Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

The biggest challenge for every entrepreneur and every startup today is to get noticed and remembered in today’s information overload. The number of entrepreneurs worldwide is huge, starting an estimated 50 million new businesses in the past year, or 137,000 per day. The obstacle or the painful need.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 8, 2016

One of the most important skills for every entrepreneur is timely and effective decision making. The best entrepreneurs relish this role, while others struggle mightily and ultimately lose their health and their company. Your job as entrepreneur or executive does not end with picking a solution.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

When entrepreneurs introduce new products to the market, their passion and conviction often leads them to assume that every potential customer will see the immediate need and value, and will quickly adopt the solution. Multiple decision makers required to close a sale. Marty Zwilling First published on Huffington Post on 11/17/2016.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Too many entrepreneurs don’t know what to do at this point, largely accounting for that disappointing 50 percent of startups that fail in the first five years, according to Gallup. Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 13, 2016

Entrepreneurs who are looking to attract investors need to develop and pitch a plan -- preferably written -- that answers every potential investor question about your startup before it is asked. What are your specific marketing and sales plans? Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 02/03/2016.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

After listening to hundreds of startup pitches, and reading even more business plans, most new venture investors develop their own favorite list of “red flags” that signal the beginning of the end of their interest. Sales projections are less than one percent market penetration. Entrepreneurs in this category are usually dreamers.

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socalTECH

AUGUST 18, 2017

Marcus Filipovich: I joined as Chief Executive Officer in January of 2016, however, our founders are really the pioneers in the area of using eye signs for drug enforcement. Marcus Filipovich: Our other founder, Ron Waldorf, is a serial entrepreneur, primarily in the medical business. How did the company and its technology come about?

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2016

Unfortunately, many passionate entrepreneurs read this initial surge as success, and charge ahead with more of the same passion, leading to a series of potential pitfalls that can quickly jeopardize the health of the entire business. Marty Zwilling First published on Forbes on 08/13/2016. That’s a win-win combination for everyone.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2016

I meet many entrepreneurs with a real passion for their new idea, but unfortunately they don’t all realize that passion is necessary but not sufficient fuel to turn their idea into a successful business. The result is that far too few really great innovations ever get implemented -- or last more than a moment in the marketplace.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 10, 2016

For example, if you watch the TV show “Shark Tank,” you will remember several entrepreneurs with specialty products doing well online who want money to move into big box retail. Here are some practical steps that I advise every entrepreneur to follow in setting their channel strategy: Focus on only one channel to begin.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2016

Business success is all about having the best team, yet the average entrepreneur has little prior experience with hiring people and building top-notch teams. Most new entrepreneurs assume their passion will attract and motivate the right team members. Marty Zwilling First published on Forbes on 07/02/2016.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 9, 2016

Good entrepreneurs are all about managing change, but too many forget that they have to change themselves as their dream evolves from a startup to a scalable business. Many entrepreneurs gave grown to prefer the relative quiet and isolation of their garage, and their ability to set their own schedule.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2016

What every entrepreneur is asking me these days, is “How do I get to be a unicorn?” Yet there are a common set of driving factors that every entrepreneur should know, including the following: Extraordinary marketplace traction. If your new venture is still in the idea or development stages, don’t even think about a high valuation.

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Xconomy

NOVEMBER 13, 2016

View the Slideshow A little more than a year ago, amid a resurgence in San Diego’s software sector, Xconomy identified a baker’s dozen of local tech companies to watch in 2016. Tim Rueth, a UC San Diego entrepreneur in residence and member of the EvoNexus selection committee, also screened the list, and offered his perspective.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 16, 2016

Most new entrepreneurs have great ideas, and many are highly skilled in building their solutions. Full autonomy to go above and beyond in sales and customer-service roles will increase team engagement as well as customer satisfaction. Entrepreneurs and team members who genuinely care for each other relish their engagement with others.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 25, 2016

Many entrepreneurs assume that everyone will love their solution as much as they do, so they tune their marketing focus based on their own needs and wants. Identify your built-in biases and define compensating development and marketing strategies. Marty Zwilling First published on Entrepreneur.com on 03/16/2016.

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socalTECH

APRIL 21, 2017

Georg Richter: For the five years before I started the company in January of 2016, I was at Guthy Renker, which is one of the largest and biggest direct marketing companies in the world. It was a logical system to start offering up cloud-based systems like those we had developed. Thanks, and good luck! READ MORE>>.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

In our industry we applaud the efforts for entrepreneurs to have tried and we know that today’s failure can bring the experience for tomorrow’s success. billion in sales and thus controls less than 10% of the market. But that’s harder to build in 2016 than it was in say 2005.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 6, 2016

But in my experience as a startup advisor, too many entrepreneurs get stuck there, and always find excuses for not really exploring mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, and alliance alternatives. For example, at any given moment in your business, you may be limited by development, marketing, or sales.

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Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 14, 2017

By transforming a single shopper's path into data points, companies can see how you move through a store, and how that tracks with sales. This domain therefore offers opportunities at multiple points in the value chain, from bringing products to market and research and development (R&D), RFID tracking, to after-sales services.

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Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2016

Technical entrepreneurs love to compare the number of features in their product to competitors, and they love to keep adding features -- just because they can. Then developers size the implementation alternatives, and startup executives draw a line based on vision, costs and funding. Define and enforce role and decision authorities.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

As an entrepreneur looking for an idea, it makes sense to explore problem areas within your knowledge comfort zone, but when you are building a business with the solution, you have to stretch your comfort zone to keep up with the market and stay ahead of competitors. The idea is the only easy part. The hard part is the business execution.

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