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According to the entrepreneurs I advise, the biggest challenge they typically face in starting a new business is funding. It consistently takes a huge amount of time and effort to find an investor you can trust, and that constrains your efforts in developing the solution you envision. People always Read More

It’s hard to be successful in any business when your customers can’t find you, or they find you and still can’t figure out whether your solution works for them. Thus I was surprised to see in a recent CNBC survey that 45 percent of small businesses still don’t have a website. These are missing a ma Read More

As a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, I often feel the frustration of someone trying to build a startup in the wrong place and time, and wrongly attributing their struggle to personal limitations. It may not seem fair, but passion and commitment alone are not enough to make your startup successful Read More

Strategic decisions set the overall direction for your business, whereas operational decisions set day-to-day operations. Unfortunately, most of the entrepreneurs who contact me for guidance only seem to work on strategic issues when they are in a crisis, such as losing a major distributor or being Read More

When the business is struggling, most business owners I know feel like anything but a leader. They start second-guessing their own vision, and are prone to making snap decisions suggested by someone else, in lieu of their carefully crafted processes and metrics. Entrepreneurs who can keep their coo Read More

While spending years in a big company as an employee and an executive, I heard many people talking about jumping the corporate ship, dreaming of being an entrepreneur, and totally in charge of their own destiny. Fortunately for many of them it was all talk and no action, saving them from a world of Read More

Having satisfied customers is no longer enough to keep you ahead of competitors. The bar has been raised to having “delighted” customers. Customer delight is defined as surprising the customer by exceeding his or her expectations, thus creating a positive emotional reaction. This emotional reaction Read More

As an occasional angel investor, I always ask for a business pitch to get me in the mood. I’m still amazed at how many technical entrepreneurs don’t have a business pitch, and offer me their product pitch or product spec instead. I’m a technologist, so I always love to learn about the product, but Read More

Just as national cultures influence and shape a country, so does the startup culture set by founder strategy drive the future of a new venture. In top current companies, such as Google, Apple, and Netflix, cultural strategies that include greater employee freedom and fostering creativity are the no Read More

Entrepreneurs seem to have blinders on when looking at competitors. Generally they are so focused on killing competitors that they fail to see the positive potential of a strategic partnership or some other type of collaborative relationship. Sometimes you have to put aside the emotion and the pass Read More