Startup. 5 Trick Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Answer Before Asking For Money. The Top 10 Rookie Mistakes for Entrepreneurs. 4 Networking Mistakes. 5 Steps for Data-Driven Decision Making. 10 Best Digital Tools for Entrepreneurs (2012) As the global economy writhes and rattles, entrepreneurship has ever more clearly emerged as the solution to economic recovery.
Young startups not only create nearly two thirds of America’s new jobs, they also bring forth innovation that often revolutionizes humanity and provides widespread prosperity. The best part is, ease in creating businesses has increased dramatically due in large part to apps and sites that help entrepreneurs. Here are 10 of the best digital tools to help you launch and grow your startup: 1) Weebly Using a simplified drag and drop engine, Weebly makes it possible to create a content rich website in minutes, with loads of features. 2) Legal Zoom Founded by a team of legal and tech experts, Legal Zoom provides users with legal documents without the lawyers. 3) Rock the Post Rock the Post is a social networking platform for entrepreneurs to fund and swap resources.
Founder vs. CEO (Ramanations) A couple weeks ago, I talked with a young and single entrepreneur who told me he was asked twice in recent weeks by different women whether he was founder of a startup.
In both cases, upon hearing his affirmative response, the women responded flirtatiously. Amused, he and I then wondered whether the women would have reacted the same way if he told them he was CEO of a startup. As a happily married guy who has no plans to get into the matchmaking business, our conversation got me thinking on a more practical level about the titles of “CEO” and “Founder”. We all know that they’re two very different things. But I never gave much thought to how different they really are.
The reason I believe this is practical is because both titles are used rather often for entrepreneurs involved in a startup. There can be, and often are, multiple founders. So to all the aspiring entrepreneurs out there, as well as the founders of pre-revenue companies, give careful thought to the CEO title. Entrepreneurs Unpluggd (Interviews With Creative Entrepreneurs) 10 Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs (2012) Almost three years ago we posted “10 Blogs Entrepreneurs Need to Be Reading” and to this day it has remained the most popular post on the Grasshopper blog.
While it’s an excellent list, we feel it’s time for an update. We bring you the 2012 version, 10 Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs. 1. For Entrepreneurs Link: About: Run by serial entrepreneur turned VC David Skok, For Entrepreneurs is exactly what the name implies; a place where entrepreneurs can get solid advice from someone who knows what they are talking about. Seth Kravitz - (Chicago Entrepreneur) Harvard Business Review Blog. Forbes Entrepreneurs Blog. Seed Investment: Angels in Chicago (Part1) This post was written for Technori by Len Feldman.
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Yelp, Tesla Motors, LinkedIn, Zygna: Not all of them are household names, but they’re all highly-successful companies. They also have one thing in common: All of these companies were funded by angel investors who originally worked at a single Silicon Valley company, PayPal. When PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, the company’s founders, and some of its early employees, decided to make seed investments in other startups, along with providing advice, counsel and connections.
Some of those investments have already paid off in a very big way; for example, Peter Thiel’s $500,000 angel investment in Facebook is currently valued at around $1.7 billion. (Thiel received approximately $55 million from the sale of PayPal to eBay.) Chicago has its own network of angels, and most of them came to angel investing with very different backgrounds than their Silicon Valley counterparts. Meet the Angels. Seed Investment: Angels in Chicago (Part 2) Part 1 of “Angels in Chicago” examined the importance of angel investment on startup development and introduced four active Chicago angels.
Part 2 investigates the level of competition for investment deals in Chicago, problems that angels see in business plans and proposals, incubators as an alternative to angels, and offers some sage words of advice for entrepreneurs from the angels. Competition for Deals Recently, Fred Wilson, a well-known venture capitalist and principal of Union Square Ventures in New York, wrote, “…there are a few storm clouds out there that we need to be watching. In particular, I think the competition for "hot" deals is making people crazy and I am seeing many more unnatural acts from investors happening. If it were just valuations rising quickly, I'd be a bit less concerned. In general, Groupon notwithstanding, the answer is no. Nick Rosa’s view is that “We’re pretty practical in Chicago. What Problems do Angels see in Proposals? The Incubator Option.
How to Find a Developer in Chicago. **Special thanks to Griffin Caprio, Pek Pongpaet, Ray Hightower, Dave Hoover, and Raymond Reinhart for their contributions.
. ** How to Hire in Chicago. Ask any entrepreneur to name their single biggest challenge, and most will reply, almost instinctively, with the same answer: Hiring.
Hiring new employees for your business can be an overwhelming and frustrating journey. In addition to being incredibly time-intensive, the process of selecting the right person for the job can be downright daunting. The 5 Minute Guide To Cheap Startup Advertising. The following is a guest post by Rob Walling.
Rob Walling has been an entrepreneur for most of his life and is author of the book Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup. He also authors the top 20 startup blog Software By Rob, that's read by tens of thousands of startup entrepreneurs every month and he owns the leading ASP.NET invoicing software on the market in addition to a handful of profitable web properties. Imagine that you've just completed version 1 of your product and you're preparing for launch. You’ve greased the wheels with a few bloggers, targeted some keywords with SEO, created a bit of linkbait, and scheduled the press release to launch in the morning.
At this point your co-founder turns to you and says: “What are we going to do with the $300 we have stashed away for advertising?” The half-life of advertising traffic is zero. Strategy #1: Try to Get Permission Seriously consider offering something in exchange for a visitor's email address. BuySellAds (Online Advertising) Crazy Egg Web Analytics (Tracking, Website Heatmaps and Usability Software) Click Tale (Heatmaps, Usability & Analytics)