June, 2021

article thumbnail

6 Key Rules To Stay Competitive In The Digital World

Startup Professionals Musings

In case you hadn’t noticed, the key elements of a competitive advantage for your business have changed as businesses move online, and your domain is instantly global. The old approaches of controlling distribution channels, saturating retail, and methodically scaling your brand awareness don’t protect you anymore. The real challenge is to win massive consumer preference repeatedly.

article thumbnail

Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2021 Lessons Learned Presentations

Steve Blank

We just finished our 6th annual Hacking for Defense class at Stanford. What a year. With the pandemic winding down it finally feels like the beginning of the end. This was my sixth time teaching a virtual class during the lockdown – and for our students likely their 15th or more. Hacking for Defense has teams of students working to understand and solve national security problems.

Lean 416
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Why Philosophy and Entrepreneurship?

Feld Thoughts

Since releasing my newest book The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors I’ve been continually getting the questions “Why Philosophy and Entrepreneurship?” and “Why Nietzsche?” Dave and I cover this right off the bat in the book, so I thought I’d toss up an excerpt that addresses the question with part of my own origin story with Dave.

article thumbnail

4 Ways IoT is Rewiring How the World Works

ReadWriteStart

There are few technologies in the world today that can make a Trillion-dollar impact on the global economy. IoT (Internet of Things) is one of them. McKinsey, the global think tank, estimates that IoT will have an economic impact of between $4 trillion and $11 trillion by 2025 ( Source ). Source: Mckinsey. IoT brings organizations a whole new way of working wherein it becomes easier to control, manage, and monitor remotely located hardware.

article thumbnail

Building Healthy Innovation Ecosystems for Your Projects

Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

article thumbnail

How Can Pursuing an MA in Data Analysis Benefit Your Online Business?

The Startup Magazine

Accomplished entrepreneurs often pride themselves on being able to spot a gap in the market from a mile away. However, it is worth noting that this trait can be taught, provided that one is willing to commit themselves to the pursuit of new knowledge. Suppose you happen to be the owner of an online business and would like to nurture your entrepreneurial skillset.

Analytics 174
article thumbnail

How to Use Storytelling in Business to Build Captivated Audiences

ConversionXL

Who. What. When. Where. Why. Answer the proverbial “Five W’s” through storytelling, and you’ll build meaningful connections with your audience. Fail to do so, and you’ll likely lose their attention. Not every piece of content needs to tell a story. Applying storytelling in the right place, at the right time, in the right way makes all the difference.

Audience 153

More Trending

article thumbnail

Why Your Business’s Purpose Should Be More Than Making Money

Up and Running

Most companies are focused squarely on the extrinsic motivation of making a profit to expand their operations and satisfy their shareholders. Today, however, we are witnessing a shift toward a more intrinsic motivation for both companies and their employees. Once united merely by their commitment to providing value for their companies and their customers, they are now united in being of value to society.

Framework 191
article thumbnail

Twitter Spaces and Nietzsche

Feld Thoughts

Last week I was scheduled to do a live interview with Eliot Peper about The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche. He opted to use Twitter Spaces and diligently tested it out a couple of days beforehand to confirm that it would work. Nevertheless, we immediately ran into difficulties, and after ten minutes, we decided to bail on the interview and reschedule.

article thumbnail

What Makes Employees Productive in a New Startup?

ReadWriteStart

After launching a new startup, you’ll be interested in growing the business as quickly as possible, thus generating more revenue, securing more stability, and improving your reputation as well. But one of the secrets to effective scaling is an efficient team; if your employees are working productively and consistently, they’ll be capable of making your vision a reality.

Employee 127
article thumbnail

5 Tips for improving your startup website’s accessibility

The Startup Magazine

As a start-up, you need all the sales you can get to survive the first few years in business. Most start-ups throw money away by not being accessible to users. Around 97% of business websites are not accessible to disabled visitors which leads to a bad user experience and can even end in lawsuits. In this article, we will look at some common website accessibility issues disabled users face when a website isn’t accessible to them and how you can make small changes to your website to make

Startup 143
article thumbnail

How to Create a Compelling Unique Selling Proposition

ConversionXL

Why should customers buy from you? How do you stand out and solve their problems better than anybody else? Every marketer knows these are important questions, but finding the answers can be a challenge. In this guide, you’ll learn how to differentiate your business and attract your ideal customers by creating a unique selling proposition. We’ll cover why a unique selling proposition is important, how to uncover what your customers are hungry for and share a framework for developing and testing a

article thumbnail

8 Ways To Ensure Customer Interactions Are Memorable

Startup Professionals Musings

As a consumer, I rarely pay attention to your marketing pitch, but I certainly always remember a exceptionally positive total experience with your team, based on a memorable set of interactions from first contact to discussions with friends. Yet, as a business consultant, I often find minimal focus on improving employee engagement and assessing their customer-facing performance.

