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Most of you new venture founders I meet as an angel investor seem convinced that starting the business is the hardest part. You look forward to the day when your business becomes self-sustaining, and settles into a long-term growth curve, ensuring financial success. Unfortunately, sustainability is Read More

Willingness to take a risk is the hallmark of a serious entrepreneur. That’s why one of the first questions that potential investors ask is “How much of your own money, and friends and family, have you put into the new business?” If you won’t risk yours, you won’t get investors to risk theirs. Read More

Although professional investors may discount the impact of crowdfunding, they can’t argue with the growth of this new industry in the last few years. According to statistics by Fundly, crowdfunding contributed $34 billion in funding last year around the world, including peer-to-peer lending. That e Read More

In this era of rapid market and technological change, I know I have to challenge my small business advisory clients to keep innovating and stay ahead of the game. As you can imagine, it is human nature to look for a stable and unchanging business process, after all the pivots and chaos of starting Read More

Now is the time to be an entrepreneur and create a business from your passion. The cost of rolling out a business has never been lower – it only takes a few hundred dollars to incorporate a Limited Liability Corp (LLC) online, create your own website, use social media to get attention, and you are Read More

Most of the people I know in business are just plodding along, working hard, and hoping that their natural talent, with a little random luck, will somehow keep them ahead of the crowd, and let them enjoy their life as well. They don’t realize that you can make your own luck as an entrepreneur, star Read More

In my experience in large businesses as well as years of advising startups, I see far too much focus on product skills, and too little on people and process skills. In my view, this focus on the wrong skill set is the primary reason why over half of new businesses fail in the first five years, and Read More

As an entrepreneur, I understand your passion when pitching your solution to investors and customers, but passion alone won’t make one more technology pitch stand out above all the rest. I can tell you from my own experience as an advisor and an investor, what everyone remembers is a good personal Read More

Market opportunities for your new venture are now immediately worldwide, thanks to the pervasive access to the Internet and social media communication. But this doesn’t mean that you can treat the world as one big homogeneous market, ignoring the vastly different geographic cultures, economic, and Read More

Every business executive and entrepreneur I know believes they are good or even great leaders, but as an advisor I often hear a different story from their team. You probably have a few stories of your own about a least favorite boss who was always too busy to listen, gave nothing but critical feedb Read More