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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...

Running a non-profit can be a tremendous challenge. Those who are deep in the planning and execution of campaigns understand the magnitude of their efforts – and the consequences of poor execution.

Day in and day out, organizations are struggling to move the mission forward, encouraging their volunteers to raise donations and bring in more support. It’s an uphill battle, as evidenced by the steady decline in charitable giving since 2015, per the Blackbaud Index.

Growing an organization in our digital age, when contributions are down, is a challenge that requires a more tactical approach than just marketing. It requires a complete audit of operational processes, while also looking at ways to streamline donor outreach.

Because so much of what...

So, you’ve decided that you want to hire a company such as Chop Dawg to help build your future iPhone or Android application. That is exciting! With that said, now comes the vetting process that is so critical to the success of your app.

We’ve covered before extensively on our library about what you need to do to prepare for your first meeting with an agency. Some of the essentials are writing out your app requirements, conducting at least preliminary market research, determining your minimum and maximum budgets that you’re willing to invest, and the type of timeframe you’re willing to work around to bring your idea to life, etc.

We typically ask these types of questions to you, but what are the questions that you should prepare to ask the...

Facebook, Adobe, Autodesk and Planet Labs all have started creative residency programs in the last year, but they are nothing new.

Artist-in-residence programs started over a century ago and ranged from making studio space in offices to placing painters, sculptors, poets and musicians at universities.

Art has always been an important part of innovation. It actually helps Nobel Prize winners (and everyone else) be better at science. And when you combine entrepreneurs and artists you get some fantastic results.

And just like how every entrepreneur-in-residence program is different, artist residencies vary widely and often depend on the organization they are inserted in.

What is the benefit of an artist-in-residence program for you company?

A...

Often when the chips are down and we're not getting paid, racking up debt, and wondering whether our startup has a future at all, it's easy to forget how valuable that freedom is.

So, let's talk about it.

What kind of freedom are we talking about here?

We're talking about the freedom to do whatever the hell we want.

If we want the whole company to work from home in our pajamas — that's what we do. If we want to take the product in a 180-degree different direction, we do. If we want to hire, fire, or promote anyone for any reason, we do.

We created this freedom so that no one could ever tell us what to do. It's amazing, and easy to forget about until we don't have it.

That said, freedom is damn expensive.

How many ways are we paying for ...

Ok, so maybe they’re not. They’re not endangered, they’re not that cute, and they definitely don’t have the time to play mascot to anybody’s cause. The analogy is still tempting, however, because finding a CTO seem to be the current “issue” of the global startup trend: founders need them, accelerators like them, and aspiring startup cities are desperate for them to move in.

A Scarcity of CTOs

There are many specific reasons for the scarcity of CTOs in any of these new startup hubs, and most of them have something to do with regional history, legislature, infrastructure or economic context. However, regardless of particularities, all these reasons stem from a simple issue of supply and demand; there just aren’t that many developers out there...

##What is a general partnership? A general partnership is a business agreement where two or more people (partners) agree to share all of the profits, liabilities, and assets of a business.

General partnerships don’t have any liability protection, so both partners are legally and financially liable for the actions of the other. That means, for example, that if one partner is sued by an upset client, then the other partner’s personal assets — like their home, car, savings, etc. — can be forfeited as payment.

In order to become a general partnership, you need at least two people who agree to take on each other’s liabilities. While oral agreements do count, it’s always a good idea to get everything written down and signed in an articles of pa...