Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2023

We have all had to work with annoying team members in business. If you are not their manager, it’s tempting to just walk away, tune them out, or react sharply, but these reactions are not appropriate for managers, and are equally ineffective for peers and teammates. Remember that annoying doesn’t mean non-productive – these may be top performers, with critical business skills.

Management 220

Management Restful Leadership Demand 220

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 2, 2023

If you aren’t willing to take some risk as an entrepreneur, then don’t expect any gain. Yet everyone has limits, and every investor implicitly has similar limits on what makes a startup investable, or one to avoid at all costs. If you need investors, it’s important that you understand their filters, and even if you are funding your own efforts, you need to recognize the red flags.

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New York City Silicon Valley Bootstrapping Technical Review 246

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 20, 2023

Many experts will tell you that you can’t succeed as a part-time entrepreneur, as any good startup will require a 100 percent commitment of your time and energy. But not many of us have enough savings to live for a year or more without a salary, fund the startup, and still feed the family. Thus I often recommend that entrepreneurs keep their day job until the startup is producing revenue.

Intellectual Property 275

Intellectual Property Cofounder Salary Metrics 275

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 7, 2023

Young entrepreneurs often are so excited by new technology or their latest invention that they forget to translate it into a value proposition that their customers or potential investors can understand and relate to. They become frustrated with investors, senior executives, and even customers who don’t seem to “get it,” with the result that everyone loses.

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Elevator Pitch Social Network Agile Technology 272

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 26, 2023

As a business consultant and mentor to many young entrepreneurs, I often get questions about leadership challenges , and what you can do to solidify your leadership position and impact. It seems that today’s worker generation is more demanding, and less willing to accept guidance and direction from anyone with a leadership title. They want a role in every leadership decision.

Leadership 281

Leadership Agile Demand Developer 281

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 10, 2023

If you are one of the new age of entrepreneurs who hates the thought of doing a business plan as a first step in starting your new venture you will love this message. More and more professionals agree that a better strategy is to explore and fine tune your assumptions before declaring a specific plan with financial projections based only on your dream and passion.

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Business Plan Lean Matching Cost 357

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2023

Many business leaders I meet in my consulting practice are frustrated by the challenge of getting their teams working together, increasing engagement, and tackling market change requirements. We all realize that the pace of change is increasing, and new global markets makes it critical that every team member is focused on the market, rather than internal battles and risk aversion.

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Social Media Global Campaign Leadership 294

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 22, 2023

If you feel trapped in an unsatisfying and limiting role as a business professional, I urge you to assess your own interest and level of ownership thinking as a means of enhancing your career or growing your own business. I have personally worked as an employee of large businesses, as well as a partner in new ventures, and found the latter to have more potential for satisfaction.

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Metrics Startup Agile Salary 279

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 3, 2023

Most technical entrepreneurs I know demand the discipline of a product specification or plan, and then assume that their great product will drive a great business. Serious investors, on the other hand, look for a professional business plan or summary first, and hardly ever look at the product plan. Is it any wonder why so few entrepreneurs ever find the professional investors they seek?

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Business Plan Product Architecture Business Model 280

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2023

Every entrepreneur I know has their favorite excuse for a previous failure – an investor backed out, the economy took a downturn, or a supplier delivered bad quality. These things outside your control do happen, but based on my years of experience as a startup advisor and angel investor, I still see too many strategies leading to failure that are inside the entrepreneur decision realm.

Intellectual Property 312

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Investor Viral 312

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 21, 2023

The average length of a funding pitch to angel investors is ten minutes. Even if you have booked an hour with a VC, you should plan to talk only for the first fifteen minutes. The biggest complaint I hear from fellow investors is that startup founders often talk way too long, and neglect to cover the most relevant points. Or they get sidetracked by a technical glitch due to poor preparation.

Technical Review 369

Technical Review Elevator Pitch Angel Investor Matching 369

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 5, 2022

Every new entrepreneur who has not spent years in corporate life has the advantage of an unbiased look at business opportunities, but at the same time has the disadvantage of missing critical business experiences that can cost them dearly in their first startup venture. In my experience, building a successful business is more difficult than building an innovative solution.

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Silicon Valley Viral Finance Leadership 292

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 4, 2022

As a startup advisor and investor, I’ve met many aspiring entrepreneurs, and I often get asked the question, “I have a great idea for a startup – do you agree that it real potential?” They don’t know that most experts agree the person is more important than the idea, yet I’ve never been asked, “I have a great idea for a startup – do you agree that I have real potential as an entrepreneur?

