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Trying to be a business leader by instilling fear in your employees and partners is never a good approach, but it is particularly devastating in a startup. Yet I see this autocratic approach used all too often by new entrepreneurs, most of whom are not natural tyrants, but who are fighting to mask Read More

Even though ‘big data’ has now been around for several years, the opportunities for startups seem to keep growing, just as the amount of data keeps growing. According to Forbes, over the last two years alone 90 percent of the data in the world was generated.. This data comes from sensors, social me Read More

Most business mentors tell me that the single biggest problem they have to deal with in small companies is the lack of open, honest, and effective communication, both from the top down and from the bottom up. Some entrepreneurs forget that talking is not communicating. Fortunately these skills can Read More

Marketing is everything these days. You can have the best technology, but if customers don’t know you exist, or they don’t know how your technology solves a real problem for them, your startup will fail. Yet I see many technology entrepreneurs that focus on the basics of marketing too little and to Read More

In my experience as a business advisor and angel investor these days, I seem to more frequently hear from entrepreneurs and business owners with “can’t-fail” or “get-rich-quick” ideas. In my view, these are the least likely to succeed, partially because the people behind them have the wrong expecta Read More

Most of you business owners I know are looking forward to the day when your product, team and processes begin to mature, and your business growth keeps tilting upward as you scale. You expect to relax a bit, and relish in the success that you see coming. Unfortunately, without your proactive effort Read More

It’s always been tough to start a new business, even when the bottom line was just making a profit to stay alive. A few years ago, a second focus of sustainability (“green”) was added as a requirement for respectability. Now I almost always hear a third mandate - social responsibility. Entrepreneur Read More

One of the first harsh realities that every entrepreneur has to learn is that most of the things that are critical to startup success are outside of their direct control. Just because you dream it and build it, doesn’t mean they will come – that encompasses not only customers, but also investors, p Read More

The good news is that a recent Kauffman Early-Stage Entrepreneurship (KESE) Index shows the highest level of new business activity recorded in the last two decades, and the cost of entry at an all-time low. The bad news is that it’s still a jungle fight for survival for entrepreneurs of all ages an Read More

Every startup lucky enough to get some traction gets to the point where they decide to hire some “regular employees” for sales, marketing, and administrative tasks. Then they are surprised to see productivity and creativity take a big dip. What they should be doing is hiring only “entrepreneurs,” m Read More