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I consider myself a highly productive guy, despite many, many challenges to the contrary.

I’ve got crazy ADHD. I run a company with over 150 people who need my attention all day long. I am responsible for being the CEO of the company, writing copy, managing our financials, new product strategy, acquisitions, and about 90 other things. I also have 2 little kids and my family lives in 2 cities that we travel back and forth from constantly. It’s nuts.

My life is defined by distraction. Yet the reason I can constantly stay on top of so many things isn’t because I’m always getting lots of stuff done simultaneously – it’s because I focus on getting just one thing done every day.

One thing. Every day. That’...

Most Founders have a "certain set of skills" that apply to one aspect of their startup, whether it's deep product knowledge or incredible domain expertise from their previous job.

Unfortunately, in a startup, we sorta need to be a jack of all trades because we're often the only person doing all the work!

Let's assume that you could only invest the bare minimum in the various aspects of your startup operations.

Here's the least you'd need to know.

What about finance? Do I need to know the numbers?

At the very least a Founder should understand how an income statement works.

That simply means "here's where we're making money, here's where we're spending it, and here's how much we're making (or losing)." If you didn't understand a balance s...

When beginning a crowdfunding campaign, it’s important to evaluate your network and establish exactly who will make up your base of support. The success of your crowdfunding campaign will largely rest on how effectively you communicate your launch within your various networks. Once you’ve identified a group of potential backers – it’s also important to structure your rewards tiers in the most compelling way possible. Take into account what is most interesting to your group of potential backers and structure your rewards tiers in the most compelling way possible.

Your network can be divided into four main groups: friends, family, customers, professional contacts, and audience.

Friends

Your friends include those you see on a...

Throughout our schooling and mentoring, we entrepreneurs are constantly urged to be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. But is this advice really viable? Does it truly apply to us? In my opinion, the answer to both questions is “yes.”

The best entrepreneurs are steadfast generalists — especially in today’s world, where knowing a little about a lot is increasingly important. They are persistently curious and have a deep, abiding interest in learning. They see opportunities where others see challenges, and they’re often natural leaders with strong problem-solving skills.

The Specialist’s Dilemma

A society of specialists is rich in data and poor in meaning. How valuable is all that knowledge without any context? As strategic thinkers, gen...

“Startups are really hard, but you have a duty to yourself, your team, [and] your investors to take care of yourself and to not neglect your health [and] wellbeing.” –Sam Altman, President, YCombinator

Rene Descartes has single handedly doomed thousands of startups to failure.

Not in person, obviously—he’s been dead for 350 years. But his ideas have lived on, convincing otherwise smart founders that the mind is the thing only thing that matters in intellectual pursuits, and that our bodies are just meaty life-support systems carrying around those minds and getting in the way.

Not only is this way of thinking dangerous to the health of these founders, it’s dangerous to the health of their companies. Building a company is hard enough a...

What is a Limited Partnership?

A limited partnership (LP) is a type of business partnership that has two types of partners — general and limited — and there are different liabilities for the two.

In order to qualify as an LP, a business has to have at least one general partner and one limited partner.

General partners in an LP are personally liable for the business. Because the general partner of a business can be a person or entity, many people choose to set up an LLC to act as the general partner, thereby avoiding personal liability. General partners are also involved the actual running of the business.

Limited partners, on the other hand, aren’t personally liable. Limited partners can’t contribute to the day-to-day operation of the busi...

It’s time we admit the obvious: The classic business differentiators have become obsolete. Customers expect the best quality, the lowest possible price, instant delivery, and an experience that wows them every time.

Despite this change, most companies are terrified to implement the “novel” technique of being honest with customers.

Modern buyers focus intensely on customer experience and touchpoint impressions, not on which products perform well. Why? Blame the Japanese Kaizen movement of the 1970’s and 1980’s if you’d like.

Not only did Kaizen spark the total quality management movement, but it also brought defects down to negligible amounts. Customers got high-quality products, and companies suddenly found themselv...

At Startups.com we talk to thousands of founders, many of whom are weighing the benefits of convertible debt versus equity. If you’re not sure what convertible debt is, check out these posts:

• Convertible Debt Simplified

• Convertible Debt Basics

Since equity and convertible debt are the most common methods for raising early stage startup funding, it makes sense to examine them side by side so that you can understand the differences. Hopefully this will make your decision easier, so you can move on to the real fun of actually raising the money.

In order to get a handle on the decision we’re going to do three things:

1. Compare convertible debt and equity
2. Discuss how investors think about convertible debt
3. Evaluate the pitfalls of using conv...

This interview, conducted by Emily Pope, was originally published on the General Assembly blog.

Raffi Khatchadourian is a Mathematical Economics major and incoming junior at Colgate University. A self-starter and talented entrepreneur, Raffi has established himself as the COO of indify, an emerging music startup, before many of his peers have even declared their major. Back in January, Raffi attended GA’s week-long Business Accelerator program in partnership with Colgate University. Since then, he and his co-founders have gone on to win $10,000 in funding from Colgate University’s Entrepreneur Weekend Shark Tank and $15,000 from Colgate University’s Entrepreneurs Fund. Read on to learn how this young entrepreneur transformed his passion fo...

After closing a new Series C round of $50MM, CEO Eoghan McCabe has released the Intercom pitch deck from 2011, the slides they used to raise their initial $600K convertible note.

I often call Intercom one of the startup tools that have been key to our success and it’s not an overstatement. We’ve leveraged their platform to create an engaging, personalized and human experience of support and customer success, that our customers truly appreciate. It’s this personal experience that has kept us on an exponential growth path for over 12 months now.

Intercom released their first pitch deck on their blog this week, you can find the original slides here. Still, we took the liberty of redesigning the presentation on Slidebean to ma...