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When a startup is bootstrapping, every last penny counts. Those early days of no or minimal funding are fraught for founders watching the number in the bank account get smaller and smaller but, unfortunately, most things that startups need cost money.

But what if they didn’t? What if, instead, you were able to trade your services for the services you so desperately need to get your startup off the ground?

Bringing Bartering Into The 21st Century

That’s the idea behind Currency, a new site that takes a very old concept — bartering — and make it totally 21st century. The site lets companies trade their “currency,” which they can define themselves, for other things that they need. So, for example, maybe you have a company that does stationary...

We’re going to do it. We’re going to be the easiest, most exciting, best way anywhere to get craft beer. And we’re going to do it while having a shit-ton of fun.

Some of the most interesting startups are the ones that appear to be simple from the outside but, when you lift the hood and look inside, are actually incredibly complicated and technical.

That’s definitely the case with BREWPUBLIK, the beer subscription service that is really basic, at least from the consumer’s perspective. All they have to do is tell BREWPUBLIK what kind of beer they’re into and new beer suited to their taste appears on their doorstep once a month. It’s like magic!

Or is it?

BREWPUBLIK founder Charlie Mulligan says that it’s not magic that brings those beers to ...

In my tech career, I had the opportunity to experience hackathons from many different angles: as a participant, an organizer, a sponsor; a process advisor and technology provider; in plenty of cases as a winner or leader of winning teams; with both startup and corporate contexts.

I’ve experienced the challenges in leading talented teams under the time pressure of a hackathon; the stress levels of pitching ideas to leadership teams. Here is my advice to those ambitious hackathon participants:

No matter the type (corporate or public one) a hackathon is always a great opportunity to showcase your talent and skills: yes, hackathons are also about team spirit, collaboration and fun but the primary motivation of the typical participant is to win...

Everyone loves to talk about getting more users. Indeed, the mantra of “more users” has become something of a rallying cry in the blogging world. But relatively few people are talking about their existing users who they are potentially annoying and losing because they are focusing primarily on attracting new users.

Pleasing existing users is a lot more important than you might think because annoyed users don’t just leave, they complain – to their friends, family, and colleagues, who then have a bad impression of your website. Perhaps you should start devoting as much time and energy to keeping your existing users happy as you do to finding new ones.

If your users aren’t complaining already, here are some things that might tick them off in t...

It's 3:35 A.M. We wake up in hot sweat so wet we've soaked our Night Ranger vintage crop top right through. We had this awful dream that we were somehow fired from our own company.

"Wait. I'm the Founder — how can I get fired?"

If you own 100% of the voting stock and have no other shareholders — you can't.

Your totalitarian rule is safe, El Presidente. However, the moment we have additional shareholders in the mix, the game can change quickly.

Multiple shareholders, especially investors, typically introduce provisions in the Operating Agreement of the company that "protect" the shareholders from wrongdoing by the officers of the company.

Does that mean the janitor can initiate a palace revolt and overthrow us? Probably not. But it does m...

Entrepreneurs have quite a few options available when raising capital that generally fall into three categories — bootstrapping, debt and equity.

Investors want to find the right fit. They want the right location, market size, and traction, among other things.

Funding your business isn’t as easy as saying, “I want to speak to investors who will give me a big check for my great idea!”

Even the best ideas often require a long period of proving themselves before any investor is willing to support them with a check. Along the way, there are several forms of capital that entrepreneurs use to address their needs.

How Most Businesses Get Funded

The most common way companies get funded is to start with their own capital, known as ...

Over the last 7 years, Docstoc, an electronic document repository for financial and legal documents, has become a top resource for people looking to start small businesses.

Jason Nazar, Docstoc’s founder, grew the team to 50 people and led the company through a sale to Intuit in December 2013.

The sale generated buzz from virtually every tech journal – TechCrunch, Pando Daily, All Things D, and Forbes all covered the deal from Intuit’s perspective – that it was smart strategic planning for the Silicon Valley software giant to invest in such a valuable asset for small business owners.

What we wanted to see, however, was Nazar’s personal side to the story – what he learned from the business acquisition experience and what advice he would pro...

Google and Facebook are tech behemoths that offer attractive salaries. But talk to an employee at either, and it’s not about salary; it’s about napping pods and car pickup. Working for a “cool” company is about the culture and the idea, not the traditional images of 401(k)s.

“Cool” means different things to different people, but it’s a safe bet that those looking for a cool startup are eyeing places that offer newfangled perks and jealousy-inducing benefits, such as telecommuting or dog-friendly workplaces. But your business doesn’t have to be cool in the buzz-worthy sense to reap the benefits.

For example, I work in the legal services industry, which might not sound very cool. But my firm, American Injury Attorney Group, went against the g...

Nancy Duarte is a pro when it comes to presentations. Not just giving presentations, but starting them, finishing them, and every step in between. Author and co-founder of Duarte Designs, Nancy Duarte is a seasoned veteran when it comes to incorporating storytelling into speaking and creating connections with an audience.

Nancy Duarte on The Importance of Knowing Your Audience

The below video is the fifth part in a series of 10 in which Nancy shares the key components to making a successful pitch using creativity, critical thinking and how important it is to know your audience. Find out what she has to say:

By this point in Nancy’s “Presentation is Everything” lesson, you know that your presentations revolve around the audience: who they a...

There's a time to get tough and keep building our startups. And there's a time to be honest about simply folding the tents.

The problem is that our own egos can rarely distinguish between the two.

We hear these (revisionist) stories of great entrepreneurs overcoming insurmountable odds to build the great companies of today, and we assume that in order to earn our own tale, we'll need to bring ourselves to the brink of destruction to do the same.

But the truth is, more often than not, the idea of running ourselves into the ground is just that: we're just killing ourselves with little upside or glory on the other side of the journey. As Founders, we need to have an honest dialog about when it's really time to put a bullet in this thing for th...