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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

Many entrepreneurs still don’t understand that building a business culture today of doing good, like helping people (society) and planet (sustainability), is also a key to maximizing profit. Employees and customers alike are looking for meaning, not simply employment and commodity prices. Every com 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

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

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

A tidal wave of valuable data is surging from the Internet and connected devices today, and the volume is growing exponentially each year. It’s enough to drown any business which tries to fight it or ignore it, and it’s an opportunity to ride higher and faster than even the successes of Google and 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

Aspiring entrepreneurs who rely only on traditional learning vehicles (teachers, classrooms, and risk-free practice) are doomed to failure in founding a startup today. Either they are never really ready to start, study an opportunity until it has passed, or fail with tools and techniques from a byg Read More