BizSugar.com › User › martinzwilling › Published

With the uptick in the economy, as an active startup mentor, I’m seeing a new surge of entrepreneurs and startups, with the commensurate scramble for funding. There just aren’t enough Angel investors and VCs to go around. Thus I’m getting more questions on new mechanisms, like crowd funding, or goi Read More

Every business leader has blind spots which limit their effectiveness and success, but due to ego, over-confidence, or deferential subordinates, many live totally in the dark. Some are smart and humble enough to assume that they don’t know what they don’t know, but lack an effective process for shi Read More

Every investor in your startup, even friends and family, normally expects a share of your company (equity), which means your return for all your effort goes down quickly. Thus founders seeking funding for a good cause or a new technology often seize on grants from universities, government agencies Read More

As an advisor to entrepreneurs and active angel investor, I often get questions about the realism of the Shark Tank TV series, compared to professional investor negotiations. The simple answer is that with all the staging of TV lights and billionaire investors, it’s nothing like Silicon Valley. Yet Read More

Relationships are the key to survival and success for entrepreneurs, and first impressions usually turn into lasting impressions. As an advisor to many early-stage entrepreneurs, I caution them to always be prepared for that chance meeting with a famous investor, a potential partner or an industry Read More

Traditionally, the majority of entrepreneurs have been logical thinkers, problem solvers, with full attention to details. These are the stereotypical left-brain engineers. Yet I see a big shift from the knowledge age, with its left-brain foundation, to a critical focus today on visualization, creat Read More

Many first-time entrepreneurs find themselves unable to bootstrap their startups, and also unable to find early funding at the venture capital level or even with angel investors. Their only recourse is that first tier of investors, fondly called Friends, Family and Fools. These are the only people Read More

The best part of being an entrepreneur is having the independence to make your own decisions, the flexibility for a better work/life balance, and personal satisfaction from driving change. But nobody said it would be easy. The road to business success is filled with challenges and frustrations that Read More

These days every new entrepreneur understands that an innovative product or service is necessary, but not sufficient, to start a business. You have to build a web presence with marketing content to get visibility above the almost 300 million other new websites created last year, and attract the cus Read More

Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Non-organic growth would include OEM relationships, finding Read More