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As one of the partners of a Ruby on Rails software development agency, I speak with dozens of non-technical startup founders every week who are in various stages of building their first web or mobile application. The range of technical acumen, willingness to learn, and time and resources varies widely among the group.

As a firm, we’re not just competing with other NYC-based agencies for their business, but also offshore devshops, freelancers, and in some cases, the prospective client who may want to execute internally.

At the end of the day, a non-technical founder who has decided that they must build something has two options: pay someone else, or partner with people. Below are the pros and cons.

Paying Someone Else

Obviously, every situat...

You’re a startup founder. An idea machine. But it doesn’t matter how many ideas you have; those are a dime a dozen. What matters more is how you’re going to turn ideas into reality. So there’s a fork in the road: Pursue your side project (e.g. your passion), or keep your full-time job?

Delaying your side project could save time and money. Then again, going through with it could add color to your life and massive value to your company.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be an either/or scenario. You can make room for passion projects without ditching your post. Almost all the companies I’m running today started as side projects.

A few years ago, I was working as a hedge fund manager and a CTO of a Hollywood church. I was doing a little side con...

Imagine sitting in a room where every person across from you is dealing with the same crazy startup shit that you are.

Everyone is worried about making not only payroll but their mortgage payment. Everyone is wondering how to deal with annoying investors. Everyone feels like a total fraud, not just you. And most importantly — everyone is willing to talk about it — honestly.

Welcome to Founder Therapy.

There's a growing trend among Founders to begin talking openly and honestly about the issues we face, beyond online rants and in private spaces where we can get back to being real people.

I've been hosting these sessions for over 20 years all around the country, mostly in my home, and have sat with over 1,000 Founders in that time. What I'...

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...

Going digital is now as simple as bringing out our phone to book a ride home. As early as five years ago before Grab hit the market, this was a fantasy for most people. Our world has been changed by digital solutions and the logical question would be to ask: What’s next?

5 Technologies For The Future

To answer this question, we refer to Cognizant’s survey of over 2000 C-level professionals in Asia to tap on their collective wisdom. Such knowledge will be beneficial to both investors, consumers and even business executives would want to stay on top of things.

The top of the list would be artificial intelligence and this has found commercial applications in autonomous drivings such as the testing of nuTonomy in Singapore. The possibility of...

Entrepreneurs are classic risk-takers. They are continually assessing the world around them, seeking to identify problems in need of a solution. They work hard to address these problems, and transform them into opportunities to improve their world. However, in their haste to identify and seize those opportunities, many entrepreneurs rush into their businesses and forget to establish a long-term vision.

The history of the business world is littered with the empty shells of failed startups that burst onto the scene, but were unable to sustain their business model after their initial appeal wore off. Many of these businesses were started by well-intentioned entrepreneurs who were able to cast a compelling vision for the startup phase. But thos...

When a startup is bootstrapping, every last penny counts. Those early days of no or minimal funding are fraught for founders watching the number in the bank account get smaller and smaller but, unfortunately, most things that startups need cost money.

But what if they didn’t? What if, instead, you were able to trade your services for the services you so desperately need to get your startup off the ground?

Bringing Bartering Into The 21st Century

That’s the idea behind Currency, a new site that takes a very old concept — bartering — and make it totally 21st century. The site lets companies trade their “currency,” which they can define themselves, for other things that they need. So, for example, maybe you have a company that does stationary...

We’re going to do it. We’re going to be the easiest, most exciting, best way anywhere to get craft beer. And we’re going to do it while having a shit-ton of fun.

Some of the most interesting startups are the ones that appear to be simple from the outside but, when you lift the hood and look inside, are actually incredibly complicated and technical.

That’s definitely the case with BREWPUBLIK, the beer subscription service that is really basic, at least from the consumer’s perspective. All they have to do is tell BREWPUBLIK what kind of beer they’re into and new beer suited to their taste appears on their doorstep once a month. It’s like magic!

Or is it?

BREWPUBLIK founder Charlie Mulligan says that it’s not magic that brings those beers to ...

In my tech career, I had the opportunity to experience hackathons from many different angles: as a participant, an organizer, a sponsor; a process advisor and technology provider; in plenty of cases as a winner or leader of winning teams; with both startup and corporate contexts.

I’ve experienced the challenges in leading talented teams under the time pressure of a hackathon; the stress levels of pitching ideas to leadership teams. Here is my advice to those ambitious hackathon participants:

No matter the type (corporate or public one) a hackathon is always a great opportunity to showcase your talent and skills: yes, hackathons are also about team spirit, collaboration and fun but the primary motivation of the typical participant is to win...

Everyone loves to talk about getting more users. Indeed, the mantra of “more users” has become something of a rallying cry in the blogging world. But relatively few people are talking about their existing users who they are potentially annoying and losing because they are focusing primarily on attracting new users.

Pleasing existing users is a lot more important than you might think because annoyed users don’t just leave, they complain – to their friends, family, and colleagues, who then have a bad impression of your website. Perhaps you should start devoting as much time and energy to keeping your existing users happy as you do to finding new ones.

If your users aren’t complaining already, here are some things that might tick them off in t...