Our friends at the Young Entrepreneurship Council asked ten entrepreneurs to share how they spur creative thinking — both internally and throughout their team. Here’s what they found: Mind mapping works like a champ “Start with a topic or question, and mindmap your way around it. Don’t censor yourself as you come up with all the surrounding […]

About two months ago, Jeni Hinojosa, our lead social media strategist at EMSI Public Relations, started noticing interesting changes involving the Twitter accounts we manage. Tools were suddenly disabled. Twitter’s technical support, which hadn’t been good, improved. So, when news broke on September 24 that Twitter had already formally taken steps toward going public back […]

Early stage companies are understandably excited to demonstrate their concept, whether to friends, potential investors, or their office-mates. In fact, it may be essential to their survival to do so, since they can’t attract investors and users without showing them what they’re doing. But companies that are considering patent protection for their concepts should be […]

While many business challenges are common for all founders, there are unique lessons that women entrepreneurs have the opportunity to learn in business. Here are several essential lessons I’ve learned as a successful female entrepreneur and what every female founder should know along the way: 1. Own your success There are several things that, as […]

In today’s startup marketplace, we tend to overvalue founding teams with experience building technology products and undervalue teams with domain expertise in the particular market being addressed. Let’s consider two fictional founders, Bill & Ted, creating two different startups to attack the same market: Bill is a great engineer. He worked at Google for 5 […]

“Enterprise technology” and “beautiful design” aren’t typically used in the same sentence. But just because the application is made for IT-users, doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful or easy to use. Believe me, I know – I relied on that kind of software earlier in my career as a data analyst. What exactly does enterprise […]

As companies grow, the agile culture of “think fast, act fast’ must eventually play nicely with the anchor of sustainability. This transition can be a bit of a mind-bend and even feel like operating in two worlds, especially in the beginning. The question becomes: “is it possible to integrate consistent systems and processes and still […]

All business verticals have their own mechanics, some of which aren’t as obvious from the outside looking in. I’ve spent the last 8 years in the wonderful world of ratings, where the acronym PEARL is an easy way to remember an important mechanic. The great thing about PEARL is that it applies to any situation […]

Our friends at the Young Entrepreneurship Council asked eight entrepreneurs to share their top tips for pitching investors, based on their own success and failures. Here’s what they found: Share your vision, not a product tour It’s a rookie error for an entrepreneur to pitch an investor with the equivalent of a product tour. Investors are usually more […]

It stinks when clients leave you. All that effort to win them over, and then, unexpectedly, they give their next project to someone else. We’ve all experienced that. It’s normal to lose some clients, but some hard lessons over the years as well as a recent conversation with Rajat Paharia, author of the bestseller Loyalty […]

When you’re swamped with work and every helping hand is tied up elsewhere, you’ll need to decide between hiring a full-time employee or a freelancer. Wrong decisions can play mightily on your cash flow and productivity (two pretty important factors for startups), so here are some thoughts to keep in mind. 1. Look in the […]

Just a few years ago, most companies’ social strategy was limited to a simple Facebook page cluttered with one-way promotional messages. Those days are gone. Customers are turning to social to help guide their buying decisions and inform their brand loyalty; in fact, nearly half of online users rely on social when making a purchase. […]

Being surrounded by an entire team that doesn’t feel like they work for you can be a ridiculous blessing. But is there a magic formula that makes work feel like joy, happiness and fun all rolled into a single cupcake you can munch on all day long? You bet there is. It’s culture talking. And […]

As female entrepreneurs under the age of 30, my business partner Brittany and I have found ourselves in our fair share of uncomfortable situations. From being carded at client dinners, to being asked if we were the sales girls, our looks and gender have never gone unnoticed by clients. Since starting the company in January […]

Recently, Paul Graham came out with a great (and comprehensive) post on how to raise money. Of the many great “rules,” the ones I find most important (and surprisingly often neglected) are: Get warm intros to investors; do not cold email them. Worse is the cold LinkedIn message Talk to your investors in parallel for […]

It wasn’t Nasty Gal CEO Sophia Amoruso’s fancy degree, tailored business suit, or five years of investment banking background that grew her e-commerce venture into a $128 million company, which has been courted by major potential buyers as of late. In fact, she had none of those things at first. She launched her business as […]

Recently while attending a session at Lowenstein LLP for the inauguration of the 2013 First Growth Venture Network, I had the pleasure to speak with and listen to some of NY and the Valley’s top investors.  Some of this advice comes from them, and some from personal experience. You quit your job, labored months building a […]