Customer 369
article thumbnail

How to Start an Amazon FBA Business in 2021 — 5 Steps to Success

Up and Running

When you research different online business opportunities, one of the first suggestions you’ll find is selling through Amazon FBA. It’s been a popular way to make money for a few years now, but is it still worth it in 2021? We decided to chat with an actual Amazon seller to find out. After speaking with Alex Shelton and hearing his story, we can safely say this is definitely still a profitable business model.

China 117
article thumbnail

Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company’s Critical Functions and Teams

Feld Thoughts

Matt Blumberg has a new book out titled Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company’s Critical Functions and Teams. It’s a follow-up to his previous book, Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business. I’ve been working with Matt since 2000. That year, we merged two companies: Return Path and Veripost. Matt was the co-founder/CEO of Return Path.

article thumbnail

How the COVID-Preneur Led to a Micro Business Renaissance

Austin Startup

This past year has seen disruption unfold across almost all sectors as many people had to pivot the way they work and live. One pivot that was trending before the pandemic and largely exacerbated by it was the move towards business ownership by more and more individuals. In fact, our team at Austin-based ZenBusiness , a one-stop-shop to form, run and grow a business, recently announced that more than 100,000 micro businesses have been formed using the platform since the onset of the pandemic?

article thumbnail

How Can You Grow Your Instagram Followers Rapidly?

The Startup Magazine

It would seem that growing your Instagram account organically is more complicated than ever before. Most of us have seen a decrease in interaction and follower numbers, which could be incredibly stressful because you think you’re doing it correctly. Whether you have a personal or business account it is vital that you grow your follower count. There are several ways you can go about growing Instagram followers.

article thumbnail

21 Unique Selling Proposition Examples (and Why they Work)

ConversionXL

Your unique selling proposition (USP) is what separates you from the competition. For customers, it’s a reason to trust and choose you ahead of someone else. For you, it’s the linchpin that powers your sales and marketing efforts. But what does a USP look like? In this article, we’ll demonstrate what makes an effective USP by sharing some of the best examples from the worlds of SaaS, e-commerce, and DTC.

Audience 149
article thumbnail

6 New Venture Realities To Target Your Funding Effort

Startup Professionals Musings

Entrepreneurs who require funding for their startup have long counted on self-accredited high net worth individuals (“angels”) to fill their needs, after friends and family, and before they qualify for institutional investments (“VCs”). The many crowd funding platforms on the Internet, led still by Kickstarter and IndieGoGo , were expected by many to put regular people in charge of funding new opportunities, and kill the need for angel groups.

article thumbnail

8 Effective Payroll Tips for Small Business Owners

Up and Running

Even on the leanest and most tightly run teams, payroll can be a tough process to unravel. For example, it can be more difficult to maintain strict employee privacy. Underpayments and overpayments are more common and harder to detect. Accuracy, standardization, backup systems, and other requirements can be overlooked and possibly trigger a time-consuming audit.

article thumbnail

27 Entrepreneurs Share Their Tips and Tricks of Staying Motivated

Hearpreneur

When the going gets rough in business, you’ll need motivation to keep moving. Motivating yourself can be hard but practicing consistent habits such as reminding yourself of why you started can be a major boost. A network of friends and partners can also serve as a great assurance and reminder that you’re not walking. Here are the various ways entrepreneurs and business owners stay motivated in business. #1- Gratitude.

article thumbnail

Leading by Example: Why It's Not Important Where Eric Adams Lives

This is going to be BIG.

“The term 'residence' shall be deemed to mean that place where a person maintains a fixed, permanent and principal home and to which he, wherever temporarily located, always intends to return.” Putting aside the archaic gendering of the law, this one sentence written into New York State’s Election Law that defines the residency requirements of candidates is one of the laziest and most ridiculous pieces of text I’ve ever seen.

article thumbnail

Article Marketing and the Power of Human-Approved Article Directories

The Startup Magazine

I recently began looking into article marketing as a method of search engine optimization. For an experiment, I wrote an informational article related to the product a friend of mine manufactures, and submitted it to human-approved articles site, HubPages. This morning I did a Google search for this product, and found the article I wrote: at #16 in the list, way above the listing for his website!

Marketing 158
article thumbnail

How to Build a Product Launch Strategy

ConversionXL

An effective product launch strategy helps you generate awareness, build intrigue, and validate your product positioning. But it’s not a linear journey. The best product launches take into account the product lifecycle—understanding where it fits into the bigger picture, and how to transition through each phase. In this article, we’ll explain how to build a resilient product launch strategy that survives a non-linear journey.

