Starting a Business: Advice from the Trenches - Aurora. 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: Guide To Writing A Business Plan. Entrepreneur Startup Advice | Both Sides of The Table. I usually tell people that everything I learned about being an entrepreneur I learned by F’ing up at my first company. I think the sign of a good entrepreneur is the ability to spot your mistakes, correct quickly and not repeat the mistakes. I made plenty of mistakes. Below are some of the lessons I learned along the way. If there’s a link on a title below I’ve written the post, if not I plan to. The summary of each posting will be here but the full article requires you to follow the links. For now it’s mostly an outline for me to follow (in no particular order). Disclaimer: I ran two SaaS software companies. 1. 2. You also need to consider founder scenarios, ownership, prenuptials and stock options.
Learning to work with lawyers. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 20 best startups of 2011. Founders: Jonathan Marcus, David Marcus, and Jack Zerby Funding: $3 Million+ in funding led by Alex Zubillaga of the Rhone Group. Additional angel investors include Dave Morin of Path, David Tisch of TechStars, Vimeo founder Jake Lodwick, Joey Levin of Mindspark, and John Foley of Barnes & Noble. What it is: An incredibly easy to use e-commerce site. Goodsie makes setting up stores very similar to setting up Wordpress blogs. Users choose from multiple layout options, color pallets, background patterns, and typography without ever having to muck in code.
After writing about Goodsie's launch, I tried the service myself. Here's a video about how Goodsie works: Goodsie.com from Hiidef on Vimeo. 10 Essential PR Tips for Startups. Erica Swallow is a technology and lifestyle writer. Sign up for her course on "PR for Startups" to learn more about getting media coverage for your fledgling business. It can be challenging for unknown startups to garner press attention — budgets are tight, relationships with journalists may not be that strong and explaining a new concept is difficult.
Not to mention, early-stage startups usually only employ a few people focused on product and development. Therefore, marketing and public relations are often tackled piecemeal by whomever has time. Good press, though, can be one of the biggest drivers for startups looking to grow their user bases, and as a result, a pretty important component for success. As a tech journalist, I've been pitched by hundreds of companies and have developed a taste for what works and what doesn't. 1. Before you begin pitching your startup, stop to think about what is truly newsworthy, especially to the publications you’re targeting. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 500 Startups Peels Back The Curtain On Its Third And Largest Batch Yet. It’s Halloween, so it’s the perfect day to unveil the newest group of 500 Startups’ “little monsters”.
Yes, this is the name that founder Dave McClure and his partner in crime Christine Tsai give to all the rock star entrepreneurs that grace the halls of their Mountain View offices. 500 Startups, as you may have heard by now, is the early-stage seed fund and incubator program founded in 2010 by the globe-trotting angel investor, which seeds between $25K to $250K in each of its startups that meet its “Three Ds” criteria: Design, data, and distribution. The fall batch kicked off on October 10 and includes 34 awesome startups, which makes this its largest roster to date (the initial batch consisted of 12 startups and the second came in at 21, bringing 500 Startups’ total to 174).
The “Demo Days” for this batch of startups has not yet been confirmed, but we do know that they will take place sometime in January 2012. 300milligrams is a priority inbox for team conversations. 500 Startups Peels Back The Curtain On Its Third And Largest Batch Yet. Startups for the rest of us. The ultimate startup lesson: knowing what matters — Cleantech News and Analysis. Interview #1: Hiten Shah, co-founder of CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics | Startup Guide for Non-Coders.
Interview #1: Hiten Shah, co-founder of CrazyEgg and KISSmetrics Neither Hiten nor his co-founder Neil had any technical experience before starting their first company. Sampling 80 different developers and development firms, they found quality product people through trial and error. Hiten and Neil went through about twenty different products and 7-10 businesses before getting some serious traction with web analytics products CrazyEgg and, later, KISSmetrics.
When asked how Hiten led a technical team w/o a technical background, he had a few bits of advice: 1) Learn as much as possible from your engineers without being annoying and use Google to make up the difference 2) Hire and work with engineers who can communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical people 3) Be clear about your expectations, the company culture, and what you look for in a developer 4) Work with developers before hiring them But how do you attract technical talent to work with you in the first place? How to Make It as a First-Time Entrepreneur. Vinicius Vacanti is co-founder and CEO of Yipit. Next posts on how to acquire users for free and how to raise a Series A. Don’t miss them by subscribing via email or via twitter. If you want your start-up to become the next big thing, it’s not good enough to just build a great product.
Unless you can afford to buy users, you’ll have to grow virally. The difference between getting one of your new users to convince one friend to sign up and that person getting two new friends, is huge. Assuming you start with 1,000 new users, after 9 months, it’s the difference between having 9,000 users and 511,000 users! Below are 9 ways your start-up can grow virally: Get Your Users to Spread the Word Get users to tell others about your app simply by using it. Get users to push content they create on your app to Facebook, Twitter. Increasing Conversion Adjust your product to become more mainstream. Conclusion Building a great product is only half the battle.
Why Some Startups Succeed And Others Fail: 10 Fascinating Harvard Findings. The legal checklist every startup should reference. I’ve been a corporate lawyer for more than 17 years, and there are certain fundamental legal mistakes that I’ve seen startups repeatedly make (many of which surface when investors are conducting their due-diligence investigation). Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to provide a simple checklist for startups that includes links to indepth posts for a more detailed discussion. Startup checklist: 1.
Form a corporation, not an LLC (see post here) or a partnership (see post here). 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. None of this is rocket science. Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, PLLC, a law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs. [Image via Yes Man/Shutterstock] Grow Detroit | Grown in the D. The Detroit Startup List is a directory of Detroit Startups, Michigan Incubators and Accelerators, Groups & Meetups, and venture capital resources. (Last updated March 31, 2014) Quick links: Detroit Incubators and Accelerators Detroit Coworking Spaces Detroit Startup Events, Meetup Groups Michigan Venture capital and investment 1. 2. 3. We are a proud Detroit Startup. 4. Detroit startups. Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas. March 2012 One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are.
In this essay I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. Any one of them could make you a billionaire. That might sound like an attractive prospect, and yet when I describe these ideas you may notice you find yourself shrinking away from them. Don't worry, it's not a sign of weakness. Arguably it's a sign of sanity. The biggest startup ideas are terrifying. There's a scene in Being John Malkovich where the nerdy hero encounters a very attractive, sophisticated woman.
Here's the thing: If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me. That's what these ideas say to us. This phenomenon is one of the most important things you can understand about startups. [1] You'd expect big startup ideas to be attractive, but actually they tend to repel you. 1. The best ideas are just on the right side of impossible. 2. 3. 4. 5.