Free Website Creator | Creating A Free Website | IM creator. Starting a Business: Advice from the Trenches. If you’re like thousands of other designers, programmers and other creative professionals out there, at one point in time you’ve considered starting your own business. Unlike most, you’ve gone against common sense and decided to open shop for yourself. And not just freelance full-time, mind you, but file for the company name, get some stationery, and wade through the legal mumbo-jumbo.
Maybe even get a real office with a water cooler. This article offers real-world advice from the trenches of a small start-up, and is applicable to designers, web developers, copywriters, usability experts and all manner of service providers. Freelancers take heed: there are several items that are just as pertinent to your profession. Write a Business Plan#section1 The most important thing you can do to prepare for starting and operating your own business. A few years ago, new age business rhetoric said forget the business plan and just run with it. File for a Fictitious Name#section2 Funding#section3 Good:
8 Tips for Starting a Business. YogiTunes co-founder Alex King-Harris shares what it takes to succeed as a new business owner. January 11, 2012 Anyone who has ever started their own business will tell you: It's a lot of hard work. You build it from the ground up, put in countless hours to get it started and extensive efforts to keep it running. It becomes your life. Those who start their own businesses have done their homework beforehand—seeking advice, meeting with potential investors, interviewing applicants and comparing different strategies from other businesses, but there are some points of wisdom you just won't know until you actually start a business yourself. Alex King-Harris is the co-founder of the recently launched YogiTunes, which works a lot like iTunes, but specifically for the yoga community.
Instead, yoga instructors were simply creating playlists for their own classes, but were unable to share with one another. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7) Be prepared to make sacrifices. 8) Do what you love to do. When Your Employees Know More Than You. Managing today's highly skilled professionals takes special skills — and not the ones that you may think.
Oftentimes, knowledge workers know more than you do about their jobs. So, how do you manage people who know more about what they do than you do? In such instances, you have to look at leadership through the wants and needs of the worker as opposed to the skills of the leader. Here are some quick tips for effectively managing knowledge workers. Demonstrate passion In days past, working 40 hours per week and taking 4-5 weeks of vacation meant that people often focused less on loving what they do. Today people work 60-80 hours a week and it's crucial that they love their work to avoid burnout. Strengthen abilities With less job security and more global competition, it's critical that people update and refine their skills continuously. Appreciate time People have less time today, which means the value of that time has increased.
What It Takes to Raise $9.5 Million. Talia Mashiach landed $9.5 million in venture capital by filling a technology need in the events industry. January 18, 2012 Talia Mashiach always knew she wanted to start a big, disruptive technology company. But unlike many young entrepreneurs, this 35-year old mother of five was in no hurry. Mashiach’s company, Chicago-based Eved (Hebrew for “servant”), is an online marketplace for meeting and event planners—a $263 billion dollar industry that Mashiach says is woefully behind the curve in terms of technology.
“I was really a technology entrepreneur who saw a huge opportunity to build a big tech solution in the event space,” says Mashiach. For several years, Eved grew steadily—to $9 million in revenue in 2009—and Mashiach proved that she could deliver efficiencies and cost savings to the events industry. Mashiach’s big goal: an IPO. With this most recent capital raise, Mashiach forfeits majority control of her baby. Photo credit: Courtesy subject. Startups Use Four Catalysts to Win Funding: Benjamin L. Hallen. For many aspiring entrepreneurs, the hunt for venture capital is a tale of frustration and woe. Yet an entrepreneurial minority, sometimes viewed as the lucky few, appears to raise money with relative ease. It turns out there is a roadmap to venture-fundraising success. My research with Stanford University’s Kathleen Eisenhardt, which will be published in the February edition of the Academy of Management Journal, identifies four hallmarks of efficient prospecting for money.
By efficiency we mean attempts that take less than two months of formal, almost full-time fundraising, while yielding offers from desired investors. Our conclusions are based on extensive fieldwork, tracking nine Internet-security startups as they sought multiple rounds of venture capital over their first five years. Conventional wisdom holds that successful fundraising requires introductions to investors, a clear pitch and the ability to signal the presence of a high-quality founding team. Casual Dating (Benjamin L. 10 YouTube Videos Every Entrepreneur Should Watch. Startup Advice: How Entrepeneurs Gain Credibility. While talking with young founders in Europe and the US over the last couple months, I have been asked the same question repeatedly -- how can an entrepreneur just starting out gain the necessary credibility to attract capital? It is an important question because, at its heart, a startup investment is an investment in the entrepreneur.
And the earlier stage the investment, the more so this is true. We all know the allure of the elusive "serial entrepreneur" -- the rare breed who has done it before (successfully) and will not fall victim to the same business pitfalls (he'll have to discover new ones). I have backed serial entrepreneurs before and will continue to back them. They have valuable startup knowledge to bring to bear on the company building process that we in the venture business clearly covet. But I have also backed first time entrepreneurs, sometimes just out of school. So how does an entrepreneur with little or no track record gain credibility?