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The rise of the Growth Hacker
The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After pr...

Crowdfunding is an incredible tool for entrepreneurs seeking capital at any stage of their business. Startup businesses can validate their idea through a rewards crowdfund, giving them great traction to share with potential investors through a follow-on equity crowdfund.

A successful rewards crowdfunding raise (typically offering pre-orders of a product), is becoming a common precursor to raising equity investments from prominent angel investors seeking an equity stake in the company.

Angel Investors and Equity Crowdfunding

Before crowdfunding, angel investments were often found within an entrepreneur’s own network. Family, friends, and close business associates were all pivotal in an entrepreneur’s search for capital, due to a ban on the p...

I believe in 5 years most designers won’t approach creating a brand the way they do now, and for good reason…

Creating a logo and all of the associated branding material requires a lot of experimenting.

Experimenting requires repetition and repetition wastes time.

As a brand designer myself, I wanted to quickly preview variations of a logo, typefaces, colors, and patterns all together on a variety of collateral items. I also wanted a way to then easily output these assets in ready-to-use formats that didn’t require hours of production work.

These tasks are tedious and could very easily be driven by software…not endless clicks of my mouse.

This is why we built Emblem.

Emblem was created to not only help non-designer types get started on thei...

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to have a first-hand look at several marketing plans, budgets and strategies — quite a few, of which, that have been weak and sub-optimal.

I’ve noticed an alarming trend within small businesses and startups across all industries: After experiencing a small degree of success from their current efforts, they get complacent. Teams that were once innovative and curious go on autopilot — pre-allocating funds to the same channels they’ve always used to connect with their audience.

In the beginning many startups experiment with a myriad of marketing channels, ad placements and creative direction to figure out what works for their target market. But, after a few short years, they s...

If you understand how venture capital firms work, it’ll be pretty easy to know what a venture capital group invests in.

Every company starts with an idea, but when it comes to writing checks, venture capital groups tend to look for ideas that have already turned into operating companies.

Venture capital groups are not just broad market investors that put their money wherever there is a potential cash upside. They specifically look for high risk, high growth industries and opportunities where there is a lot of M&A and IPO activity. They need their investments to become liquid in a short period of time, so companies that are just profitable aren’t good enough. They need to be purchased or taken public for them to matter to a v...

Alexander Graham Bell once said, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. Since we’ve already entered a new year, I hope that you’ve been making your goals in preparing for 2017. Sure, you may not finish or complete every goal but your goal will put you in a better position to handle any uncertainty that is thrown your way. But, what exactly are the type of goals you should start planning for this year?

HERE ARE 12 SMALL BUSINESS TREND PREDICTIONS THAT DESERVE YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION.

SMALL BUSINESSES WILL GO GLOBAL.

Globalization is a hot topic — especially following Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. While it may do damage to some industries and sectors, there’s no denying that it’s also going to prese...

In the startup world, payment is validation. If someone is willing to pay you for your service, you’re onto something. If no one will pay you, then you’ve got an issue with your message, your offer, product/market fit, something.

But payment can be misleading.

If you’re not selling at all, it’s clear that there is a problem. If you’re selling a ton, it’s clear that you’re validated.

But what if you’re just getting some orders?

I had a startup that provided feedback on online dating profiles that limped along for a couple years, never having great market fit. It was hard to market, and the model itself made it hard for customers to need to come back.

I should have taken it down it after a year. I eventually killed it after 2.5 years, after p...

Crowdfunding has become the go-to resource for entrepreneurs looking to launch new products and businesses. It’s an incredible tool to gather support and test ideas on a smaller scale, before moving ahead full-force on a business. That said, it also requires entrepreneurs to put in plenty of work in order to be successful.

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz surrounding rewards crowdfunding projects that are failing to make good on their promises – delivering rewards late, if at all, and unable to detail their plan to supply the products pre-ordered by backers. Some would say that it is crowdfunding’s biggest problem to solve, and has led to heated discussion over who is to blame when a backer is left high and dry without the rewards the...

First-Mover Advantage is an idea that just won’t die. I hear it from every class of students, and each time I try to put a stake through its heart.

Here’s one more attempt in trying to explain why confusing testosterone with strategy is a bad idea.

First mover advantage — great bad idea

The phrase “first mover advantage” was first popularized in a 1988 paper by a Stanford Business School professor, David Montgomery, and his co-author, Marvin Lieberman.[1]

This one phrase became the theoretical underpinning of the out-of-control spending of startups during the dot-com bubble. Over time the idea that winners in new markets are the ones who have been the first (not just early) entrants into their categories became unchallenged conventional wi...

When you’re just starting out and excited to share your new business with the world, building your website can be an overwhelming process. As you’ve built your business from the ground up, you have no doubt struggled to find the right way to pitch your idea. Now that you’ve found the right messaging for your story, it’s crucial that you create a website that will capture people’s attention and make a lasting impression.

Here at Startups.co we’ve seen our fair share of startup websites—the good, the bad, and the ugly. We created the infographic below to hopefully make this fraught process a little easier, and ensure that your startup website stands out.