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. Guide To Writing A Business Plan. Entrepreneur Startup Advice. 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. 20 best startups of 2011. 10 Essential PR Tips for Startups. 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. 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. 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. Below are 9 ways your start-up can grow virally: Why Some Startups Succeed And Others Fail: 10 Fascinating Harvard Findings. The legal checklist every startup should reference. Grow Detroit. 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. 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. 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.