Product 96
article thumbnail

Budgeting for Nonprofit Organizations: The Board’s Guide

Board Effect

Managing a budget for a nonprofit organization is much like planning a household budget, except that there are generally more sources of income and more categories of expenses. In both cases, a sound budget is important for financial sustainability and provides a guide for financial health and sustainability. A budget isn’t a prediction, a forecast, a target or a wish list.

article thumbnail

6 Stories of Successful New Entrepreneurs to Inspire Your Business

Up and Running

New tech entrepreneurs can find it difficult to surmount the onslaught of obstacles to getting a new business off the ground. Some days can feel so frustrating that you consider giving up. However, the challenges you face are the same ones that every successful small business owner has faced and then surmounted in some way or another. It can be instructive and inspirational to hear about businesses that triumphed over adversity.

Columbus 134
article thumbnail

15 Entrepreneurs Reveal How They Break Through The Noise With Their Business

Hearpreneur

How do you gain the attention of your preferred audience in an era of stiff competition? The truth is, both new and existing business struggle to create a sustained buzz around their business. But it’s not always difficult as it sounds, it starts with thinking like the consumer, creating an experience for them and ensuring your products align with their values.

article thumbnail

Hybrid Work Model: How to Make It Easy

Transformify

2020 penned the most challenging excerpts of our personal as well as professional lives. From the nine to five work routine to the laptop on the couch no routine, life painted a major shift for everyone. The hard times did pass but left an imprint like a storm. As businesses get back to work after an unfortunate 2020, they’re using a hybrid work model to conduct their business activities.

article thumbnail

Boost Your Customer Leads with Los Angeles SEO

The Startup Magazine

With the limited businesses that were allowed to operate this past year due to the pandemic, the online market and electronic commerce became more relevant than ever before. In the past, we enjoyed going to the malls, spending countless hours at local shops, and having a great time at your favorite restaurant, but sadly that all became impossible to do with the fear of getting the virus.

article thumbnail

The 3 Essential Ingredients For Long-Term Happy Clients

Duct Tape Marketing

The 3 Essential Ingredients For Long-Term Happy Clients written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing. Agency Spark Podcast with David Gersh. The Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode is designed to spark ideas you can put into practice for your agency today.

article thumbnail

You Don’t Need Permission

Steve Blank

I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Suresh, an ex-student I’ve known for a long time. A U.S. citizen he was now the head of sales and marketing for a company in London selling medical devices to hospitals in the UK National Health Service. His boss had identified the U.S. as their next market and wanted him to set up a U.S. salesforce. Suresh understood that the U.S. health system was very different from the system in the UK, not just the regulatory regime through the FDA, but the reimburse

Lean 436
article thumbnail

10 Hints That Now May Be The Time For A New Venture

Startup Professionals Musings

Many budding entrepreneurs struggle mightily with that first step – out of their comfort zone and into the unknown. They keep asking people like me whether the time is right, and the truth is that there’s never an ideal time to start your own business. It’s like starting a personal relationship, if you wait for exactly the right time, you’ll never do it.

Salary 422
article thumbnail

Burning Platform: Leading with authenticity

deal architect

In the 49th episode of the series we have a repeat appearance by Sabrina Horn, CEO of Horn Strategy We discuss her new book "Make it, don't fake it". The book shows how authentic leadership eliminates the need for the.

article thumbnail

What Mistakes Do VCs Make When Fundraising?

Both Sides of the Table

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of talking to Samir Kaji on the Venture Unlocked podcast about a wide range of topics that we as venture capitalists think about everyday, including: How to build a generational firm?—?retaining partner talent and finding the complimentary networks and skillsets firms need to succeed over time The state of venture today and how COVID crammed 10 years of technological change into one accelerated year The human psychology of decision making and one book I think

LP 375
article thumbnail

Essential Tech Tips For Businesses

The Startup Magazine

Every business needs to make sure that it is using tech in the best possible manner as it can have a positive impact on just about every aspect of the business. When used correctly, tech can streamline operations, make work easier for your team, increase output, reduce costs, promote the business, keep customers happy and much more. Tech can also be an area that many businesses struggle with, especially as it seems to constantly be evolving and developing.

article thumbnail

People-First Capitalism

Reid Hoffman

When COVID-19 upended the travel industry last year, Airbnb was among its earliest victims, losing 80% of their business in the first two months of the pandemic. Such a blow would leave any CEO reeling, if not prove fatal to the company as a whole. While many travel industry leaders chose to “go dark,” as Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky put it , while they decided how to navigate next steps, Chesky took a different approach: He got candid.

article thumbnail

Your Product is Not Their Problem

Steve Blank

There are no facts inside your building, so get the heck outside. I just had a call with Lorenz, a former business school student who started a job at a biotech startup making bacteria to take CO2 out of the air. His job was to find new commercial markets for this bacteria at scale. And he wanted to chat about how to best enter a new market. His market research found that the concrete industry contributes between 5 and 10% of the world’s carbon emissions.

Product 433