8 Keys to Convincing a Bank to Fund Your New Venture

A common question I get is “How do I get a bank loan to fund my startup?” The default answer is that it probably won’t happen, because most banks just don’t make bank loans to startups. The failure rate is just too high, and startups typically don’t have the assets or revenue stream to back…

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8 Steps to Assembling the Most Talented Startup Team

With the pace of change ever escalating, entrepreneurs today can’t afford to acquire talent through traditional hiring alone, and need to revise the perception that “talent” is only full-time employees. At the same time, more people in the workplace don’t want to be “employees.” According to an Intuit study, that number is quickly rising and will…

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Business Location Strategies for Startups and New SMEs

In How to Choose a Location for Your Small Business, I discussed picking a location based on customer and other factors, without considering the importance of search engine visibility. However, having a location strategy is as important as choosing a good location for customers and staff. In a business environment where search engine visibility is…

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8 Ways to Instill a Sense of Purpose in Your Startup

Starting a new venture and thriving in today’s economy is hard, but the best have figured out that customers and employees need to feel that you have a sense of purpose, to complement the company’s pursuit of profit. A higher purpose motivates people in a way that financial wins alone never will. For a company…

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Startup Dilemma: E-Commerce vs. M-Commerce

Ever since the Netscape graphical web browser transformed the way we access the internet, retail entrepreneurs and developers have been redefining the way we purchase goods. We have come a long way since Amazon started out as an online bookstore and eBay was an internet platform for auctioning off garage sales items; in 2018, e-commerce…

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4 Building Blocks to a Successful Restaurant Startup

The restaurant business is fiercely competitive and without the proper course of action, your new restaurant could easily become just be another statistic. Some people have a rather naive idea of the restaurant business and still have a “build it and they’ll come” mentality. But times have changed and restaurants that succeed these days have…

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8 Keys to Successfully Bootstrapping Your New Venture

If you really want to start a business your way without a boss or professional investor hovering over you, then just fund it yourself or through friends and family, and grow it organically. It’s more possible to bootstrap today than a few years ago, as the cost of entry continues to go down. According to Investopedia,…

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The 3 Phases of a Tech Startup

Most tech startups go through three phases: 3Fs, Seed and VC/Scale. Understanding these stages, and the objectives for each, is an important factor in strategy development and decision making. Not understanding the stage you’re currently in is one of the most common reason tech startups fail to move forward, or worse, fail. The Three Phases:…

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Pervasive Startup Myth: Don’t Work for Free

Startup myth: The one about founders having to work for free to impress angel investors. This supposedly shows passion. Don’t believe it. Investors want people committed to working their startups, and that usually takes getting them paid. I’ve been getting a lot of upvotes on my answer to this question in Quora: How do entrepreneurs…

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