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At one time, only the corporate elite could afford to collect and crunch millions of data points to optimize their businesses. But with the advent of big data as a service, companies of all sizes now have the chance to take part in the big data revolution.

Although the need for data isn’t new, the amount of information and the type of intelligence it can provide looks starkly different than it did even a few years ago. In fact, the same amount of data influx that was achieved over the past 50 years is now achieved every two days.

If you’re serious about data, you need a way to store, manage, and analyze millions of numbers that will point your business in the right direction. As your company expands, your data stockpile will also grow expon...

What is product strategy?

Product strategy is the combination of a high-level vision of what your company is going to accomplish and the steps you’re going to take to get there. Basically, you’re turning your product vision into your product roadmap. It’s something of a transitional step in the top-down process of transforming your grand vision for your startup into an actual, product design.

Most companies have more than one product strategy. In addition to an overarching product strategy that applies to the direction the whole company is headed, if your company has more than more product, then each one is going to need its own product strategy.

For many startups, the overarching product strategy and the specific product strategy overlap,...

Let’s face it: Media failures happen to the best of us. Sometimes they’re simple mistakes that go unnoticed, and sometimes they’re catastrophic failures that can ruin a business. The vast majority of the time, though, they’re preventable.

At its core, a media failure is when the value exchange between a marketer and a media company breaks down. This can happen because a marketing strategy was poorly planned, the implementation was rushed, or the media company was unable to actually deliver the audience it promised.

That’s why at New Brave World, I always caution the teams we advise to be careful to consider legal timelines and the time and cost exposure that’s connected to custom content creation. It’s also important to ensure you’ve ...

We all have heard that "just getting 51% of the company will help us control the board and rule the world!"

But in startup companies, that's often not the case.

A lot of our control actually lies within the agreements that we create within the company, regardless of our percentage of control.

The Difference between Common and Preferred Shares

Startups can have many classes of stock, but the two most often created are "Common" and "Preferred" shares. There are many variants, but the most classic usage is "Preferred" have controlling rights, "Common" does not.

Investors will almost always take Preferred shares, which entitle them to specific types of rights within the company, even if they do not have the majority of those shares.

Those c...

Whether you’re running a startup or leading an established company, getting your brand noticed in today’s increasingly “noisy” digital environment can be a challenge. Old marketing paradigms – which focus on traditional media buys and banner ads – simply don’t get the traction they used to, emphasizing the need for new promotional strategies.

The numbers don’t lie

Currently, all signs point towards content marketing taking the lead as 2013’s hottest advertising trend. According to research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute:

• 86% of B2C marketers surveyed employ content marketing tactics, with 55% of these professionals planning to increase their content marketing spends throughout 2013.
• 91% of all B2B marketers polled use content...

“Without a clear vision to evolve, you will never break free of the ‘start-up’ mentality.”

–Hayley Winter, How to Evolve a Startup Into a Successful Business

How do you go from being a startup to a viable business to a very successful business? Where do we draw the lines between these classifications for companies? Founders from around the world set out to answer these sticky questions in Startups Live.

Haley Winter tried to lay the groundwork for erecting a successful venture. Some of the materials incorporated into her architectural scheme included a business plan, the startup mentality, making yourself visible and profitable, devoting resources properly.

Her article also covered the extremely difficult terrain of trying to d...

What is a product roadmap?

A product roadmap is an illustration of how you get from your company’s big-picture, high-level goals to the actual actions you need to take to achieve those goals. It not only shows what you’re building, but why you’re building it.

A project roadmap has two main audiences: External and internal stakeholders. (Like investors and employees, respectively.) You might even want to create two different roadmaps — or, at least, two different versions of your roadmap — for each audience.

For external stakeholders, the goal is to make sure everyone is informed about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. It may also be useful when you’re trying to procure more investment.

For internal stakeholders, a pro...

Creating a healthy sales organization is imperative for startups that want to eventually scale-up. Mastering the ups and downs of sales cycles requires that you get a lot of important factors right –from hiring and managing, to prospecting and pitching, to reporting and pipeline analysis, and much more. Throw in the fact that you’re selling at a startup and you end up with a lot of unknown factors that you, as a sales leader, and your sales team have to account for and plan against.

So how can you get really good at sales? How can get your sales organization to a place where it’s the department you worry about least? How can you get through this quarter with flying colors? More importantly, how can you set yourself up for success all year r...

Brand promotion through email marketing is a crucial tool for customer acquisition and engagement. Many businesses waste precious effort and resources because they don’t plan their brand promotion properly.

Traditionally, retailers have been able to just post huge signs and distribute flyers making consumers aware of the sale in the back. Their storefronts could remain nicely decorated.

Ecommerce retailers face a new challenge. They promote multiple product categories, various CTAs, and a sense of urgency practically daily to customers. While it may be efficient in the short-term, it dilutes the value of the brand.

Consumers aren’t curious to see new advertisements or flyer graphics, but they might be curious about new products and discount...

So, you’ve got an idea for a new web-based business venture and you’re looking to get started on product development.

You don’t know a lot about the direction you’re going to take when building your product or what to do when it comes to market validation. But, you think your idea is a good one. After all, you’ve got some early anecdotal feedback reassuring you of this.

Before you approach investors, focus on building out and maturing your web-based business idea—which can be faster and cheaper than you’d think.

This is the exact situation we found ourselves in with The Audio Hunt around 2 years ago. We adopted the Lean Startup methodology and utilized SEBLOD—A web application builder for Joomla!—as our platform of choice to build and launc...