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What an exciting moment! You’re looking to scale up your startup and need to bring in a growth agency to help you do that. But, it’s a big decision. Choosing the wrong agency will lead to months of delayed growth, thousands of dollars in wasted spend, and difficult conversations down the line trying to understand where it all went wrong.

This means it is vitally important you make the right decision from the get-go. There are hundreds of marketing agencies out there, but if you are in the startup phase of growth I’d recommend going with a startup growth agency that has experience in the earlier stages.

I have done some of the research for you by putting together a list of the top 9 startup agencies I know deliver great results. So, at least...

"Never tell anyone how much money you have. They will only judge you by it or try to take it from you."

That was some of the best advice I've ever gotten from the son of a well-known billionaire after my first startup just started to take off. At the time, I had just started to make some money, and like any poor kid who just came into some cash, I wanted the whole world to know just how well I had done.

So yeah, I was the douchebag posting pictures of my Lamborghini, only social media didn't exist yet, so I guess I was just emailing them, which is way worse! Little did I know at the time how much trouble my personal PR campaign would create for me.

They Will Only Judge You by it

One of the things I first started noticing was that everyone w...

As a startup, customer acquisition is essential for success. It requires careful planning and execution to ensure that your efforts are successful and cost-effective. In this introduction, we will explore key topics such as building relationships with potential customers, tracking success metrics, leveraging digital marketing channels, testing different campaigns, and more. With the right strategies in place, customer acquisition can be an exciting opportunity for startups to grow their customer base and expand their business.

Overview of customer acquisition for startups

Why Customer Acquisition Matters for Startups

Customer acquisition for startups is an incredibly important process that can mean the difference between success and failure. A...

As a founder or leader in a startup, it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind of running your business. But if you want to achieve real success, it's important to take a step back and consider the bigger picture.

In his essay "Growth," Paul Graham argues that the most successful startups tend to be those that focus on rapid growth.

But what does it mean to have a "growth mindset"? Simply put, it's the belief that your company can and should grow quickly, and the willingness to take on new challenges and opportunities as they arise.

This means being open to trying new things, even if they come with a risk of failure. It means embracing change and constantly seeking out ways to improve and expand your business.

Company Culture: A Key Dr...

It is difficult to predict the specific types of startups that will be most successful in 2023, as the success of a startup can depend on a variety of factors such as market demand, competition, and the unique value proposition of the business.

However, here are 20 business ideas to start the brainstorming process:

1 - Virtual events platform

Virtual events, such as conferences, trade shows, and workshops, have become increasingly popular in recent years due to the rise of remote work and the convenience of participating in events online. A virtual events platform could be a successful startup business model for a number of reasons:

Market demand:

There is a growing demand for virtual events as more organizations look for ways to host events onl...

When it comes to building a website for your business, it's important to choose the right type of website that will meet your needs and goals. There are several different types of websites to choose from, each with its own set of features and benefits. And choosing which website is best might be a litter overwhelming.

Some websites are more useful than others, depending on your business's industry. Some are easier to maintain while others are just plain confusing. That's where we come in. We've put together a quick guide that will help you figure out what type of website is best for your business.

Read on for tips on choosing the perfect website for your business model with insight from our community members to help you along the way.

Most Co...

If our startup sinks, everyone else gets a life raft — but Founders go down with the ship.

There are a million stories about how other entrepreneurs were able to scale successfully, but what we rarely hear about is what happens when things aren't so rosy, which is ironic since most startups don't have that picturesque outcome AND this is a great learning opportunity.

The reality is most Founders find themselves inextricably tied to their startup baby at a very personal financial level.

This means when things go sideways, it's not just the startup that's in jeopardy — it's our personal lives that get pulled into the mucky-muck. And if this is your first startup — this may not be apparent at all.

Most Big, Successful Businesses of Today Were ...

All startup financial projections are based on a few key assumptions about how we feel the business will perform.

In this section, we're going to explain what key assumptions drive our financial forecasts and how to adjust them to create a financial model that works.

Download our Income Statement Template here to get started and follow along.

What’s the Goal Here?

The Assumptions tab in our income statement template gives us a worksheet to help determine what the right values will be to populate in our projected income statement. The tab itself is just a worksheet that drives things like our revenue projections, cost assumptions, and ultimately net income.

We’ll walk through each of the assumptions in this worksheet one by one to give a little m...

Startups live and die by financial projections — yet we tend to suck at creating them!

That's because we're so busy trying to create the "perfect" financial statements, when in fact what we should be working on is identifying what key assumptions will drive our projections at all!

Assumptions are the raw materials that make up our financial statements and tell us whether we're headed toward gross profit or total disaster! Here we'll be taking a beginning inventory of the 3 most important financial assumptions that tend to drive most startup company projections.

Assumption #1: "How Many Customers Will We Acquire?"

Our first step is to construct a series of assumptions that tell us how many paying customers we will get through the door. All of th...

While we may not know all there is to know about our business yet, there’s still going to be some good old-fashioned accounting to do. So let’s break out those green visors and add machines — it’s time to learn WTF accounting is!

At its core, in order to be an accountant we need to be able to collect all the sources of income and expenses and translate those into a spreadsheet. When the numbers are small, this is so easy to do we’ll wonder why people get paid to do it. When they get large, we’ll wonder why anyone is willing to do this for any amount of money ever!

Can any Founder do Accounting for Startups?

Yes! Because accounting for startups in the early days just isn't that complicated yet. Even if we've never seen any financial statements ...