Early stage companies are understandably excited to demonstrate their concept, whether to friends, potential investors, or their office-mates. In fact, it may be essential to their survival to do so, since they can’t attract investors and users without showing them what they’re doing. But companies that are considering patent protection for their concepts should be […]

While many business challenges are common for all founders, there are unique lessons that women entrepreneurs have the opportunity to learn in business. Here are several essential lessons I’ve learned as a successful female entrepreneur and what every female founder should know along the way: 1. Own your success There are several things that, as […]

In today’s startup marketplace, we tend to overvalue founding teams with experience building technology products and undervalue teams with domain expertise in the particular market being addressed. Let’s consider two fictional founders, Bill & Ted, creating two different startups to attack the same market: Bill is a great engineer. He worked at Google for 5 […]

“Enterprise technology” and “beautiful design” aren’t typically used in the same sentence. But just because the application is made for IT-users, doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful or easy to use. Believe me, I know – I relied on that kind of software earlier in my career as a data analyst. What exactly does enterprise […]

As companies grow, the agile culture of “think fast, act fast’ must eventually play nicely with the anchor of sustainability. This transition can be a bit of a mind-bend and even feel like operating in two worlds, especially in the beginning. The question becomes: “is it possible to integrate consistent systems and processes and still […]

All business verticals have their own mechanics, some of which aren’t as obvious from the outside looking in. I’ve spent the last 8 years in the wonderful world of ratings, where the acronym PEARL is an easy way to remember an important mechanic. The great thing about PEARL is that it applies to any situation […]

Our friends at the Young Entrepreneurship Council asked eight entrepreneurs to share their top tips for pitching investors, based on their own success and failures. Here’s what they found: Share your vision, not a product tour It’s a rookie error for an entrepreneur to pitch an investor with the equivalent of a product tour. Investors are usually more […]