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Daniel Kempe, after a series of careers that ran the gamut — from builder, typist, telecoms engineer and freelance designer — decided to try his hand at content marketing. What he found was a landscape teeming with great content, complimented by some great automation tools. But, while tools like Buffer were great for automating sharing, Daniel found that actually finding content to share was a major time suck.

“It was just a pain in the ass, really, to find really great content to share,” Daniel tells Startups.co.

And so, like so many startup founders before him, Daniel looked this problem in the eye and said: I can solve this.

Daniel teamed up with PR professional Matthew Spurr and award-winning developer Mubashar Iqbal to create Quuu, the...

From startups like Allbirds and Harry’s to larger companies like Tesla, the Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) business model is becoming increasingly popular.

Today, the supply of consumer products greatly outstrips the demand that exists in the market. As a result, consumers are demanding a new experience that big box retailers and other “middlemen” simply can’t provide. Companies want a way to reach consumers directly and control every aspect of that experience.

The rise of D2C companies follows off the back of what General Catalyst’s Hemant Taneja refers to as “economies of unscale.” Modular services have greatly reduced the barriers to launching a D2C strategy. Back in the early 2000s, it was difficult for an e-commerce startup to build and man...

When making hiring decisions, many startups with limited resources choose sales talent over customer service, aiming to scale and grow their consumer base as quickly as possible. But considering that it costs companies five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing client, this tactic doesn’t really add up.

You only need to look at companies like Amazon and Apple to see that top notch customer service is a key driver of success. But you don’t need to be a multi-billion dollar multi-national or have a huge customer service team to provide the best support possible.

If your startup is growing, first you need to assess how much you need to invest in customer service per client. Then you need to look into the strengths and...

Very few entrepreneurs have been are able to successfully create a viral, cult-like following around something as random as workplace collaboration software. But, if anyone could — it would be Stewart Butterfield, a two-time failed gaming entrepreneur.

When headlines circulated that Amazon was looking to spend some $9 billion to purchase Slack, it was another sign that this hot app wasn’t some overblown unicorn flash in the pan.

While Slack has a high valuation, it stands out from the current startup landscape. In a world of 24/7, party all night brogrammers, Butterfield says his offices are empty at 6:30 every night, and people work ~45 hours a week. He’s designed the company for people who have already lived the insanity of a boom and bus...

Here’s a question that sometimes confounds supervisors and HR departments alike: Is there a difference between a high-potential employee and a high-performance employee?

The answer is yes, and confusing one with the other is apt to lead to some some poor promotion decisions down the road. It also could deny a business the full benefit of having truly high-potential workers on its staff.

A high performer is easy to spot, clearly excelling at whatever job he or she currently fills. But as the Peter Principle observed several decades ago, there is a tendency in business to serially promote competent people until they reach their level of incompetence. Thus, an asset can become a liability.

High-potential employees are not simply good at what ...

What is an S Corp?

An S Corporation is a type of business corporation.

An S Corp passes all their finances — corporate income, losses, deductions, and credits — through their shareholders. Because S Corp shareholders report the income and losses of the company on their own personal tax returns, the company isn’t subject to double taxation.

S Corp Structure

Shareholders

The shareholders of an S corp are the owners. They’re the ones who “hold” shares of stock.

Depending on how much stock they own, they have varying degrees of influence on the corporation — but they don’t make the decisions or run the day-to-day. Instead, they elect the company’s directors, who take care of all of that. They also vote to remove directors, when it seems like ...

Taking on full-time staff is a super scary proposition.

It's one thing to have to cut a check to a freelancer, but it's a whole other thing to know that someone's entire livelihood rests squarely on your shoulders.

Startup Founders have far more options and flexibility than we used to, which means the question of taking on full-time staff should be weighed much differently than it used.

Have Founders always been debating this question?

Not nearly as much as we have in the last decade.

The world of employment has undergone a massive change as the gig economy and freelance marketplace has exploded. Nowadays, more people are considering themselves "mercenaries" who can float between gigs which also means employers have to re-consider how th...

Becoming a Founder is often the first time our lives where the advice of others — even our parents — may not necessarily be useful advice.

That isn't to say getting feedback on our idea isn't important, it just means that we have to be hyper-aware about how we get feedback and who we're asking to evaluate our idea.

My (Insert Smart Person) says this is dumb. Is it?

The first mistake we make in letting others evaluate our idea is determining whether they are in fact qualified to be making this evaluation.

Let me put it this way: I'm Wil Schroter, Founder & CEO of Startups.com. I've started 9 startups and helped over 1 million Founders on our platform. If you come to me with an idea about how to take a screen-printing business to market, I'...

A great startup idea is nothing without a great co-founder. Finding the right partner is instrumental to your success: “teams with more than one founder outperformed solo founders by a whopping 163%” says the First Round Capital Ten Year Project report.

However, you can’t just take the first person who likes your idea and call her your partner. Being co-founders is like being married.

How to find the right co-founder

My co-founder Diana and I realized we’d make perfect co-founders after going on an adventure of a lifetime in South East Asia. A few years ago I became obsessed with doing the Pinnacles hike on Borneo, Malaysia. Diana, who at the time was my climbing buddy, agreed to come.

It took three planes, a bus, a kayak and a three-hour ...

If you’re bootstrapping your SaaS, you should drop your free tier.

By doing so, I was able to double the revenue growth rate of my Slack app Smooz, while reducing the amount of work required to maintain my app and support my customers.

“Drop your free tier” should be for bootstrapped SaaS apps what “Charge more” is to consultants: a reflex, a sanity check, a default choice.

There may be exceptions, but only for well thought-out reasons. Instead, focus on attracting paying customers. This article is based on hard-learned lessons, from the mistakes I made while launching and growing Smooz. Recently, several entrepreneurs asked my opinion about their pricing structure, and were about to fall into the exact same traps that I fell into.

Why we f...