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Entrepreneur Salary Partner Global 304

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 3, 2022

It’s been happening for some time, but business changes, accelerated by the recent pandemic, have highlighted the need for all of us to review our positions, image, and satisfaction at work. As a business consultant, I see and hear all around me people questioning their current and future career interests and growth, and wondering what they can do to make a decision and prepare.

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Social Media Media Internet Community 314

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 2, 2022

You can’t succeed in business without an operational model that delivers value to customers at a reasonable price, with an underlying cost that allows you to make a profit. There are no “overrides” – for example, businesses don’t thrive just because they offer the latest technology, or because everyone wants to be “green,” or because their goal is to reduce world hunger.

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Business Model Distribution Viral Green 256

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 6, 2022

One of the realities of being an entrepreneur is that you have to keep learning and changing to survive. Everyone on the startup team knows there is no buffer, and no personal isolation from impact based on your job description that can save you. Thus everyone has to make sure they are focusing on what is important, and making leadership decisions to save the business.

Leadership 368

Leadership Employee Entrepreneur Internet 368

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 5, 2022

As a business consultant with experience in large companies as well as startups, I often hear about dysfunctional management hierarchies, as well as the value provided by exceptional ones. We have all heard about the successes of flattened management organizations in the last decade at Facebook, Valve, Zappos, and others. Individual team members all dream of being unleashed.

Management 333

Management Dilution Forecast Leadership 333

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2022

People who have been followers too long as an employee don’t realize how hard it is to be a leader. Every new entrepreneur has to initiate the right actions to be perceived as a leader in their chosen business domain by their team and by their customers, or the road to success and satisfaction will be lost along the way. Driving these actions are some basic principles that entrepreneurial leaders, such as Airbnb CEO Brain Chesky and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, seem to have learned early.

Leadership 317

Leadership Founder Startup Partner 317

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

These days, it is almost impossible to find a small business where everything is done by full-time employees, in the office or at home. We are in the age of outsourcing, by any of many popular names, including subcontracting, freelancing, and virtual assistants. These approaches allow your startup to grow more rapidly, save costs, but costly mistakes can lead to business failure.

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Cost Philippines Bandwidth Cofounder 346

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 24, 2022

As a business consultant and angel investor, I often ask for your own assessment of marketing ROI , or customer acquisition cost (CAC). While I realize that a high level of certainty in these numbers is an elusive goal, the value of doing the work, and benchmarking your business against competitors is well worth the effort. Are you making the proper investment, and is it paying off?

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Acquisition Cost Customer Sales Cycle 250

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2022

Too many customers have long felt distanced from many successful brands, seeing them as closed and mysterious environments, focused only on profits and killing competitors. They may not have noticed the wave of “open businesses,” spawned by the Internet and social media. These are responding to the demands of this new world for collaboration, trust, and transparency.

Social Media 315

Social Media Demand Equity Partner 315

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2022

Perhaps sparked by the recent pandemic, I’m seeing a new era of the entrepreneur, with startups springing up all around. Based on my own mentoring and investing experience, the best entrepreneurs are pragmatic problem solvers. They have an uncanny ability to find elegant, easy, and fast solutions to pain points in the marketplace, as well as their own challenges.

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Startup Technical Review Partner Restful 338

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 9, 2022

A common request I get while mentoring entrepreneurs is for a copy of the startup checklist they need to follow, in order to build a successful new business. I wish it was that easy. The challenge is that every new business needs to be innovative and different, in order to rise above the crowd, bring real change to the world, and give you the satisfaction you seek.

Technology 334

Technology Social Media Cloud Retention 334

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2022

Today more than ever, the evidence is clear that business people need to find and communicate a purpose that goes beyond making a profit, in order to ensure customer engagement, as well as your own, and drive results in the marketplace. In my work with entrepreneurs, I have concluded that finding and communicating that purpose is often more important than the solution offered.

Technical Review 357

Technical Review Green Social Media Lean 357

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 23, 2022

New entrepreneurs tend to focus only on getting the product right, and assume that the right culture and ethics will come later simply by hiring good people. In fact, they need an early focus on developing their moral compass, as well as setting the right ethical tone. Building an ethical business is more than just compliance and meeting legal requirements, and it has big paybacks.

