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Marty Zwilling
Martin is the CEO & Founder of Startup Professionals, Inc., a consultancy focused on assisting entrepreneurs with mentoring, business strategy and planning, and networking.
Martin for years has provided entrepreneurs with first-hand advice, mentoring and business plan assistance as a startup consultant. He has a unique combination of business and high-tech experience, and executive mentoring and connecting startups with potential investors, board members, and service providers.
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All Stories By Marty Zwilling
Funding - 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...
Management - In today’s business startup environment, if you don’t move fast, you get run over. Without a sense of urgency, people and businesses just can’t move fast enough. Speed is the driver because customers have a zero tolerance for...
Funding - Lack of confidence in your self, your product, and your startup is a surefire recipe for disaster. At the other extreme, too much confidence or arrogance can kill you just as fast. It’s always painful when a startup fails, but as a...
Strategic - Big Data is Getting Bigger as a Startup Opportunity
Even though “Big Data” has now been around for a few years, the opportunities for startups seem to keep growing, just as the amount of data keeps growing. According...
Management - 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...
Lifestyle - Successful entrepreneurs are usually driven, and highly focused on some specific goal, such as being the dominant player in a given domain or the low-priced provider of their product. Yet other entrepreneurs will talk for hours about...
Strategic - Almost every startup is a virtual team these days, since most don’t start out with dedicated office space, and some or all members of the team work part-time or out of their own home. It’s a small world, so these team members may...
Advice - The days are gone when a techie or a genius could build things in his or her garage and customers would find and buy the product based purely on the “wow factor” of the technology. New technologies are everywhere today. People...
Advice - One of the first questions that I get from many entrepreneurs is “How should I set up my company to minimize my setup costs, tax liabilities and risk of lawsuits?” The answers are different in every part of the world, but the...
Advice - A common misconception I often hear in the startup world is that non-profits are easy and safe, since they don’t have to pay taxes, or make a profit for their shareholders. According to the feedback I get from non-profit executives,...
Advice - Most entrepreneurs have learned that it’s almost always quicker and easier to get cash from someone you know, rather than Angel investors or professional investors (VCs). In fact, most investors “require” that you already have...
Advice - Every new startup I know dreams of being funded early by one of the 318,000 active Angel investors in the USA alone. But many entrepreneurs don’t realize that Angels are also extremely discerning in the projects that they will invest...
Advice - Almost every early-stage startup who has approached investors for funding has heard the innocuous sounding rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” What does traction really mean to investors, and how...
Funding - It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or...
Resources - More and more entrepreneurs are hearing about the successful graduates and investors queued behind a few well-known startup incubators, including Y Combinator, TechStars, and the Founder Institute. They dream of appearing at the door,...
Funding - In reality, so-called “founder’s” shares are simply common stock, issued at the time of startup incorporation, for a very low price, and normally allocated to the multiple initial players commensurate with their investment or...
Resources - True leaders realize that, by definition, the word "leader" places the leader at the front, and not the rear. Yet many, many executives try to lead through fear and intimidation. This isn’t really leading at all. It’s pushing. In...
Angel/Seed - The number of startups getting seed funding in 2012 jumped by 65% over the previous year to a total of 1749, according to a recent report by CB Insights. “Seed investments” are early stage financings (typically less than $1.5...
