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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.

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• Incorporation
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• Free post-incorporation templates

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

We’ve all been there: You’re searching the web for some new shoes but then get distracted by a TV show or an incoming text message. Upon opening up your laptop again, you notice that there’s magically an ad for the running shoes you were looking at before.

Coincidence? Not in the slightest.

Smart marketers understand that there is no magic wand needed for this trick. Instead, they strategically utilize retargeting to reengage missed consumer opportunities.

This powerful strategy — when implemented properly — can inspire casual browsers to convert into customers. And many companies are willing to pay more for retargeted ads because they appear for consumers whose intent to purchase is typically higher, such as shoppers who have abandoned an ...

For many entrepreneurs, focusing on one critical skill will lead to success in the early stages of their business. Finding that skill and focusing on it could mean the difference between success and failure. In this post, we hear from eight different entrepreneurs and learn about their one “critical skill.” I asked them the following questions:

• What was the one skill or activity you focused on that made your startup(s) successful?
• How did you know this was where you needed to focus?
• Did you need to sacrifice in other areas of your business to focus on your one skill?

What surprised me is that for most of them, focusing on this skill did not make them feel like they were sacrificing in other areas of their business. If you are focusing on ...

Like a lot of ambitious young women, Lisa Wang, co-Founder of the female entrepreneur networking group and community SheWorx, didn’t think that her gender was holding her back — until it did. Lisa’s first career was as a US National Champion Hall of Fame gymnast, where she was surrounded by talented, competitive women. This was followed by a short-lived career as an equity research analyst right after college, but chafed in that highly-structured environment. So, like so many talented millennials before her, she turned to tech.

“I realized that the work I was doing in finance was simply not aligned with my values,” Lisa tells Startups.co. “Having creative ownership, autonomy, and making a clear impact that aligned with my personal mission w...

Ask people what makes entrepreneurs successful and you’ll hear a familiar list of adjectives; agile, tenacious, resilient, opportunistic, etc.

What you don’t hear is that often they didn’t know any better.

It Can’t Be Done

I was just rereading Jessica Livingston’s book Founders at Work, and a common thread through the stories reminded me that there is a type of technology innovation that occurs in startups when a founder/team simply doesn’t know what they’re attempting is impossible.

Steve Wozniak at Apple building the Apple II floppy disk controller without ever seeing one. The original Fai...

Here’s a basic truth about founding a startup: You don’t know everything you need to know. In fact, you probably only know a fraction of what you need to know to be successful. But don’t worry — you don’t have to go it alone. This is where a startup mentor comes in.

“For a really early stage company, mentors are a great source of industry advice and expertise, particularly if you don’t have direct expertise in that particular area,” Sapna Shah, Principal at Red Giraffe Advisors and startup mentor for XRC Labs, The Monarq Incubator, and TrendSeeder, tells Startups.co. “As well as executive coaching advice — perhaps you’ve never been a CEO before, and you’ve never had to manage people in this way.

Knowledge is one of the greatest things a sta...

How much time do we spend preparing our spouses for our startup journey?

Do we assume they somehow magically understand the path we've chosen to follow? Do we know for sure that our sacrifices align with their goals? When is the last time we sat down and made ourselves 100% sure that we're still on the same page?

In a business where we spend so much time recruiting talent, pitching investors and selling customers, we often overlook the most important person we should be convincing to join our cause — our spouses.

Often the single most important person in our life hasn't been afforded the same time and attention as everyone else to understand exactly why we're going down this crazy path. Or perhaps they do, but they haven't been reminded in...

Active investors sift through dozens of deals a week, and some hundreds a month. In order to find the gold, they need to quickly weed out the junk. The junk usually involves startups with any one of three red flags that deems the deal a “pass.”

Unfortunately startup founders are rarely aware of these flags, or choose to ignore them. Regardless of whether you believe these flags apply to your startup or not, you can be sure that investors will be far more critical of your progress and your deal traction.

No Traction

Traction is your ability to demonstrate you can move the ball forward, with or without funding. Traction comes from signing up early customers, generating some revenue, or demonstrating high user growth.

Startups often complain t...

Venture capital funding is both the most commonly referenced and yet commonly misunderstood form of investor capital available.

Unlike banks or more traditional investment sources, venture capital funding is all about big risks and big rewards.

Simply put, venture capital funding involves a venture capital firm investing a large sum of money (typically starting at $2 million or more) in exchange for an equity stake in your company.

Venture Capital Funding Risks and Rewards

Unlike banks or more traditional investment sources, venture capital funding is all about big risks and big rewards.

Venture capital firms specifically look for companies that offer an exceptionally large growth opportunity, which you can think of as the type of company t...

It’s taken on the allure of the holy grail. Systems would crash trying to count the words devoted to the subject. I’ll bet you don’t need to be told that I’m writing about: productivity.

We’re all in search of greater productivity (even if we define doing less as more, make sense?) One day, the times we’re living in may well be known as the GSD era.

Notes, doodles, end-of-day/beginning-of-day routines, virtual assistants… Buckle up as Startups Live surveys Founders’ different approaches to achieving superhuman productivity.

Wil Schroter wasted no time diving into a conversation that several people proved eager to discuss. “I’d like to talk about time management, but I’d also love to talk about how you all are managing productivity.”

“I lik...