading delays. A trove of images eliminates the need to conduct time-consuming searches elsewhere. 38 ready-made slides put creators close to the finish line before the...