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James Wolf was late for our interview — two and a half hours late, to be exact. I’d speed walked the fifteen minutes from my apartment to his shop in Ho Chi Minh City’s expat hub, Thao Dien, at 8:30 in the morning, only to be met with a shuttered door and no signs of life inside. Sweating in the shade as loitering taxi drivers threw me curious looks, I called him up.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, picking up after a couple of rings. “I didn’t expect to have to go to the factory this morning but something came up and I’m just arriving, on my bike. Can I call you in a couple of hours when I’m headed back to Thao Dien?”

“Oh no problem!” I said. “It’s my bad! I should have sent a follow-up email.”

Now, anyone who knows me knows that that’s not my us...

One of the most common questions we get asked is, "Should I raise capital for my business?" _What they’re really asking is, “Can you tell me how to raise money and where to find it?”_

And our stock answer is simply "No".

That tends to mess with people — because they typically aren’t expecting pushback. But the reality is that there are actually very few reasons that a startup absolutely has to raise capital. Every startup could use it. But does every startup absolutely have to raise?

Nope.

Having answered this question about a billion times, it seemed like the right time to list what the decision tree for startup Founders should be when determining they must raise capital so we can distinguish the difference between "I need it" and "I have...

Clicking the “Publish” button is one of the highlights of my day.

Working hard on a post and then putting it out there to help others is extremely rewarding. It’s one of the main reasons why I continue to write so much.

But it’s not the only reason….

Content marketing remains one of the most effective strategies to grow a blog – any blog.

Eighty-six percent of marketers in North America use content marketing, and 71% of marketers (overall) are planning to increase spending on content marketing.

Creating great content is an extremely important part of any successful content marketing strategy. But it’s just one part.

If all you do is hit “Publish” and then move on to the next article, your blog won’t grow as quickly as it should.

And if you...

More often than not, financing gets a bad rap. Sure, Apple can mark up a product as high as it wants, and McDonald’s can increase the price of hamburgers, but when the product is money, customers and merchants start to question the ethics behind the markup.

Yet financing these markups has the power to make a positive impact on both the economy and your business. Companies that can overlook the negative stigma and provide financing options will create a viable business model and attract long-term customers from a variety of backgrounds. Here’s why:

Financing Makes Economic Sense

To understand how financing impacts the economy, let’s take a look at the United States’ savings rate over the past five decades. Trading Economics reports that pers...

Pre–seed. Seed. Series A. Series B. Growth capital. Term sheets. Valuations. Cap Tables. Convertible notes. Market opportunity. Venture Capital. Angel investment. Equity Crowdfunding. Family offices.

While the learning curve is steep, getting funding is about more than just an understanding of terms, it’s about the art of relationships. For female founders, the funding landscape has been less than friendly. According to Crunchbase, the number of female-founded, venture backed companies has plateaued at 17% since 2012. Is venture the only way to go? Certainly not. There are a diversity of funding sources founders can tap into. Crowdfunding, for example, is the only type of funding where women outperform men.The SheWorx100 Summi...

This is a stupid idea. Why did I quit my job? Why did my friends say they liked this idea? I bet they were just humoring me. What if nobody likes it? I have no clue what I am doing. I should ask for my old job back.

If you are even a month into starting your own business I am going to hazard a guess that at least one of these thoughts has popped into your mind. You’re not alone. Self-doubt is natural even for the most confident of people, your business is essentially a highly visible, physical manifestation of your beliefs and thoughts. So yes, it is scary exposing yourself in that way, the same way it would be scary if you were to share your love letters (Snapchats nowadays) with the world.

But this is not a good reason to stop or slow do...

Samuel F. Poirier is the first French Canadian to be named a Thiel Fellow. Samuel founded his first company when he was 14, where he would import minerals from several countries to Montreal. At 18, Poirier founded the first debit card for Bitcoin. His most recent venture, Retinad, is an analytics platform for virtual reality that helps VR companies understand how users are interacting with their platform. He currently remains a shareholder of Retinad, but recently left the day to day operations to focus on a new project that he isn’t quite ready to talk about! I took the time to speak to Samuel about his journey as a young entrepreneur and the challenges that he has faced both personally and professionally to get to this point.

Determinati...

They came, they crowdfunded, they conquered, and now it’s time to get to know them better. While the winners of the inaugural Crowd2Shelf contest come from different parts of the country and from different industries, they have one thing in common: they’ve created amazing products that are helping people do more.

We sat down with the winners and got some background into how they’ve grown into the incredible startup product companies they are today.

EVA
Wilmington, DE

Designed by LEDified, EVA™ is the world’s friendliest recessed light. They’ve combined the most efficient LED technology with an everyday practical element of a home: the remote control.

They’ve already pre-sold over 50,000 EVA™ units. Before EVA, LEDified’s founding team devel...

Question: What is one tip for negotiating with a vendor who will provide a key service to my new business?

Let Them Make the First Move

“Let them go first when giving you a quote. This way you see where they stand and don’t make the mistake of accidentally up-selling yourself without realizing it.”

— Jessica Baker
Aligned Signs
@alignedsigns

Ask for Help

“The old saying “it never hurts to ask” is true! Whether you’ve “made it” or are a startup on a shoestring budget, get over your pride and ask your vendor if they can help on cost. Assure them you want to do business for the long haul and build a relationship.”

— Steven Newlon
SYN3RGY Creative Group
@stevennewlon

Make It Easy for T...

These days, culture is paramount for having a strong team to execute your business’ vision. Ideas are worthless on their own; without a strong team, you won’t succeed. When building a business, you want employees who deeply about the company. A big piece of that is recognizing that, at the end of the day, they’re just people with normal daily stresses and worries.

My company TheSquareFoot is an unconventional business—we’re taking commercial real estate into the digital age—so we’re used to alternative practices. But like our business model, our unconventional ways have a purpose and rely on three major points: team building, nourishment and fun. Throughout our growth, I’ve recognized a few unconventional ways (that anyone could try) to pos...