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Whether you’ve raised a few million or you’ve bootstrapped your way into business, your responsibility as a founder is to leverage your company’s resources for maximum gains.

A mediocre founder spends money to maintain the status quo. A smart founder knows that every dollar coming out of their pocket needs to be justified by a healthy ROI.

While the reality is a little more complex than “you gotta spend money to make money,” these five investments have proven themselves to have high returns in the short and long-term for growing businesses.

1. Cover Your A$$ and Protect What’s Important

If headline-grabbing IPO blunders and startup lawsuits have taught us anything, it’s that quality legal advice is an invaluable asset to any startup. When y...

Fundraising is the lifeblood of any non-profit. Unfortunately, it also takes a significant amount of time and volunteer effort to make outbound calls and knock on doors. Since most of your volunteers aren’t professionally-trained fundraising experts, it can be difficult to solicit donations and support.

Traditional channels for fundraising are also less effective than they once were. You’ll need to pivot and try new avenues to gain donor support in a digital age.

How to Leverage Content Marketing to Attract Donors and Supporters

Today, much of the marketing and advertising done by major brands and successful nonprofits is based on content. Content marketing takes a variety of forms, and for the nonprofit it offers a great way to share the ...

Investors help fuel the economy, providing entrepreneurs and thriving businesses with the capital they need to innovate and grow. This leads to economic development, job creation, and break-throughs that change the way we look at the world. The path to becoming a millionaire or billionaire investor does more than put lots of zeroes at the end of your bank statements. It tends to leave you with some hard won wisdom. Here, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 quotes from self-made millionaire and billionaire investors to help guide you on your own path.

“There must be high risk – in fact, very high risk. It’s the key to success. If there is no risk, you have already missed the boat. Your competitors will already be there.”

— Tom Perkins
(n...

Someone that becomes a Startupper is usually someone that has identified a specific problem or need and is super focused on creating the best solution. It is that hyper focus that allows small teams in garages to compete with Fortune 500 companies.

But as a startup CEO or core team member, you have hundreds if not thousands of tasks to complete and staying focused can become an issue. That’s why one of the key competencies an entrepreneur should have is discipline and an ability to focus on each problem at once all while not losing the larger picture.

Below is a video of a crazy day in the startup life, not an average one.

The day begins by waking up and checking all emails and responding. It is also productive to map out the beginning of...

We wanted to find out, were these people telling us they liked the product just to be nice? Or was there something else that was going on?

Jeff Stefanis and his co-Founder Amber Wason were pedal to the metal on development of their electric bike startup Riide in early 2015. They had perfected their design, they had partnered with a top manufacturing company to build the bikes, and they were offering test rides around Washington, DC as a way to introduce DC commuters to the idea and turn testers into buyers.

There was just one problem: nobody was buying.

“Our conversion rate from test rides to buying was about 3%,” Jeff remembers. “Which is not great.”

The low conversion rate confused Jeff and Amber at first, because it seemed to directly co...

A few weeks ago I read this post from Eric Stromberg. It inspired me to write what you are now reading.

Eric admits the matrix isn’t exhaustive. But it gives you a general sense of which consumer markets (shopping, media, and finance in this case, I did the math) are the most crowded ones in general.

The matrix also shows there are very few people innovating in areas related to security, seniors, or healthcare. And no one, I repeat, no one innovating in the parenting consumer market!

This reminded me of CB Insights’ “MGI Industry Digitization Index” (shown below) where you can see which industries are most and least “digitized.”

The red dots clearly show which industries are screaming for innovation, so why are they the least talked about?...

You never see many “consultant” costumes around Halloween time, but it turns out that hiring one can be the source of numerous company horror stories.

First of all, hiring a seasoned strategic consultant is a difficult area to navigate. For example, you might prepare by reading whitepapers to brush up on some knowledge before the hiring process. Then, if the candidate uses the same terminology that you read in the whitepapers, you might assume you two are a great match. But what if the candidate read the same whitepapers and that is the full extent of his knowledge?

It can be challenging to know whether the person in front of you is the real deal or just wearing a mask.

Expectation and reality

Hiring the right strategic consultant can be di...

It’s no secret that college in the United States has become incredibly expensive.

Student debt in the US is currently close to $1.5 trillion in total and people graduate with an average $37,172 in debt.

And while politicians debate about what to do about it and investors tell young startup founders to quit the college rat race altogether, one company is working on a solution from within the system to help people afford their degrees.

That company is OnlineDegree.com, a free platform that helps students reduce the cost of college by around 30 percent.

As “a modern alternative to junior college,” OnlineDegree.com lets students accumulate up to 44 transferrable credits via their online classes.

All of the courses can be completed at the st...

Aditi joined Crosslink in 2014, focusing on Mobile, Fintech and Internet Services investments. Prior to joining Crosslink, Aditi was an analyst in the technology, media & telecom investment banking group at Deutsche Bank in San Francisco providing M&A advisory and capital raising services for Internet & digital media and software clients. She has prior experience working at Allen & Overy LLP in Singapore and J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Hong Kong. Aditi holds a BA in Psychology from Stanford University, where she cultivated her interest in the human aspect of technology and the way it impacts lives.

What startup verticals interest you most right now?

Companies disrupting our current financial services infrastructure: changing the way we thin...

Question: I need to completely rebrand my startup. What is one step I should not overlook (in terms of marketing, customers, or any other area of the business)?

The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

Start From the Heart

As we all know, people make buying decisions based on how they feel. So don’t create an intellectualized version of your brand that isn’t emotionally accessible to your customers. Start your rebranding by planting a flag in the gr...