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So, you’ve got an idea for a new web-based business venture and you’re looking to get started on product development.

You don’t know a lot about the direction you’re going to take when building your product or what to do when it comes to market validation. But, you think your idea is a good one. After all, you’ve got some early anecdotal feedback reassuring you of this.

Before you approach investors, focus on building out and maturing your web-based business idea—which can be faster and cheaper than you’d think.

This is the exact situation we found ourselves in with The Audio Hunt around 2 years ago. We adopted the Lean Startup methodology and utilized SEBLOD—A web application builder for Joomla!—as our platform of choice to build and launc...

What's more fair than a 50/50 equity split?

Well, chances are a 50/50 split is a bad deal for one person - the person who will contribute more value over the long haul. The problem comes when we make those determinations of future contribution based on the least we will ever know - where we stand before we start our startup.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to address the split differently, focusing on what our contributions may be over time.

Why should I be concerned about a 50/50 split?

Because the likelihood that both parties will contribute the exact same amount of value over the course of the startup’s life is incredibly low, especially in the formative years.

One person may be contributing a ton of value relative to the moment in t...

The Situation

Brad is a newly hired analyst for a mobile payments startup, Cash.io. He joined the startup ready to help conquer PayPal, Visa and anyone else in their way.

When talking about the company to friends, he gushed, and often referenced it as his company. To prepare for the role, he read books and articles about the importance of innovation and not being afraid to fail.

Brad vowed he would never let the fear of failure stand in the way of his creativity and his desire to innovate. Yet as the first quarter came and went, Brad had not found a chance to flex his creativity. He reassured himself with thoughts about the virtues of patience.

As the days wore on, he found himself spending a lot of time doing what his predecessor, Alan, no...

When people visit the Startups.co office and see hockey sticks leaning against a wall, or members of our team wandering through the woods, they might wonder if we’re one of those Internet companies that plays too hard to really work hard enough.

We do love to have fun here at Startups. But the truth is we’re also militant about our productivity. There’s a reason we’re doing plenty of fun activities in any given week. We’re not just enjoying our lives, we’re optimizing for productivity.

Productivity in Waves

Like many people, we see our productivity peak and valley like a wave. It’s not linear – we don’t just wake up in the morning with constant peak productivity throughout the day.

Working thr...

Be sure to catch Part I of this discussion

“The customer is why you exist. Why your company chooses to exist. If you don’t put them on a pedestal, if you don’t remind yourself, your team, your operations why you’re a business, why you’re here, you’re destined for fail.”

–Joshua Davidson, Six Customer Service Principles To Abide By

New, new, new, new…. We tend to grow the most excited over new things and to obsess over them, so it’s no surprise that startups focus tremendous energy on new customers. So much so, that a vey important player in the destiny of companies gets overlooked: existing customers.

Unforgivable as that might be, the good news, according to Dr. Deborah Hecker, is that “respect, empathy, good listening,...

We all like to think we’re rational animals. The truth, though, is that we buy based on emotion and intuition, not reason or deduction.

In fact, according to Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman, 95 percent of our buying decisions are made by our subconscious mind. Our subconscious craves simplicity; it’s impulsive, decisive, and emotion-driven. Because it isn’t swayed by figures or feature sets, we in the tech industry often struggle to speak its language.

But take a look the most successful tech companies’ marketing materials. What do you notice about Apple’s iconic ads? They’re colorful, happy, and emotion-driven, featuring punchy phrases like “Think different” and “Say hello to the future.” Now think about what’s missing. Th...

Experienced entrepreneurs know that when it comes to slicing up the equity in their new startup companies, the longer you wait to hand out big slices, the better.

That’s because a startup company can create a ton of value in a very short period of time, and in many cases, with relatively little effort.

It’s exciting to get others wrapped into your new idea, and their willingness to bet on your idea may feel like something you want to reward with shares of the company. The issue isn’t whether or not you reward these individuals, but really when you reward them, and with how much of the company.

As a rule of thumb, the longer you wait to slice up the equity (assuming you’re growing the company) the less equity you’ll have to give up. Here are...

Quick. Grab a stack of sticky notes and come with me. We’re going to help you uncover new value hidden in your next initiative.

But wait. Sticky notes? There are so many software tools we could use instead of pen and paper. And a few of those software tools are really great.

How could a pen and paper possibly be used to help tackle something of any real consequence? Isn’t the sticky note just a crutch of the busy person trying to stay organized?!

Used correctly, the sticky note will help you and your teams uncover incredible new value.

When you’ve mastered the sticky note, I give you permission to return to your software tools — if you still want to!

New value defined

Let’s define new value. New value is an advantage or gain you did...

After graduating college I was working as a social worker running a foster care program for children with developmental disabilities when I found an ad online for someone selling a business — Amigos Spanish Program. It was a business that contracted with daycare centers to provide Spanish language classes to young children. I contacted them, reviewed a few spreadsheets and bought the business for $8k. I put it all on credit cards and started my quest towards millions… It was going to be great! I was going to own the biggest Spanish Language Class Business in the World…..or so I hoped.

I lost 20k over the year I owned it before I shut it down and closed the company operations for good. I was 22 years old with 22k in credit card debt wi...

I know a lot. Or rather, I know a lot more than I should naturally know. Specifically, I know a lot about people before I meet them – not through clairvoyance, but through artificial intelligence.

There is nothing strategic in this post. Just some practical suggestions about three tools I am using – Accompany, Notion.ai, and Sende.rs. – to artificially enhance my intelligence.

As I have written about before, I spend a lot of my day networking with entrepreneurs and VCs about their ventures and prospective investments. And sometimes I lose track. Where did I connect with this executive? or, Who asked me to speak with this founder? I no longer lose track. In fact, I am usually ahead of the curve. Here’s how:

Accompany is a ...