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James Wolf was late for our interview — two and a half hours late, to be exact. I’d speed walked the fifteen minutes from my apartment to his shop in Ho Chi Minh City’s expat hub, Thao Dien, at 8:30 in the morning, only to be met with a shuttered door and no signs of life inside. Sweating in the shade as loitering taxi drivers threw me curious looks, I called him up.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, picking up after a couple of rings. “I didn’t expect to have to go to the factory this morning but something came up and I’m just arriving, on my bike. Can I call you in a couple of hours when I’m headed back to Thao Dien?”

“Oh no problem!” I said. “It’s my bad! I should have sent a follow-up email.”

Now, anyone who knows me knows that that’s not my us...

See part one of our interview.

James Wolf started one of his companies, The Bike Shop — which is located in the expat hub of Thao Dien in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam — after pressure from friends pointing out that it was a much-needed business for the neighborhood. But he’s not in it for the cash. Ultimately, he told me, it’s more about meeting a neighborhood need and not so much about making any real money.

“There’s virtually no profit in the business,” Wolf chuckles. “If you just pay everyone salaries, keep people employed, and keep the neighborhood rolling along, you have to consider that successful. You can’t expect to take home money as a bike shop owner. It’s kind of the standard — there’s no money in the industry. But as far as keepin...

When entrepreneurs are successful, we are enormously interested in what made them become entrepreneurs. It’s as if their main achievement is the decision to say goodbye to the secure and safe life — the sure job, the safe pay, and the good CV. While the choice of taking the plunge is definitely a precondition for success, it is quite far from being the primary achievement. The difficult part is not becoming an entrepreneur but remaining one when things look hopeless and everyone around you has lost faith. We love stories about how two 15-year-old kids in a basement have a good idea, get a breakthrough on the first day, and become a global success a year later. In reality, however, building a business and generating real value takes time. It...

The only way we grow is to bite off way more than we can chew.

There's this notion, however, that the way startups are built is by first building the entire product, team and infrastructure, and then attacking our market. While that sounds fantastic, it's actually not how startups grow.

We grow when we take giant leaps that are way beyond our current capacity and then figuring it out from there. In order to do that, we need to feel comfortable with taking these steps.

Am I Lying?

The first problem we all deal with is feeling like a fraud. We assume that if we're not 100% ready today, then we shouldn't even attempt to pitch our product to customers or investors. If that were true, startups would never get past a single Founder.

The reality i...

If most early-stage Founders were being completely transparent with their staff, their company updates would probably look something like this:

"Hey everyone, good to see you all on Zoom. So my quick update is this — We don't know if we have enough runway to make it to our next funding round. Also, I'm getting a lot of personal emails from folks saying they don't see the vision anymore. And personally, I don't really think this was the right decision for me or my family. So.. who wants to lead with OKR updates?"

That's the kind of truth that exists for us as Founders every day, and yet we find ourselves "hiding" that truth from our staff on a daily basis. Does that make us horrible people? Do all Founders leave this kind of information out?...

What is a private investor?

The short answer: A private investor is a person or company that invests their own money into a company, with the goal of helping that company succeed and getting a return on their investment.

The long answer: The field of private investment is more varied than the short answer might make it seem at first. It's important to note that while some types of private investors may be from firms that focus solely on investments — like VC firms and angel investors — they are never from banks (for example, SBA bank loans).

The four main types of private investors

a. Friends and family

Family and Friends are often the first private investors that startups and small businesses turn to. They're a great resource for seed funding a...

When you’re looking at grants for nonprofit startups, you’re looking at an area that’s crowded with a lot of competition. But, if there’s one thing startup entrepreneurs are known for, it’s tenacity.

The reason there’s so much competition is, a) there are a limited number of grants and, b) grants — unlike other forms of funding — don’t have to be paid back. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

But if there’s one field that’s very familiar with grants, it’s the nonprofit field. Here’s an overview of how to secure grants to start to nonprofit startup, as well as a few types of grants for starting a nonprofit.

What is a nonprofit?

A nonprofit is an organization that puts their social mission before profit. In contrast, a social enterprise is a for-p...

We’ve spent a lot of time on the blog talking about the early stages of planning a company, so let’s flash forward a bit. Say you’ve built out your product. You’ve validated your idea to death, formulated your pricing strategy, built out social channels and put out press releases.

You flip the switch, launch your product, and… crickets. Not a customer in the pipeline, not a signup on your website. Nothing.

So what now? Is that it? Do you throw in the towel, pack up and go home? Not by a long shot.

“If you build it, they will come,” is great and all, but sometimes in the startup world, if you want customers, you have to go out and get them yourself. So grab your email lists and your spreadsheets, folks, because we’re going sales prospecting....

We’ve all been to networking events where we’re bored to tears by the same mindless conversations. You swap credentials (and probably a few not-so-humblebrags), but the connection never goes beyond skimming the surface.

Networking is the first step of building a professional community, but you need to develop meaningful relationships to actually make an impact. In their book, “Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships That Matter,” Young Entrepreneur Council co-founders Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh advocate for a move beyond the typical boring, dead-end interactions.

In the chaos and noise of the social media age, the demand for authentic, credible voices — otherwise known as superconnectors — is at an all-tim...

Entrepreneurs are lone wolves by nature. Even those who successfully lead great teams tend to work the longest hours and make the greatest sacrifices for their companies. That resolute independence is essential to bring projects to fulfillment, but when it comes to healthy living and personal growth, it is less beneficial.

Gallup’s research found that 45 percent of entrepreneurs report feeling stressed, a slightly higher rate than that of the average worker. Feelings of loneliness and isolation can worsen the stress brought on by already substantial workloads.

Despite the risks, entrepreneurs do what it takes to succeed. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt famously worked 100-hour weeks for more than 20 years. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz l...