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Many entrepreneurs are convinced that banks are not worth the effort for startups, especially early-stage ones that still don’t have a revenue stream, or collateral to back up their financing needs. A question I get all the time is “Can I ever expect any backing from my bank for a great opportunity Read More

Steve Jobs is one of those entrepreneurs who seems universally either loved or hated, but not many will argue with his ability to innovate in the technology product arena over the years. He was instrumental in creating Apple, which has pioneered a dazzling array of new products, and recently surpas Read More

I’m always looking for evidence of early startup characteristics that might be predictors of long-term success. Every investor has his own list, usually based on his own very small sample, or simply his gut feeling. Of course, we would all like to have a magic list based on more definitive tracking Read More

What if your Google search for ‘Paris Hilton’ listed your top result as the Hilton Hotel in Paris, because it knew your interests were not in the other direction? This is the current dream of Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the (first) World Wide Web. Read More

When someone asks me for the best way to fund a startup, I always say bootstrap it, meaning fund it yourself and grow organically. Bootstrapping avoids all the cost, pain, and distractions of finding angels or VCs, and allows you to keep control and all your hard-earned equity for yourself. Read More

These days, if your startup does not have an Internet web site up and running, you are not ready for business or potential investors. Customers go there to check on the details of your offerings, investors look there to check out your management and sales approach, partners go there to see how they Read More

Successful startups are all about turning ideas into action. These actions must be the hard part, since entrepreneurs always seem to come to me with ideas, and ask me for help on the actions. That has always seemed strange to me, since the magic is supposed to be in the ideas, and the actions are t Read More

Every new startup I know dreams of being funded by an angel investor. Yet according to the latest data from AngelSoft, only about 3 out of 100 companies who initiate the formal request process actually get funded. Read More

In the world of business, you only get one chance for a great first impression. The stakes are high – you are asking an investor for money, a customer for an order, or another executive for a partnership. Badly written letters, long rambling or emotional emails, or an obvious lack of spell checking Read More

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about “Ten of the Worst Reasons for Starting a Business,” so naturally a reader challenged me to turn that around and talk about the right reasons for starting a business. That’s a fair challenge, and probably more productive than the negative approach for all the peop Read More