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The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. I often get asked about the real alternatives to bridge this Read More

As a business advisor, one of the things I see most often as a drag to productivity and growth is employees who, despite their best efforts, can’t change things that they know are hurting the company. They want to grant deserving customers special concessions, or fix a broken process, but are convi Read More

Every entrepreneur I know is short on resources, including time, money, and skills. The last thing they can afford is to waste any of these, but in my mentoring and coaching activities, I see it happening all too often. Waste in a startup is any activity that spends resources, but creates no value Read More

Starting a new business is a serious undertaking. Yet many aspiring entrepreneurs I know approach it as a fun project, get-rich quick scheme, or perhaps an expensive hobby. Others quit their day jobs and commit everything to their new passion, without regard for their own well-being, or the welfare Read More

Millennials have come a long way in business since I started writing about them almost ten years ago. They started out as that spoiled generation of kids, born between about 1982 and 2004, who had everything, and could care less about business. Today they are in every business, and will likely comp Read More

In my experience with technical entrepreneurs, they work hard on creating an innovative and elegant solution, and assume that customers will flock to them (“if we build it, they will come”). The reality is that successful businesses these days require an equally elegant business model, with the rig Read More

The new era of highly connected and interactive technology is changing not only how business employees interact with customers, but also how they interact with each other, and with their company. I am happy to see reports that young companies are leading the way in these trends, on both the custome Read More

Welcome to another challenging new year ahead! You’ve probably already made your resolutions for 2018, but if not, I suggest a renewed commitment to finding happiness and satisfaction in your chosen business lifestyle. After all, most of us spend more hours in this role than any other, and life is Read More

Most entrepreneurs believe they are “different,” but they can’t quite understand how. They usually explain it by insisting that they are driven to follow their passion, need to be their own boss, want to get rich quick, or want to change the world. I now believe that the roots of the difference may Read More

Every culture and community puts pressure on its members to follow the norms. Even young people who start out wanting to be different are called “freaks,” and most are slowly bent back into the norm by the time they “grow up.” Maybe that’s why so many entrepreneurs struggle with building a disrupti Read More