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If Product A & B are identical, what could cause Product A to sell 5x more than Product B?

I love button up short sleeve shirts, I usually buy them at $15-$30. I came across one I loved, but it costs a whopping $85! How can one mimic their bold pricing positioning to become a premium brand vs. a mid-range brand?

Randy Tucker, Startup Founder, answered:

Purchase decisions are made based on presentation and then need. The same products presented in different methods will sell drastically different. Think about this, shirt A & B are identical, Shirt A is presented in a comfortable nice store with a well dressed sales person and Shirt B is neatly folded and laid out in a street vendors trunk. At the same price, shirt A will sell better. The on...

There’s one major question that nearly everyone faces when starting a small business or startup: Where are we going to get the money? One option is a small business loan.

In general, a small business loan is any loan that exists to help a small business or startup with little to no business history. While there are a range of financing options for small businesses and startups, let’s take a look specifically at SBA small business loans.

What is a
SBA small business Startup loan?

A SBA small business loan is a loan that is backed by the Small Business Administration (SBA). Founded in 1953, the SBA is a federal government program that provides support to small business owners in the form of mentorship, workshops, counseling, and small busine...

Passion

Passion may be a startup buzzword, but it is the trait shared by most successful founders and entrepreneurs. It’s what keeps you going, fuels your team, and leads to personal satisfaction. “If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, you will be successful,” says Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder and chairman.

But, what kind of passion is at the root of your company? I’ve noticed most founders fall into one of two camps: being passionate about the problem you want to fix, or passionate about the solution to that problem. Both are about solving problems—the real nuance is in how you get there.

What Motivates Me

Finding the right solution to a problem is what motivates me. It’s what a friend of mine endearingly calls a “hate f...

Trying to figure out a way to make those big startup business goals reachable? Not a fan of visual mapping or assigning each of your goals to a hierarchy?

Well, you’re in luck. Setting S.M.A.R.T goals is a tried and true method that has worked for a lot of people.

The idea of S.M.A.R.T. goals traces back to 1981 — so the meaning has changed a little big over the years. Originally, the acronym stood for

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time bound

Over the years, different meanings have been added to those letters, but we’re going to stick with the old school, for now.

Specific

Let’s start with “Specific.” When you’re figuring out if your goal is specific enough, ask yourself the five “W” questions: Who, why, what, where and which. Fo...

One day we wake up and realize our startup is working great for everyone but us — the Founders.

What the hell happened? We started out with big dreams of building our dream job, creating true financial independence, and just being able to do whatever we wanted on our own terms. That sounded great, right?

Yet here were are, spending our days at everyone else's behest. Our days and schedules are driven by the needs of staff, customers, and investors, all of whom mean well, but have essentially put our own goals and needs well into the back seat, and in some cases, forgotten about altogether.

When was the last time we got paid first (or at all)? Or took a vacation without being pulled away 100x by everyone else's needs? Or spent our day the wa...

A “go to market strategy” outlines how your startup plans to deliver your product to your customer. While similar to a business plan, a go to market strategy is narrower in scope. A business plan covers everything about the business, while go to market strategy zeros in on exactly how your startup will deliver a product or service to your customer.

How to create a “go to market strategy”

Define Your Product

This one might seem painfully obvious, but you have to know what you’re selling before you can sell it. With that in mind, take a little time to clearly define your product before you dive into the rest of your go to market strategy. You need to be able to say exactly what the product is as well as what it does.

Granted, much of the info...

Continuing in Phase Three of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

• Part 1 - Anatomy of a Pitch

• Part 2 - Market Size

• Part 3 - Revenue Model

• Part 4 - Operating Model

• Part 5 - Customer Definition

• Part 6 - Customer Acquisition

• Part 7 - Funding ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 8 - Key Pitch Assets

• Part 9 - Traction

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Welcome to part 7 of “The Pitch” — where we look at the funding ask section of our pitch deck or plan and how to get potential investors excited about our business idea.

Let’s dive in!

The real purpose of our pitch deck.

Most business plans and pitch decks are a long preamble to one question - will you fund me?

Ah, the age-old question. 🙋 It'...

Over the past six years, Applico has built over 300 apps, and I’ve learned a lot about how to find the perfect app developer at the right price. The primary driver of price is the cost of labor. For example, hiring offshore developers will be exponentially cheaper than hiring domestic developers, and an established firm will cost you more than a freelance hire.

Because there are so many different variables, the price for a mobile app could range anywhere from $5,000 to $500,000. The average price range will typically be somewhere between $100,000 and $300,000, and the entire development process takes about 12-20 weeks. It’s obviously a hefty investment, both in time and money. So in order to optimize your financial resources, here are the f...

If you'd like to see some samples - we've got 4 awesome business plans for you here.

Would you rather make $200K with a shitty quality of life or $100K with an awesome quality of life?

In the startup world we all seem to understand that $200K is better than $100K, but we do a really lousy job of qualifying that difference based on what actually matters — our quality of life.

When we step back for a second, we may come to find out that "compensation" in strictly monetary terms, is a broken metric. We're all really trying to translate those dollar signs into how it will impact our quality of life.

So why don't we just start with what improves our quality of life and then figure out where money comes in?

What we really want is time.

Years ago at Startups.com, we instituted a work from home policy. At the time we were all sti...