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Startup entrepreneurs face the daunting task of getting everything in order and taking care of even the minor thing precisely. Ranging from finances, back-end, front-end development to marketing and product launches, a startup entrepreneur has to take care of everything possible. Most of the time and personnel is wasted on administrative tasks which can be completely automated through the use of some powerful tools. Getting your idea developed into a full-fledged business is the primary task of an entrepreneur and a startup is no way endowed with hordes of cash to hire more personnel, unless backed in millions by a VC or angel investor.

Every startup has to operate in the financial constraints imposed on it and has to limit the personnel wo...

Clicking the “Publish” button is one of the highlights of my day.

Working hard on a post and then putting it out there to help others is extremely rewarding. It’s one of the main reasons why I continue to write so much.

But it’s not the only reason….

Content marketing remains one of the most effective strategies to grow a blog – any blog.

Eighty-six percent of marketers in North America use content marketing, and 71% of marketers (overall) are planning to increase spending on content marketing.

Creating great content is an extremely important part of any successful content marketing strategy. But it’s just one part.

If all you do is hit “Publish” and then move on to the next article, your blog won’t grow as quickly as it should.

And if you...

What do Karl Marx and Monday mornings have in common? Considering how most people feel on Monday mornings, Marx and Mondays are more connected than you’d think.

Marx predicted that as skills became more specialized, the personal contributions of workers would become less distinct, leading them to lose sight of the results of their efforts. Without a sense of accomplishment at the end of a task, workers would eventually become apathetic to their roles.

This is a sentiment that’s grown increasingly strong in today’s digital world.

In contrast to the industrial age, the digital age provides a far less structured work environment that often lacks fixed schedules, the need for offices, and tangible products. On top of that, it deals in the curre...

Startups.co, the world’s largest startup launch platform, announced Tuesday, August 11th that they have signed an agreement to purchase Zirtual, the leading platform for connecting fast-growing startup companies with virtual assistants.

This agreement comes on the heels of an announcement by Zirtual on Monday, August 10th that the company would pause operations while it made a transition. The brief outage was due to a capital infusion that the company was counting on for expansion. Startups.co has notified all Zirtual employees, clients and associates that the service will resume normal operations as of Monday, August 17th.

The Zirtual service has grown at a rapid pace, expanding to over 400 Zirtual Assistants (ZAs) in just a few years, ser...

In our work with startup founders, we’ve come to discover that convertible debt is a confusing subject for many. It’s a complicated and nuanced topic, but here are the three things you need to know up front:

Trust us, there is far more to convertible debt than knowing these three things, and we’ll cover them in subsequent posts, but let’s first arm you with the basics.

Delay Your Valuation

For many founders, the most meaningful characteristic of convertible debt is around valuation; specifically, the fact that you don’t need one.

If you are trying to raise $50,000 in seed stage capital, chances are you don’t have a lot of traction, and that can make valuation painful. Imagine that the investor values your idea in its current state at $...

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I’m not that smart, and yet I’m a pretty good online marketer. I am actually probably one of the better ones out there.

So, how’s that possible? Well, you don’t have to be smart to be the best marketer. Instead, you need to be creative, execute well, and continue to learn from others.

Here’s the process I used to become a great marketer, and here is how you can follow in my footsteps:

Don’t be afraid to bug people

When I first started out in the world of online marketing, I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know how to edit HTML; I thought MSN was a bigger search engine than Google; and I had no idea where to start.

But the one thing I did know is that there are marketers out there who are a...

All entrepreneurs launch with the hope that their businesses will live forever – or at least survive the next hundred years. They develop long-term business plans, chart growth paths, and seek advice from veteran business owners. Those words of wisdom likely don’t advise them to find a way to “cannibalize” their own companies.

But even if your company hits the hundred-year mark, you should always be looking for ways to revolutionize your initial idea before someone else does. No cautionary tale better illustrates this point than Kodak.

Most people would be surprised to discover that Kodak invented the digital camera, but it didn’t commercialize it for fear of jeopardizing its film business. By the time Kodak realized its digital camera prot...

Before you think about raising capital or growth strategy for your startup, ask yourself this question: “Exactly how much money do I need to feel rich?”

Raising capital implies trying to grow a business, and in many cases, creating a big financial outcome for you and your investors. But do you really need a big financial outcome? How big? Are you sure about that number?

Disclaimer

This article is going to talk about how to spend money. You may want to save it all, you may want to make it rain in the VIP balcony at the club. I don’t care how you spend it. I care that you know exactly how much money you need to achieve your goals, down to the last dollar.

Map Out Every Last Dollar

Before you answer with the typical “I want a $100 million exit...

Putting a value on your business can be a tricky enterprise, but it’s not as puzzling as some would have you believe.

The real hurdles come as you attempt to increase that value. What improvements should you make? Where should your priorities lie?

Steady, dependable growth relies on four interrelated factors: earnings, risk, growth prospects, and transferability.

Earnings

Buyers make purchases to see returns on their investments; existing earnings are the most concrete predictors of potential ROI.

If you’re not making money, your value will generally be lower. Potential money is good, but money in hand goes a long way in proving the viability of your business model.

Risk

The less risk in your business’s future, the higher its value.

A few y...

As Product Managers, building product roadmaps is a crucial part of our job. Yet most of us still use outdated tools and software for roadmapping—Excel, PowerPoint, wikis, etc.—to try and keep several teams on track toward the same goals. It’s painful. The good news is that there’s a better way.

We understand that building a product roadmap is not easy and that your business colleagues always want to know what’s coming next.

It’s time to lead your product with conviction. Take a radical new approach to roadmapping because your company needs it and you deserve to build the future and enjoy what you do.

Executives have a vision of the future and sales and marketing teams want to be heard too. And engineering is waiting for those detailed requ...