6 Keys to a Great Name for Your Business

Picking the perfect name when you start a business is an essential step on your entrepreneurial journey. It needs to be done first before you begin your logo design. Whether you want a funny name like, The Codfather (Fish & Chips), or something more serious like, Fresh Look Painting, your organization name does not just…

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10 Most Common High Tech Business Plan Fails

I was asked about high-tech business plan fails on Quora recently. So this isn’t about lean plans for all business owners, but just the business plans submitted for angel investment and business plan competitions. I read about 100 of those business plans per year. So here’s my list of high-tech business plan fails: Naive profits. Drives me…

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4 Ways the Gig Economy Can Help a Startup

In today’s business world, the gig economy combined with the unique startup company model are overhauling the traditional 9-5 job experience that most workers have grown accustomed to. Together, this is creating a new norm that allows for more freedom and flexibility in the workplace. There are many parallels between the gig economy and startups—both…

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4 Reliable Financing Tips for Women Business Owners

Women are now majority owners of 38% of businesses in the United States. And yet, when we look at funding, there is a disparity. The loan approval rate for women is 15-20% lower than it is for men, and women receive only 7% of venture capital investment money. But financing for women business owners is…

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What Every Entrepreneur Should Know Before Starting a Company

When it comes to running a business, my best advice to any new owner, founder or executive of a company is to listen to as much advice as you can and apply what is most relevant to your scenario. When I first started Isolator Fitness Inc., I made mistakes like ignoring my customers’ needs, hiring…

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What First-Time Parents Need to Know About Building a Startup

Having recently crossed the one-year mark with my daughter, my first and—my wife assures me—only child, I started thinking about the commonalities between raising a human in that first year, and building something in the business world. After starting Rented.com, I thought I would share some learnings that might be useful to other founders and…

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The 5 European Cities Where You Can Build Your Startup

When we think of top European cities for start-ups. London and Berlin often spring to mind, yet, the tech start-up culture is spreading throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The cities on our list have growth opportunities evident by collative data, and you may be surprised by some of the cities listed! 5. Bucharest, Romania Bucharest…

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Where is the Best Source of Early Stage Investment?

If you have been following our recent insights, you’ll be up to speed knowing that professional investors negotiate tough terms, from provisions of control over asset acquisition, eventual sale of the company, future investments, forced co-sale when others attempt to sell their shares and more. And yet, in an earlier post, we spoke of the…

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10 Strategies to Cover New Product Development Costs

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. I often get asked about the real alternatives to bridge this valley, and…

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