December, 2012

Gust

article thumbnail

How important is a video pitch to investors for an early stage start-up?

Gust

There is no one thing (aside from integrity) that is an absolute, and what you need to have when fundraising for a startup will depend to some extent on how you are managing your funding process. A good list of just about everything you could possibly want to have in your arsenal is listed in the answer to What materials or software should I use to pitch a VC?

article thumbnail

10 Perspective Checks on Your Startup Aspirations

Gust

Image via Facebook.com. Every entrepreneur needs to be honest about their strengths and weaknesses, and realistic about their reasons for choosing the startup route. For any entrepreneur, even the best business opportunities, if entered for the wrong reasons, will likely fail. Some of these reasons seem obvious, so forgive me for restating, but I still hear them too often.

Startup 181
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

10 Action Items to Keep Angel Investors Hovering

Gust

ABC Shark Tank Angels via Elite Daily. Every new startup I know dreams of being funded early by one of the 318,000 active Angel investors in the USA alone. But many entrepreneurs don’t realize that Angels are also extremely discerning in the projects that they will invest in, rejecting approximately 97% of the proposals submitted to them, according to the California Investment Network.

article thumbnail

4 Startup Tenets for Extreme Focus on Customers

Gust

Image via Facebook. New product startups rightfully begin with a heads-down focus on creating the ultimate product – whether it’s a new technology, a new look and ease of use, or a new low-cost delivery approach. Most then add customer service at the rollout, but very few really understand what it means to be truly customer centric, and even fewer really achieve it.

Customer 166
article thumbnail

Users Guide to Startup Advisors

Gust

What’s an advisor to a startup deal? Technically, advisor is one of those bucket terms that means anything and everything, depending on context. Those names and faces and backgrounds that turn up in pitches and business plans might be deep and important relationships, somebody with options or equity who is going to be helping for the long term; or meaningless fluff, somebody who agreed once to have his or her name appear, but really does nothing. .

Startup 165
article thumbnail

Building a Startup is Navigating an Obstacle Course

Gust

Image via Facebook. It would be no fun if starting a business was simply plotting a straight line between your idea and success, with no challenges along the way. Zigging and zagging amongst the obstacles is the fun part of being an entrepreneur, and it’s what sets you apart from the average worker who knows exactly what he or she has to do every day to get paid.

article thumbnail

Startup Map & Trends Analysis – November 2012

Gust

For November 2012 we are noticing an interesting trend of product ready companies declining, while concept stage companies are rising. This trend is mostly led by a decrease in product ready internet web service companies in the US, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom, and with an increase in concept stage companies in Spain, India, Brazil and the United States.