Building an online community is no easy task, but the reward in doing so is worth the effort put into it. If you have built one before, you already know that online businesses not just should be, but NEED to be monetized. Online communities are a lot of work, after all, and nobody wants to work for free (right?!).

Facebook Groups are a great way to create an online community and build trust with potential customers. In this article, we are going to dive into how to start a group (for those ready to jump in) and offer all the different avenues of revenue that can be utilized on the platform with helpful insight from members of the Startups.com community.

Starting Your Group

Starting a Facebook Group is the easy part — especially if you are alre...

Welcome to Phase Two of our four-part Funding Series — all about Investor Selection!

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

Phase Two - Investor Selection

• Part 1 - Introduction to Startup Investors (←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 2 - How to find Startup Investors 

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

This article is an Introduction to Startup Investors. Let's dive in!

Whatever stage your business is in when you launch your fundraising efforts, you can find the investor support that you’re looking for. Now that you’ve determined the fundraise structure that matches your needs and goals, it’s all about finding the investors that make sense.

All investors are not created equal. 

They may all have capital, but the vast majority of i...

How to Sell an Idea to a Company Without Them Stealing It

For many, coming up with an innovative idea leads to a desire to do something with it — and in the absence of knowing how to commercialize a great idea, many people jump to the conclusion that it can simply be sold to a big company. Then they worry that the big company will simply take their idea, and leave them in the dust. It’s a great story — it just tends to be a tale of fiction, on many levels.

Before We Answer the Question of a Company Stealing My Great Idea, Can I Sell My Idea to a Company at All?

I talk to thousands of startup founders, inventors, creatives, engineers, and other ideating and innovating types every year.

At least 100 times a year I'm asked "Ryan, I've got this gre...

Continuing in Phase One of a four-part Funding Series:

Phase One - Structuring a Fundraise

• Part 1 - Startup Bootstrapping

• Part 2 - Debt as Startup Capital ( ←YOU ARE HERE 😀)

• Part 3 - Equity Funding for Startups

• Part 4 - Convertible Debt 

Phase Two - Investor Selection

Phase Three - The Pitch

Phase Four - Investor Outreach

Let's dive in!

Debt is the most common form of outside capital for new small business owners. While angel investors and venture capitalists get all the big headlines for funding exciting companies, it’s the debt providers that are behind most of the investment dollars that go into the 99% of companies that aren’t splashed across magazine covers and business websites. SBA Loans, Personal Loans to the business owner, merchant ca...

Faking it as a startup is pretty much what being a startup is all about.

As first-time Founders, we just don't realize that it's the norm. Instead, we worry ourselves about not being a big enough company, not having a full staff, or not having a proven product.

Well, guess what? If we're just starting out, we fake everything!

Our Fake Website

"But wait, won't people find out that all we have right now is a cheap landing page that my cousin created and just a couple of products available?"

Yes, and they generally won't care. When is the last time you deliberated on the corporate structure of a company before making a purchase? Probably never. Most customers assume there is some level of functionality and deliverability in our product becaus...

A customer journey map can be an incredibly helpful tool for your business. These maps outline every step that your customer goes through while engaging with your company, from learning about you for the first time to making repeat purchases. A customer journey map helps ensure that your customers are the center of your marketing — it should include touchpoints, frustrations, purchasing motivations, and the like. Creating one can help you identify pain points and keep your customers engaged throughout their buying process.

In this article, we’re going to outline how you can create a customer journey map for your inbound sales funnel.

Start by defining your buyer personas

Before creating your customer journey map, you need to build and defi...

Search engine optimization is an area of digital marketing that involves using certain tactics to help your website climb the search engine results pages for queries relevant to your business.

Focusing on boosting your SEO should be a key part of your plan to build an audience, as it can help you to reach a lot more of your target customers.

In this guide, we are going to outline 7 different tips for improving your on-page SEO and improving your site’s search engine visibility. Read on to find out more.

What is on-page SEO?

When we talk about on-page SEO, we’re referring to changes you can make to your own website in order to boost your search engine rankings. This can involve writing optimized copy, creating SEO-friendly content, and e...

Craig Newmark is the man behind craigslist —a website that today is among the 40 most visited websites in the world, is found in 70 countries, and can best be compared with Exchange and Mart in the United Kingdom.

Craig started craigslist back in 1995, and today he is reportedly worth more than DKK 3 billion. However, the last impression you get when talking to him is that of an entrepreneur guru. On the contrary, Craig is completely down to earth, something of a nerd (his word), and deeply passionate about using technology to make the world better.

He no longer heads craigslist but has dedicated his life to charitable work via Craig Newmark Philanthropies, which supports and connects nonprofit communities and drives powerful civic engageme...

Startups.com marketing technology stack

What is a Martech Stack?

First up, what even is Martech? This is an abbreviation of “marketing technology.” It’s the tools and software you use in your day-to-day sales and marketing.

The reference to the “stack” has been used by developers for years, in reference to the technology and codebases they use within the products they build. Martech Stack references the marketing technologies and tools you use within your marketing infrastructure set-up.

By stacking these tools together and integrating them you create a consistent, automated flow of data between your tools.

The benefits of setting up a Martech Stack

The likelihood is that you already have some form of Martech Stack in place, even without...

I sent the following letter to our entire team at Airbnb.

Hey team,

Our next team meeting is dedicated to Core Values, which are essential to building our culture. It occurred to me that before this meeting, I should write you a short letter on why culture is so important to Joe, Nate, and me.

After we closed our Series C with Peter Thiel in 2012, we invited him to our office. This was late last year, and we were in the Berlin room showing him various metrics. Midway through the conversation, I asked him what was the single most important piece of advice he had for us.

He replied, “Don’t fuck up the culture.”

This wasn’t what we were expecting from someone who just gave us $150 million. I asked him to elaborate on this. He said one of the r...