Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. Scientists and Engineers as Founders. It might be its most important. So what? MORE >>

When I graduated with an Electrical Engineering degree, I was ill-prepared for the professional world.  All in all, I was pretty much useless as an engineer coming out of engineering school. college university education learning costs loans debt value employment wages skillsWere the classes not valuable then?  MORE >>

I come from a high-tech software background, and only a few years ago, it would cost at least a million dollars ($1M) for a team of professionals to produce any commercial software product. Now, with open source software components, and low-cost development tools, the same job can be done by one good hacker for a few thousand dollars. MORE >>

Search engine optimization (SEO) can provide low cost opportunities for a startup to market its products and/or services. In the video, I recommend a book about SEO – here’s a link if you’re interested – Search Engine Optimization for Dummis (by Bruce Clay and Susan Esparza). MORE >>

This combination will almost certainly get your plan tossed by potential investors, who understand all too well the need and cost for marketing in today’s environment. Viral marketing costs real money these days, which usually means adding at least an extra zero to budget estimates. plan entrepreneur marketing costs startup business MORE >>