5 Ways for Bootstrapped Startups to Get Through the First Year | Entrepreneur.com

August 29, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In the eyes of an investor, a bootstrapped startup that has proven stable and successful within the first year is powerful. It not only raises confidence in the product and the leadership behind it, but also indicates that any invested money will likely not be thrown away.

Ultimately, when it comes to working with investors, it’s important to prove that a startup and the people behind it not only know how to spend money, but know how to bring in additional money.To successfully bootstrap a company in its first year, it’s important to consider a few things:

Veterans on the front lines of small business | CNNMoney

August 31, 2013 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

When I left the Navy in 2000, I noticed veterans weren’t marketed in the best way and were often thought of as being was worse off because of their service.

In 2002, we launched Victory Media to change that perception. The company started by connecting the military and civilians through G.I. Jobs, which helps businesses promote themselves to veterans looking for work. Until then, there weren’t many resources to help veterans transition to the civilian workforce.

Lead Generation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them | AllBusiness

August 26, 2013 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Good content marketing starts with good lead generation. You’ve probably heard something like this before. But what is lead generation in the first place?

Lead generation is the act of collecting a list of names and contact information of people who will play a critical role in your content marketing strategy. These are the people that your search engine optimization SEO team will forge relationships with to promote your products.

Lead generation is usually the first step in any comprehensive SEO strategy. Establishing contacts will get the ball rolling in your campaign, allowing you to reach a targeted audience that will be more receptive to your business.

This is why it is incredibly important that you are able to conduct lead generation early on, and do it the right way. What are some of the pitfalls to avoid? Let’s take a look at some of them.

Tesla Is Beginning To Put The Hurt On The Competition | Forbes

August 26, 2013 ~ lmehit ~ 1 Comment

Upstart automaker Tesla Motors TSLA +3.05% won’t sell as many cars this year as Chevrolet sells in 3 days, but its early success with the all-electric Model S sedan is already keeping the competition up at night. An examination of sales data from across the U.S. and in California for the first half of 2013 paints a picture of just why that is. While Tesla delivered right around 10,000 cars through two quarters, those sales appear to be coming at the expense of BMW, Mercedes, Lexus and Porsche. And Tesla’s sales are remarkably — though perhaps not surprisingly — concentrated in California thus far, with nearly half winding up in the Golden State. As the automaker continues to open new sales and service locations across the country while simultaneously growing its network of high-speed Supercharger stations, things are likely to get a bit worse for the imports.

The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship | Inc.com

August 21, 2013 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

By all counts and measures, Bradley Smith is an unequivocal business success. He’s CEO of Rescue One Financial, an Irvine, California-based financial services company that had sales of nearly $32 million last year. Smith’s company has grown some 1,400 percent in the last three years, landing it at No. 310 on this year’s Inc. 500. So you might never guess that just five years ago, Smith was on the brink of financial ruin–and mental collapse.

Life After Kickstarter | Ypulse

August 21, 2013 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Kickstarter has become an entrepreneurial epicenter, helping innovators earn the money to make their dreams become reality. But what happens after the kick start winds down? The crowdfunding industry raised $2.7 billion in 2011 and is expected to have doubled by the end of this year. For the new products and brands that raise funds on the platforms, expectations are sky high for delivering on crowdfunding promises and raising the bar for innovation with each new project. What is life like for the little brands suddenly launched into the world with the funds they asked for, and an audience of expectant consumers?

Personalized Shopping Startup The Hunt Adds Tyra Banks As Investor | TechCrunch

July 15, 2013 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

The Hunt, a website designed to help shoppers find specific items to buy online, has added Tyra Banks to its list of high-profile backers.

This is not the first time Banks has expressed interest in the tech startup community. The former model added an investment sector to the Tyra Banks Company, Fierce Capital LLC, and told Betabeat she would have liked to have invested in startups such as Uber and Airbnb when they first launched.

The amount of Banks’ investment was not disclosed, but The Hunt CEO Tim Weingarten tells TechCrunch the money will go to improving functionality and user engagement. While Weingarten also declined to give specifics of the direction The Hunt is heading, he says users can expect to see new developments within the next few months. Prior to its most recent investment, The Hunt raised $2 million from Javelin Venture Partners and another $700,000 from Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary (Madonna’s manager) and Rohan Oza.

Weingarten’s website functions through “hunts” that users post to find items they want to purchase. Weingarten tells me 75 percent of the time that a user is satisfied with an answer and declares the hunt “found.” However, this majority is solved by the minority of users — 15 percent of registered users aid in others’ hunts. With over 300,000 registered users and 250,000 products added to submitted hunts, a simple and generalized calculation comes out to an average of 55 hunts from each person in that percentage. That’s not necessarily representative of what actually happens, but it’s still a lot of hunts to be solved.

Cash Scarcity Threatening Berlin’s Thriving Startup Scene | Bloomberg

July 15, 2013July 15, 2013 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Naren Shaam spoke virtually no German and knew only one person in Berlin. That didn’t keep him from founding his travel planning website, GoEuro, there.

“Berlin was the right choice,” said the 30-year-old Harvard Business School graduate, who now has 20 people working for him at his offices in an old industrial building. “I would do it again here.”

Young people like Shaam have made the German capital a global hotbed for startups, drawn by a raw, artsy atmosphere that rivals Brooklyn’s as an icon of global hip. The city is home to 2,500 fledgling tech companies, employing some 30,000 people, according to the Federal Association of German Startups, which was set up in the city last year.

But even as Berlin jostles with London for the title of Europe’s latest Silicon Whatever, a lack of financing threatens its growth. Shaam, for instance, acknowledges that finding backers would have been easier and valuations higher in the U.S. or Britain, though he felt free-wheeling Berlin, with its growing talent pool, was a better fit

Untapped Potential for Expanding Women’s Entrepreneurship Holds Promise to Grow the U.S. Economy, According to Kauffman Report

July 1, 2012 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Women who are capable of starting growth companies that serve global markets may be the nation’s secret weapon for achieving sustained economic growth.

Research shows that startup companies – particularly high-growth startups – are the most fruitful source of new U.S. jobs and offer the economy’s best hope for recovery. However, despite the fact that about 46 percent of the workforce and more than 50 percent of college students are female, and that women have risen to top positions in corporate and university hierarchies, they represent only about 35 percent of startup business owners. Their firms also tend to experience less growth and prosperity than do firms started by men.

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