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6 Tips For A Marketing Focus To Match Your Solution

Startup Professionals Musings

If customers don’t know you exist, you can’t solve their problem, they won’t buy. Getting customer attention often takes more innovation today than solving the tough technical problems. As a business adviser, I still see too many new venture founders who skimp on their marketing focus, or start too late.

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If You Don’t Define Your Personal Brand the Market Will

Both Sides of the Table

I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. For 1991 I was very technical and also had a lot of practical business implementation experience in technology.

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5 Strategies Recommended For Successful Bootstrapping

Startup Professionals Musings

As an advisor to entrepreneurs, I often hear the desire to run their own company, to avoid having someone else telling them how to run the business. They then ask me to help them find investors who can provide the funding they need. are still bootstrapped today, often starting with less than $10,000 of personal funds.

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6 Ways To Make You An Entrepreneur Before The Product

Startup Professionals Musings

Many of the entrepreneurs I advise or invest with spend considerable time on the Internet, keeping up with technology, customers, and competitors, but very few feel the need for an early personal presence. In fact, some totally avoid it, assuming their product or solution will speak for itself later.

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Equity Investment Platform Preparation Best Practices

Startup Professionals Musings

If you are one of the thousands of entrepreneurs who need equity funding to get your startup going (no loans to repay), you are probably overwhelmed at the prospect of finding, contacting and pitching to the huge number of qualified angels and investment groups around the country. Collect target customer testimonials and advocacy.

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Business Complexity Goes Up Dramatically As You Scale

Startup Professionals Musings

Most of the entrepreneurs I advise today are ready to declare success when they get that first surge of traction with a real customer. You need to find investors for funding, vendors for volume manufacturing, processes for repeatable execution, as well as marketing and distribution to attract customers far beyond your pilot rollout.

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What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company?

Both Sides of the Table

It’s what signals to existing investors how quickly their teams need to be fund raising and the level of risk the company is facing and also it signals to potentially new investors both how quickly you need to raise (ie you have less leverage if you’re in a rush) as well as how much cash you’ll need if they fund you.

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