Software Review 291

Software Review Offshore Entrepreneur Leadership 291

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 2, 2022

Many entrepreneurs think that adapting to the new technologies, like smart phones and Internet commerce, are the key to attracting new customers. In fact, businesses need to adapt even more completely to the changes in the buying and social behavior of consumers. High-technology product startups, without customers, don’t make a business. Today’s customer buying dynamics are all about “user experience,” according to Brian Solis, in his classic book “ What’s the Future of Business?

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Customer Technical Review Social Media Social Network 306

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2022

The entrepreneur’s challenge is to effectively communicate their value proposition, not only to customers, but also to vendors, partners, investors, and their own team. Especially for technical founders, this is normally all about presenting impressive facts. But in reality facts only go so far. Stories often work better, because humans don’t always make rational decisions.

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Chad Audience Founder Security 307

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 7, 2022

Startup work environments are always chaos, but they can still be great environments to work in, or they can be terrible. Whether yours is terrible or great, that same tone flows out to your customers, and regulates your productivity inside. You as the founder are the starting point and definer, so you need to get it right. What does it take to create a positive workplace culture?

Startup 290

Startup Founder Customer Product 290

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 21, 2022

In my consulting work, when I ask team members in startups and small businesses how they know whether they are doing a good job, the typical response I get is “Nobody has yelled at me today,” or “No news is good news.” This means you are missing the positive impact of catching people doing things right and reinforcing that performance with timely praise and support.

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Startup Leadership Employee Small Business 333

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 28, 2022

Is it possible to be successful in business and not fulfilled? The answer is a resounding yes today, and I’m convinced that it will be even more true tomorrow, as young idealistic entrepreneurs try to adapt to the long-standing business culture if success is only measured in the money you make for yourself and your business. That isn’t very fulfilling to the growing number of entrepreneurs whose vision and satisfaction comes from making the world a better place, and enjoying a leisurely lifestyl

Entrepreneur 382

Entrepreneur Finance Partner Cost 382

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2022

Fundraising is brutal. Actually, according to Paul Graham of Y-Combinator fame, “Raising money is the second hardest part of starting a startup. The hardest part is making something people want.” More startups may fail for that reason, but a close second is the difficulty of raising money. Quite a while back, I outlined “ The 10 Best Sources of Cash to Start Your Business ” for startups, listing angel investors as alternative six.

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Angel Investor Advisory Board Database Institutional Investors 384

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 1, 2022

I tell entrepreneurs that Google was an “exception” to all the investment and startup rules, but I’ve always wondered what it takes to be an exception. Since every business is built by unique individuals, I’m totally convinced that exceptional people are the key to an exceptional company. To check out the Google founders, and because I still see so many business plans that are modeled after Google (more search engines, and more billion dollar growth models), I had to take a look at the classic b

Startup 328

Startup .Net Advertising Search 328

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Traditional business intelligence (and data mining) software does a very good job of showing you where you’ve been. By contrast, predictive analytics uses data patterns to make forward-looking predictions that guide you to where you should go next. This is a whole new world for small businesses seeking enterprise application opportunities, as well social media trend challenges.

Analytics 248

Analytics Retention Social Media Startup 248

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 6, 2021

Most of you business leaders focus first on providing guidance to your team, but neglect self-leadership as an equally important dimension. In my experience, many entrepreneurs rely too much on the perspective of a trusted advisor, or try to emulate a competitor who is getting attention. Personal leadership is setting your own direction and making real decisions first.

Leadership 330

Leadership Reputation Entrepreneur Developer 330

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Most aspiring entrepreneurs believe that a great idea alone will assure business success. Experts argue that it’s more important to have a great plan, and personal business acumen. Hardly anyone mentions selling principles. Yet in this age when customers have a thousand alternatives, and are overwhelmed by a multitude of messages, sales efforts can make or break a business.

Sales 348

Sales Startup Bootstrapping Technical Review 348

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 8, 2021

Knowing all too well how hard it is to start a single new business, I’ve always wondered how several well-known entrepreneurs, including Richard Branson and Elon Musk , have managed to successfully lead dozens of startups to success, and thrive on the process. These special people are called serial entrepreneurs, because they have figured out how to do it over and over again.

Entrepreneur 361

Entrepreneur Early Stage Restful Startup 361

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 7, 2021

Most entrepreneurs avoid setting up a board of directors for their new business unless or until they sign up an investor who demands a seat on the board. That implies that a board of directors has no value to the founder, and is just another burden that to be assumed for the privilege of attracting outside investors or going public. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth.

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Advisory Board IPO Government Acquisition 362