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It was the glitch heard ‘round the skies. Just this past summer, a brief computer outage grounded thousands of Delta Airlines flights. The carrier lost $100 million in revenue, and the entire airline industry saw a spike in consumer complaints over the ensuing months.

This was merely the culmination of America’s rocky relationship with commercial air travel, as airlines are consistently near the top of the Better Business Bureau’s list of most complained-about industries.

As an entrepreneur, does the above anecdote leave you feeling eager to launch a business in the airline industry — or does it make you want to run away from it as fast as you can?

If you’re leaning toward the “run away” option, have you forgotten about a company call...

In the startup community it can sometimes seem that buzzwords come from out of nowhere. Not the case with “pivot”: Steve divulges that this is actually a term coined by his “best student ever” Eric Ries, when he noticed the cyclical nature of customer validation and customer discovery – stemming from his work developing lean startup methodology.

So what is a pivot, exactly?

A pivot is the action you take when you discover that your hypotheses don’t meet reality. It used to be that if a business wasn’t succeeding, executives would get fired. What we’ve come to realize in recent years is that if your business model doesn’t match what’s going on in the real world, it’s time to fire the model. That’s why it’s so crucial when first starti...

When we talk about building startups, we talk about lots of costs: Staffing costs, the cost of capital, cost per acquisition, and opportunity cost.

But we never talk about the biggest cost – the emotional cost.

Imagine if we could put a numeric value on how much “emotional capital” we have in the bank. The amount of stamina, the amount of positivity, the amount of physical wellness we have left. Startup Founders don’t just run out of financial capital – we run out of emotional capital.

Running out of emotional capital isn’t something we talk about, and that’s a problem. That’s because the cost of capital in this case is our well-being, our relationships, and ultimately the startups we sacrificed it all to ...

The web has made it possible for everyone from prospective customers to business partners to potential employees to see at the click of a mouse or the tap of a screen what companies have to offer. If upon first glance they see unhappy customers or poor reviews, there’s a very real potential of permanent damage to a business’s bottom line.

Companies’ online reputations reflect how the businesses conduct themselves and how they operate on a daily basis. Increasingly, customers are turning to the information they find online when deciding whether to engage with a brand.

To cultivate a healthy online presence, companies need to constantly demonstrate why people should come to them as industry leaders and trustworthy partners — both in dai...

Don’t miss out! Check out the previous editions here:

–Getting Your Idea Going: There is no perfect idea
–Getting Your Idea Going: Popular Excuses for Not Starting
–Getting Your Idea Going: When to Jump Ship

Every entrepreneur daydreams about walking into their boss’s office to proclaim: “I quit!”—and then loudly declaring “Freedom!” a la WIlliam Wallace in Braveheart.

However—If you recall—this also involves the part where you get ceremoniously beheaded which (let’s face it) kinda-sorta ruins the whole celebration.

Before you quit your job and get all pumped to be the Founder of a new startup that writes checks instead of cashing them—let me give you a few things to think about.

You Need Personal Runway

Everyone talks about how muc...

You’ve probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, right? Just in case you’ve been living under a rock — here is a quick recap:

In 1943, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow proposed that humans have a five “levels” of needs, usually drawn in the shape of a pyramid.

The needs at the bottom of the pyramid are physiological needs that are necessary for survival: food, water, warmth, rest.

The next level up is “safety,” followed by “belongingness and love,” then “esteem,” and, at the very top of the pyramid, “self-actualization.” The basic idea is that humans need to meet those basic needs first, before they can be concerned about the needs further up the pyramid.

Makes sense, right? You can’t really think about transcendence when your stom...

It’s hard to think of anything more closely associated with the startup experience than pitching to investors.

Think about it: virtually every hackathon ends in a pitch competition. The promise of pitching to real, live investors is the grand prize at incubators everywhere. There are whole television shows devoted to following people as they pitch their company. Podcasts, too.

And no wonder: when you’re pitching to investors, you’re putting your heart on the line, spilling your guts about why you believe down to your bones that this business needs to happen – and you need to be the one to lead it. It’s not hard to see why that makes for compelling viewing/listening.

But there’s another reason the investor pitch is so iconic: because it’s so...

Trying to figure out a way to make those big startup business goals reachable? Not a fan of visual mapping or assigning each of your goals to a hierarchy?

Well, you’re in luck. Setting S.M.A.R.T goals is a tried and true method that has worked for a lot of people.

The idea of S.M.A.R.T. goals traces back to 1981 — so the meaning has changed a little big over the years. Originally, the acronym stood for

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time bound

Over the years, different meanings have been added to those letters, but we’re going to stick with the old school, for now.

Specific

Let’s start with “Specific.” When you’re figuring out if your goal is specific enough, ask yourself the five “W” questions: Who, why, what, where and which. Fo...

Vacation. A concept that sounds nice in theory, but is a total bitch for startups to pull off. Or is it?

For a startup founder, the logistics are terrifying. Who’s going to meet with those investors? Who’s going to start that COO search you planned a month ago? Who’s going to run your next evaluation? (Heaven KNOWS Jim can’t do it.) That generously crafted vacation policy that you dangled as an incentive to your early employees doesn’t apply to you, right?

According to a report from Project: Time Off, created to cast a new light on our country’s view of vacation days, we leave an astounding $224 billion in unused vacation time on balance sheets each year. The workaholic tendencies are even worse for startup founders, who have no “vaca...

Looking for minority business loans? You’re not the only one. It’s no secret that the tech world is overwhelming male and overwhelming white. Study after study has shown that not only do underrepresented groups pitch less to angel investors and venture capitalists, they also receive less money when they do pitch. And when it comes to loans? Same problem. Underrepresented groups consistently receive less money than white men on loans.

For example, a 2014 study from researchers at Brigham Young University recruited nine “mystery shoppers” to go and seek small business loans. Three were black; three were Hispanic; and three were white. They all wore the same clothing, had nearly identical backgrounds, and asked for $60,000 for identical busine...