A lot of people confuse crowdfunding with crowdsourcing. While they are similar in that they both allow people to primarily leverage mass-community collaboration, they relate to two different things entirely.

So, what’s the key difference?

The short answer:

Crowdfunding is the process of sourcing money or funds from a group or groups of people.

Crowdsourcing is the process of sourcing information or skills or end products from a group or groups of people.

The long answer:

What is crowdfunding?

In a crowdfunding campaign, a person, business, or organization raises a relatively small amount of money from a large group of people. Crowdfunding is a method of raising capital through the collective effort of friends, family, customers, and...

How To Write A Business Plan: A Comprehensive Guide

A comprehensive, step-by-step guide - complete with real examples - on writing business plans with just the right amount of panache to catch an investor's attention and serve as a guiding star for your business.

Introduction to Business Plans

So you've got a killer startup idea. Now you need to write a business plan that is equally killer.

You fire up your computer, open a Google doc, and stare at the blank page for several minutes before it suddenly dawns on you that, Hm…maybe I have no idea how to write a business plan from scratch after all.

Don't let it get you down. After all, why would you know anything about business planning? For that very reason we have 4 amazi...

Founders have to learn so many new skills when they're launching a startup, and writing a business plan is a big one. When you're writing your business plan for the first time, things can get… intimidating.

What do you include? What kind of wording should you use? What do you make sure not to include? Is a mid size business plan different than an enterprise plan or a scalable startup? Do I need to include financials like cash flow statements? What do investors want to see?

It's enough to make even a stalwart startup founder and management team throw in the towel before they've even begun.

Lucky for you — we've created a complete guide to writing your business plan. Check it out if you haven't already. (And if a link from th...

How are angel investors different from venture capitalists?

We’ll dive into the details of the differences between angel investors and venture capitalist below, but here’s a wide angle of view first:

Angel investors are wealthy individuals (or groups of wealthy individuals) who invest their own money into companies.

Venture capitalists (VCs) are employees of venture capital firms that invest other people’s money (which they hold in a fund) into companies.

Now let’s take a closer at the two, before diving into the specific differences.

What are angel investors?

Angel investors are typically high net worth individuals who invest very early into the formation of a new startup company, usually in exchange for equity or convertible debt. The ro...

I’ve covered Max Levchin and the Web properties he’s built pretty much since I arrived in Silicon Valley in the peak of the dot com bubble. In fact, I spent hundreds of hours interviewing him for my first book, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0.” I continually try to get him on stage— despite having plumbed so many of his thoughts for so long— because he’s genuinely one of my favorite people to interview.

Not only does he have one of those iconic immigrant stories that should convince everyone why immigrants make this country stronger, but unlike so many other wealthy success stories, he’s never forgotten where he came from and what it felt like to be an outsider with nothing. Nothi...

Launching a startup can happen really quickly. Making it a real business — Now, that takes a lot of time. But how much time does it take to make a successful startup?

I get asked this question a lot. The short answer is it takes at least 4 years just to get pointed toward a real business, and I’d argue it takes 7-10 years to make your startup truly the success that you had in mind when that idea came to you.

Having been part of the journey of thousands of startup founders and having started lots of companies myself, I’ve noticed a very consistent pattern in how those formative years come together which I’d like to share with you.

If you’re reading this and nodding your head along the way it’s not because I̵...

When Jason Ross packed his bags to make the big move to New York City in 2013, it wasn’t for a girlfriend, or to chase his dreams of stardom to the Big Apple. It was for a company – his company, the one he’d started building more than seven years before.

He’d sold that company, the early apparel eCommerce success story JackThreads, to an upcoming media company called Thrillist about three years earlier. The company was thriving in its new environment in New York. But back home in Columbus, Ohio, Jason started to feel like he was on the outside looking in.

“I started to realize all these meetings were happening in New York,” Jason remembers. “So you start to feel like, ‘Oh man, things are happening at my company that I didn’t put in p...

Of the many, many things that can be extremely confusing for a startup founder, how to assign startup stock options is undoubtedly near the top of the list. Stocks are a whole world unto themselves, complete with new vocabulary, confusing math, and complicated issues to consider.

If you're not already an expert in finance, chances are you're scratching your head and going “Huh?” while simultaneously trying to make it look like you definitely know what you're doing.

But have no fear! This is your very simple, “how to assign startup stock options” 101 primer. I've reached out to startup founders and financial experts to figure out how this all works.

Consider this your first step — and then consider buying some time with a financial expert ...

Your business plan needs a problem statement, because every great company starts by solving an important problem. The more accurately you articulate the problem, the more valuable the solution will be.

A common founder faux pas is overlooking the importance of giving the problem more weight than the solution. Founders get so excited about their solution that they forget to explain why the problem is so important. A well-articulated problem makes the value of your solution and your entire plan 10x more effective.

In many ways, the problem statement is the heart of your concept. It’s what intrigues people a...

In December of 2013, serial entrepreneur Jason Nazar woke up, rolled out of bed, grabbed his iPhone and with bleary eyes read the headline:

“Document-sharing platform Docstoc acquired by Intuit for $50 million.”

This wasn’t just any headline – it was his headline. Today was the day Jason would announce to the world that he had just sold the company he had worked on for 8 long years for a reported $50 million to Fortune 500 powerhouse Intuit.

Do you think he was smiling?

The Black Box of Acquisitions

We wanted to know the answer, so we spent some time with Jason to dig into the process.

The problem with understanding startup acquisitions and how Founders manage them is that people rarely talk about the process – they just talk a...