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I am hard pressed to think of a company run by just a handful of people— with less than 100 million users and no revenue at its peak — that has had such a transformational impact on the consumer Web than Instagram.

Had Instagram stayed independent, it may well have wound up looking a lot like Twitter, today.

Had Twitter bought Instagram, everything would look different: Facebook struggles more with teens and mobile just after it’s IPO, and Twitter doubles down on photos/expression/celebrity and pop culture.

But instead, Facebook bought Instagram and that one move made the strongest market player way stronger than the $1 billion it “overpaid” for the asset. Not only did Instagram give Facebook youth again, celebrity, it’s first successful “m...

Question: What is one tip for organizing co-founder roles and responsibilities, and aligning co-founder job descriptions among founders?

The following answers regarding how to balance responsibilities, lay out co-founder job descriptions, and define co-founder roles and responsibilities are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC).

Embrace Co-Founder Job Descriptions

Co-founders are vital to the business but can get lost as the company evolves. We evaluate our co-founder job descriptions yearly to ensure that the written expectations are in line with the work the company needs done. Don’t be afraid to reassign co-founder roles and responsibilities so that business goals can be met.

— Robby Hill
HillSouth

Track Tasks

Yo...

Question: What is one way to take your core strengths and make them even stronger?

The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

Assess Subsets of Your Strengths

While you may be an excellent programmer, what are some other areas of programming where you can improve your skills? Being good in a few core areas doesn’t mean there isn’t additional learning to do.

— Nicole Munoz
Start Ranking Now

Find People to Cover for Your Weaknesses

Core comp...

You probably know the saying: It costs money to make money. And with 50 percent of new businesses failing within five years — and 70 percent failing within 10 — marketing is more important than ever. Marketing is what fuels business growth, and it’s one of the most important things to consider in a business plan. Without a solid marketing strategy in place, you’ll find that you’ll be spending a lot of time and money on trying to grow your business with little to show for it.

As a new business owner, it would be great to see high-impact results immediately. Without millions of dollars from venture capitalists, though, gaining results can be a long road. However, while there is no magic formula to marketing, there are some ...

We’ve spent the last couple of sessions at Startups Live talking about idea validation: how do you know if an idea you have is an actual viable business in the first place? How do you go about learning about your idea from the people whose opinions matter most – customers?

For this session, we’re staying on the idea validation theme, but we’re taking it a bit more tactical, focusing on actual, concrete methods you can use to validate your ideas. Joining us for this conversation is Stuart Brent, founder of userinput.io, a service that provides on-demand feedback for websites and business ideas. Stuart has shared his favorite startup idea validation techniques with us in the past, and he added his insights to this conversation as well.

The ma...

The competitive analysis section of your market analysis in your business plan is essential. Knowing your competition is as important as knowing your product and your customer. Market gaps tell you where to develop your product and internal weaknesses tell you where you’re vulnerable to losing customers.

A solid competitive analysis is your way of showing that you know exactly where you stand among your fiercest competitors — and that you have a way to out-maneuver them. The best way to think of the argument you’re trying to articulate is:

“Here is where we can gain the most customers (offense) and here’s where we could potentially lose them (defense).”

Your competitive analysis should start with your SWOT Analysis ...

This is a question that I’ve been struggling with for years. Through my life as an entrepreneur, I’ve had the opportunity to be a TEDx speaker. I have good friends that have organized tech conferences themselves, and I’ve obviously been an attendee of a fair share of events and even part been of those Startup battle segments.

So, are tech conferences worth it? That depends on the expectations you have going in.

With time, I’ve learned that the best thing you can do is set accurate expectations, and have a clear action plan in place as to what you want to accomplish at the event.

Here are some of the goals we’ve set at Slidebean when investing time/money in attending a tech conference, and mostly succeeded at:

1. Networking: meeting rele...

EDITOR’S NOTE

Ah, rejection. The early-stage Founder’s bread and butter.

When you’re building a company from the ground up, you kind of get used to hearing the word “No.”

But Saasmetrics Founder Leo Faria: he didn’t just get used to it. He broadcast it for everyone to see.

A few weeks ago, Leo published a post on Medium that he called “Lessons learned from a startup rejected by 500 Startups, Techstars and Y Combinator.” In the post, Leo digs into his experience applying for the US’s three most prestigious accelerators — and (spoiler alert) getting rejected by each and every one. He even goes as far as to include the actual text of the actual emails he received from each accelerator, and you can just imagine what it must have felt like...

As Product Managers, building product roadmaps is a crucial part of our job. Yet most of us still use outdated tools and software for roadmapping—Excel, PowerPoint, wikis, etc.—to try and keep several teams on track toward the same goals. It’s painful. The good news is that there’s a better way.

We understand that building a product roadmap is not easy and that your business colleagues always want to know what’s coming next.

It’s time to lead your product with conviction. Take a radical new approach to roadmapping because your company needs it and you deserve to build the future and enjoy what you do.

Executives have a vision of the future and sales and marketing teams want to be heard too. And engineering is waiting for those detailed requ...

Most small business owners and entrepreneurs have considered the question of whether or not to hire additional help. Whether you are just starting out, looking to expand, or simply need to become more organized and efficient, the need to delegate common administrative tasks is a typical problem.

Knowing you need help is the easy part, but making the decision of how to get that help is a little more daunting. Is it better to hire in-house or do you need a Virtual Assistant? Is a VA cost effective? What are the real benefits to the business and the user if you hire a Virtual Assistant?

We’ve honed in 5 important reasons you should hire a Virtual Assistant and the positive impact it will have on your business and your work-life balance.

1. Us...