article thumbnail

Financing with grants, not equity or debt

Berkonomics

The company created a product that could be delivered as a service to medical clinicians anywhere in the world, enhancing their ability to understand their patents’ problems and needs in less time, using the expertise built into an AI expert system created by the best minds in many medical specialties. How refreshing!

Equity 156
article thumbnail

7 Ways Your People Skills Are The Key To Your Success

Startup Professionals Musings

The critical success factors for a product business are well known, starting with selling every unit with a gross margin of 50 percent or more, building a patent and other intellectual property, and continuous product improvement. If you don’t have a high level of commitment and passion, you customers won’t seek you out.

Startup 111
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

7 Success Factors When Your People Are The Solution

Startup Professionals Musings

The critical success factors for a product business are well known, starting with selling every unit with a gross margin of 50 percent or more, building a patent and other intellectual property, and continuous product improvement. If you don’t have a high level of commitment and passion, you customers won’t seek you out.

Startup 174
article thumbnail

10 Common Startup Mistakes That Are Rarely Admitted

Startup Professionals Musings

I believe the old adage that you don’t know what you don’t know until you try to write it down. The discipline of writing down your plan is the best way to make sure you understand how to transform your idea into a business, and how to communicate it. Offer free solutions to bring in more customers.

Startup 124
article thumbnail

6 Due Diligence Concerns Before Outside Contracting

Startup Professionals Musings

Despite some recent advances, there are still some cultures which have less regard for patents and other intellectual property. Customer-facing services, like call centers, should rarely be outsourced. Internal services, like marketing and accounting, are more manageable and have less customer visibility. Marty Zwilling.

article thumbnail

Reduce five risks: Increase your valuation

Berkonomics

One way to mitigate this is by using early money to create a prototype, to perform market research, to complete the first generation of the product, or to deliver the service to a satisfied customer. Second: Market risk. . Are you ahead or behind the market with your product or service? Third: Management risk. . And fifth: Competitive risk.

article thumbnail

10 Key Business Founder Checks Needed Before The Plan

Startup Professionals Musings

Most business advisors I know will say that writing a business plan is the first step to starting your own business, but I believe that a better first step is to do a self-analysis of your real drivers, strengths, and assumptions before committing to this lifestyle. Assess your connections, both social media and financial.