He didn’t know it at the time, but Leigh Drogen was an entrepreneur from the start. Growing up, he spent the summers with his family on Fire Island. At the age of eight, Leigh and his sister would sell painted shells out of a wagon on the sidewalk. When all the shells had been sold, […]

Entrepreneurs need to determine which VCs to contact. Once you’ve done your research, made a list of potential investors to approach and prioritized that list, you’re ready to plan how you get meetings with them. To get a meeting, you should try to get an introduction to the VC, and your job is find someone who […]

What do you want to do? The question is so simple, yet it strikes fear into the hearts of millennials everywhere. When I ask someone around my age (mid-20s) this, and they respond with, “I don’t know” or “There are just so many things I am interested in,” I often want to take these people […]

Last week we discussed why to never email proposals and how walking people through your plan will dramatically increase your close rate.  This week we will cover the content — what you should provide your prospects with and how to walk them through it to close that deal. An important point to keep in mind is that most […]

Allen Ackerman and Ryan Brogan sit in their two-person office on the third floor with windows overlooking Lafayette Street in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood. On a warm July day, the light streams into their tidy workspace where a mini fridge with cool refreshments sits under the windowsill. A logo on the glass door of their office […]

These days, most social media advice for small businesses really translates as advice for using Facebook and Twitter. Are you as sick of hearing about those two platforms as we are? There’s no doubt that businesses can leverage tremendous value out of those two behemoths. But what about other forms of social media—social media that […]

For most entrepreneurs planning a move, networking falls somewhere below “forward the mail” and “buy more bubble wrap” on their to-do list. People often assume that the best time to meet local business owners and start building their customer base is immediately after they’ve settled into their new location, but my experience has taught me […]

How many times have we heard the story of a Stanford undergrad who built a website/app that reached a million users, got funded by guys like Sequoia Capital, and sold to Yahoo! for millions of dollars before they turned 30? These are the great Blockbuster stories swarming the web, but what about the unsuccessful ones? […]