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It’s rare for any team to have an open Q&A with their board — even more so when they’re such well-known investors as Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and Matt Murphy of Menlo Ventures. The Usermind team was fortunate to be able to sit down with Ben and Matt for an informal discussion on the current fundraising climate, conquering the competition, and creating a new software category.

Why did you invest in Usermind? What has you most excited about our market space in particular?

Ben: One of the things that became pretty clear to me back in 2009 when we started the firm was that if there was going to be SaaS — if software was going to become a service — then there was a whole set of infrastructure work that needed to be done, and it was g...

Private equity is a type of investment typically reserved for companies that have already grown to a larger size and are looking for a particular growth or exit strategy that isn’t available through traditional financing.

When private equity makes sense

Most startup or small businesses have little use for private equity. Technically, venture capital is considered private equity, but for the purposes of this explanation let’s leave venture capital out of it.

If you’re a startup with just an idea, you’re likely way too early for private equity. Typically private equity firms are looking for later stage companies that require much larger sums of money, usually at least $5 million, in businesses that already have some sort of assets to leverage...

Public relations, growth channels, virality – they all have a role in the elusive world of startup PR & marketing. And oh how elusive it is…

How should you identify the channel that will be successful for your startup? How should you calculate the ROI of your startup PR efforts?

Every startup is in search of media traffic that will convert to users that will ultimately convert to long-term customers. Pulling the right levers from a PR & marketing perspective is an age old quandary and what works for one startup could — or could not — work for the next one.

We’ve incorporated a number of marketing channels and tactics over the past two years. From the beginning, we’ve focused on the data to help us measure what works and what doesn’t. No sou...

The question of whether entrepreneurship can be "taught" has been volleyed back and forth between academics and Founders forever.

The academics believe that entrepreneurship is a process that can be learned and executed, while the hardcore Founders feel like you either have "the right stuff" and figure shit out or you don't.

This is one of those cases where both are right, but both are asking the wrong question.

What aspects of Entrepreneurship can be taught?

A ton, from how to validate an idea to managing your finances or setting up marketing campaign can absolutely be taught — and if we're being honest, are sorely lacking amongst most startup Founders today.

If you don't think those fundamental skills are helpful to building a startup, t...

Raising capital isn’t easy.

Don’t be fooled by the blog hype and sensational headlines – it’s still a game where less than 1% of new businesses will get funded by storied VCs and angels.

So for the rest of us, the non-one percenters, we need a more reliable playbook to invest our precious cycles in.

Busting the Startup Bubble

Let me get this party started with a big shot of sobriety.

Over 500,000 companies will be started this month in the U.S. alone. Venture capitalists will write less than 100 checks to them in the next 30 days. Angel investors will add just over 4,000. We’re still around 495,000 checks short of everyone getting a piece.

I share this math for two reasons.

1. To point out that if you’re going to bank your future solely on...

It’s so easy to get hung up on the details. Don’t get me wrong, they are all important. Your logo, for example, is a key piece of your branding. But should you spend months agonizing over the fonts and icons used in your logo? Should you wait until you can afford a professional designer to create a logo before you go forward with your startup?

If your answer to those questions is “Hell, no!”, then you’ll want to have a look at MakeLogoOnlineFree.com (MLOF). MLOF is a simple tool that enables anyone to create a free logo in minutes – and not some napkin doodle logo, but a professional logo that will make your business proud.

Making a logo truly couldn’t be any easier than using MLOF’s free logo generator. You enter the name of your brand, e...

Tell me if this pitch sounds familiar:

“If we could capture just 1% of the market for this product, we could do over $500 million in sales! And that’s with just 1% of it!”

It’s the basis for the all-too-popular and far-too-lame “1% of the market” approach. The suggestion, used by overzealous (and inexperienced) entrepreneurs is that 1% of a market is so little, that it couldn’t possibly be hard to capture.

And let’s face it, 1% is awfully small!

1% of a pizza is about two bites. 1% of your mortgage payment probably means you can pay it with the cash in your wallet. 1% of a typical business book is only two pages. Boy, that sounds ridiculously easy.

Yet 1% of the market for a particular product ain’t a slice of pizza or few pages of a book. ...

A company will only survive as long as it continues to have a strong customer base. Even the best products will fail without a steady stream of users.

Luckily, once a company has attracted its first customers, maintaining demand and continuing customer development momentum becomes considerably easier.

However, how do you go about finding customers as an early-stage startup?

In this extensive blog post, we’ve gathered some of the best and most valuable insights from Gagan Biyani, a Graduate of the Silicon Valley Founder Institute, as well as the co-founder of Udemy and Sprig.

How Do You Perform Initial Customer Research and Development?

When launching Sprig, Gagan planned the company’s development extensively, almost as if writing a marketin...

Paying your dues sucks. When I started my career, I got told by everyone older than me that whenever they handed me shit work I should be thankful because I was “paying my dues”.

I assumed it was some tired colloquialism for getting young people to do work at sub-market rates without questioning their own value.

Virtually every business is built on software, whether it’s a website, a mobile app or desktop programs. Companies that are good at outsourcing can launch products and services much faster and cheaper than competitors, and maintain a long competitive edge. Unfortunately, most companies are awful at it. A horrifying two thirds of outsourced projects are late, over budget, incomplete or malfunctioning, and often all four at once. This unnecessarily costs businesses billions each year.

I know a little bit about outsourcing because I was the founder and former CEO of RentACoder.com (later renamed vWorker.com), an outsourcing marketplace with 400,000 users, and $131 million in projects. I saw numerous companies making the same mistakes over and ...