Get out of the building. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur, teacher, and father of the Customer Development methodology is best known for that phrase. Customer Development is not a reason or even an excuse to slow your roll and switch your plans every day; it’s a method to reduce the risk of total failure by […]
Learning
Female Entrepreneurs and Their Rising Roles in Business
As businesses become more diverse, more women are accepting jobs in the tech industry. We are seeing an increased amount of female leaders, who are overcoming gender norms and workplace stereotype
Why Listening Leads To Learning
Have you ever heard the proverbial expression, “God gave us two ears and one mouth so we ought to listen twice as much as we speak…”? Gosh, it seems so cliché, but it is such a valid point. It took me years to figure out that listening leads to learning. When I began Pretty Girl Movement, LLC. I […]
The Ultimate Guide to Finding a Mentor
After my dad went into a permanent coma, I had to take his car back to the dealership and hand them the keys. They wanted to know what happened and I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t sign papers. I was shaking. I held out the keys and they took them. I walked out. My dad was […]
Sales for Startups: Elevator Pitches, USP’s & Value Props
I was planning on writing something that helped break out the differences between the elevator pitch, the unique selling propositions (USP’s), and value propositions. Then I came across the exact same post written last year by sales guru Jill Konrath, which is pretty solid, so I am reposting here in its entirety down below. One […]
Your Investor Pitch Keeps Failing Despite Great Team and Traction: Here Is Why
Great entrepreneurs with great businesses frequently find themselves facing Repetitive Investor Pitch Rejection (RIPR) from investors who don’t offer a clear or credible explanation why. This is a serious condition which can be fatal to your startup. If you’re sure you have checked all the boxes (team, product, market, financials, traction, problem, competitive advantage etc. […]
An Involved CEO is a Learning CEO
What does that mean, “a learning CEO?” It is exactly what it sounds like: a Learning CEO is a CEO who is not only open to the idea of learning new information and skills but actively seeks them out. Brad Feld talks more about this on LinkedIn. When you look at the organizational pyramid of a […]
10 People Who Will Not Be Happy as Entrepreneurs
Some people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs. This is a good thing: if they were, the business world would be chaos, with everyone trying to do their own thing. So what about you? How do you know if you should be running your own company or concentrating on that queue of work that […]
Startup Leaders Must Discard Their Security Blanket
One of the biggest impediments to starting a new venture is the “terror barrier,” a concept popularized by Bob Proctor, a 75-year-old millionaire and world-renowned entrepreneur. This is the imaginary barrier that always seems to appear at that critical point where we would normally step out ahead of peers or competitors, but stop short due […]
For Everyone Tired of Hearing that Learning to Code is Easy: the REAL Scoop
Recently, the man himself, Fred Wilson published a blog post about the importance of learning to code. His decree was simple and straightforward: If You Aren’t Technical, Get Technical. In particular, if you are a non-technical co-founder at a tech company…you must get technical. As the founder of Skillcrush, a technology education company, this is a topic […]
10 Keys to Managing the Business After the Startup
Entrepreneurs often have formidable technical expertise, a key to developing a new product or service, but they often also have a great naïveté in management skills. They run into difficulty when their business reaches the $1-2 million annual sales range, or their employee count exceeds 5-10. It is at this point when entrepreneurs must shift […]