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When people talk about the transformative innovations shaping business in the 21st century, you may hear them talk about the influence of automation or the impact of increasing globalization. But one of the most revolutionary aspects of the digital revolution often goes unmentioned: social media.

Because so many of us tweet and post and share day in and day out on our personal accounts, it’s easy to think that social media is… well… easy.

But social media has completely transformed the way businesses connect with their audiences. And as any Founder who has struggled and failed to drum up an online audience for their brand can tell you, effective social media strategy is deceptively hard to get right. It takes a delicate balance of strategy ...

Things were looking up for Kelly Reid, founder of Quiet Speculation, in 2007. His post-college years had been “a total catastrophe,” but he’d finally found a job at a startup he liked and felt like he was getting his act together. He was making decent money — almost enough to live in New York City — and he was learning new tech skills. His employers gave him more responsibility and he began to really thrive. Yeah, all in all, things were starting to look up.

And then the crash of 2008 happened.

“One day I woke up with no job,” Kelly tells Startups.co. “The whole world caught on fire and my entire life was kindling.”

But there was one thing that Kelly Reid still had going for him.

Magic: The Gathering.

Making a game very, very real.

So ther...

Marc Nager might know more about the global startup ecosystem than anyone in the world.

While that statement seems hyperbolic, it’s not: Marc has spent the past six years expanding Startup Weekend — which brings startup entrepreneurs together to create a new company over the course of 54 hours — from 32 events to almost 3,000 worldwide.

Today, it’s one of the most recognized names in the industry, with close to 200,000 community members and over 23,000 teams formed in 150 countries.

“In my time with Startup Weekend, I was so fortunate. I got to meet heads of countries and work with executives from many Fortune 500 companies,” Marc tells Startups.co. “I got to work with leaders, entrepreneurial grassroots leaders from literally hundreds of c...

Getting an angel investor meeting is one of the high points of being a founder. After all, tracking down one of these illusive investors can be a serious hassle. But don’t worry — we’ve got you covered on how to find angel investors, how to get an angel investor meetings, and what to do once you’re in the room.

What is an angel investor?

Angel investors are typically high net worth individuals who invest very early into the formation of a new startup company, usually in exchange for convertible debt or equity. The role of angel investors serves as a critical bridge between the startup financing needs of a company and their larger capital needs later on.

Where do you find angel investors?

If you want to [find angel investors](https://www.sta...

Slack is a great work tool for communication. Teams love being able to easily send messages to one another in real time and keeping conversations organized by channels. For speed, convenience and simplicity, Slack rocks.

Is there a downside to being able to connect so efficiently?

Well, employees and managers do grow accustomed to living with one another in their back pockets. When it comes time to have a more serious conversation, it’s not always obvious that more than the typical quick question/brief exchange is being called for. Setting up different channels for different kinds of conversation is one way to make the distinction, but there’s no guarantee that’s how they’ll actually be used.

Is there a better way to signal when the stakes ...

At school we were taught that the key to success is a graduate degree and a steady job at an established company. Yet over the past decade we have seen many major companies collapse, and during the recession that began in 2008 many millions lost their jobs just in the United States. Many had graduate degrees. People began to realize that their lives and security depend solely on themselves, and that job security is often a hollow promise. This raised the question: if a job can be lost at any time because of external factors, why not work instead on something you actually care about?

Working in a corporate cubicle on something that does not really correlate with your values did not seem so appealing anymore. Employers have often misinterpret...

In January 2016, after 8 years in the British Military, I left to enter our crazy world of startups. Over the past 8 months I have pivoted three times from my original idea.

That’s a lot in a short space of time but it has helped me find product market fit. I can attribute some of this speed to my military background. There is a lot of advice out there from the military to business and vice versa but here are some direct lessons I believe the military can teach the Pre Seed Startup:

The Why

No soldier is going to follow you to into combat unless he/she knows why they are doing it. When I started my first company KitShare (an Air BnB for surfboards, skis, etc) because I had no employees I hadn’t given it much thought until an investor asked ...

Do you have a million-dollar business Idea in mind and don’t know HOW to proceed? Whether it is worth, investing time, money and effort?

This is the question that haunts many entrepreneurs and demotivates them from working on their business Idea. The best way to start when you have a business idea in your mind is to think of the problem it is trying to solve.

In this blog, you will figure out the WHAT of problem, WHO of problem, HOW of identifying and validating the problem. I will be explaining this with the help of interesting examples and correlations.

This blog gives an in-depth view of the first step mentioned in my previous article: Came up with a great Business Idea? What Next?—Which is about 6 steps to validate a Business Idea. Here...

We created Toggl Button 3 years ago to make Toggl more accessible and better integrated with other tools. We started small — advertising only to our own users and integrating with a few major project management tools. Up until recently, only one developer ever worked full time on Toggl Button.

Yes, you read that well. Out of the 135,000 total users, about 85,000 have found us in the last two years, while I was leading the efforts on growing Toggl Button — the ultimate time tracking add-on for all your favorite web tools.

As usual, I can’t promise you’ll get rich quick or succeed over nigh...

This is Part I of our interview with Rhone co-Founder and CEO Nate Checketts. Check in next week for Part II!

Hey, do we really want to do this? We don’t have to be starting a business. We have good jobs. We both have families and mortgages. We don’t have to do this.

When you’re starting a new company, the week your site launches is pretty much guaranteed to be the most stressful week of your life, even under the best circumstances.

The circumstances that Nate Checketts was dealing with in the week leading up to the launch of his company, Rhone? Let’s just say they were a little less than the best.

“A week before the launch, my co-founder’s kitchen caught on fire and nearly burned his house down. So he and his family – he had three kids a...