Startup Tips: 5 Website Mistakes That Are Costing You Customers

You love your website like your baby. It represents your startup perfectly — except when it doesn’t.

Your website might not be delivering the message you thought it was. Here are five of the most common startup website mistakes that I see founders make when creating their own website or hiring a designer to create it for them — and what to do about each:

1. Designing for the “Cool” Factor

You want your startup to stand out from all the others out there, so you design your logo and your site with lots of flair. Figuring that a flashy design will stick in people’s minds, you forgo clarity.

While people may think your site looks good, they won’t remember what your service or product is all about. They might not even grasp your concept while they’re on your site, which will cause them to hit the back button or move on without a second thought.

Ouch. Visitors can be fickle, so make sure to focus on explaining what your startup does and how it will help make your customers’ lives better.

2. On-Page Overwhelm

In an effort to tell people all the reasons they need to sign up for your service or product, you might go overboard and cause more harm than good.

If you have more than three major pieces of information or options on a page, you’re likely overdoing it. When it comes to designing effective websites, keeping the visual options to a minimum always results in better conversions.

Instead of packing your website with the 20 different reasons to try your product, focus on the big three benefits that you can deliver. Think of what your startup helps people get more or less of, whether that’s sleep or anxiety.

3. Not Testing On All Devices

Your website looks great on your computer and maybe your phone. But have you tested it on a variety of different devices? Have you considered making it design responsive, so that it will resize based on the dimensions of the screen?

These are all great questions to consider before you hit publish on your new startup website, but it’s worth going back and checking different browsers and devices even if your site is live.

4. Forgetting to Ask for Contact Details

Most visitors who land on your website will not buy your product or service. It’s just not going to happen — but it doesn’t mean that you should let these curious folks walk away into their busy lives, never to return.

Instead, make sure you have a simple and prominent way for them to stay in the loop with your startup’s progress. Make the offer to join your email list an inviting one by focusing on what benefits they will get from hearing about your startup.

If you can’t think of anything, consider creating free content in the form of articles or videos that you think will be of interest to your ideal customers. No one can turn down a highly targeted freebie that’s designed to solve their exact problems.

5. Not Offering a Taste Before Asking for the Sale

Speaking of freebies, do you have anything on your website that people can try before they buy? Depending on your product or service, you might be able to offer a taste before asking them to commit by plunking down their credit card details.

If you offer an ongoing service, it’s a great idea to let people get used to your software or services. They’ll be hooked and won’t want to stop using it. Try offering a free trial, and be generous — if you did your job right in creating your offering, people will take you up on your paid version, too.

Think outside the box on this one, because offering a sample is one of the best ways to get people open to buying from you.

Do You Make Any of These Mistakes?

Now that you know what to watch out for when creating or updating your startup website, it’s time to be honest with yourself and assess your own site. And if you need an unbiased opinion, ask a friend or colleague — someone who isn’t as close to your “baby” as you are.

Nathalie Lussier got her Bachelors in Software Engineering then promptly turned down a “stable” job on Wall Street to start her own online business. She’s a sought after digital strategist who teaches people how to get techy with their business. Get your Free Website Checkup at http://GetTechyNow.com.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Dan Martell: How to Build A Real Connection With Your Customer

You’ve spent 12 months building the most wicked product on the planet. Now what?

Now, you need customers, revenue, and growth. Here’s the sequence most entrepreneurs follow:

Step 1: You launch a blog
Step 2: You launch your Facebook page
Step 3: You start promoting your writing to your fan community of 50.

Then you wait. You’ve built it; why aren’t they coming?

You get pissed off. You hop in your car, go to the gym, or take a walk outside to take your mind off things. Then you see that big Coca Cola billboard with shiny, happy stock-photo people and blinding, bright colors — you can’t help but swoon. You’re craving Coca Cola’s fizzy goodness and wishing that Santa would bring you a $10 million paid advertising budget.

Hold it — the glamour of paid advertising is a total illusion

Get it together. Get back to your computer immediately and watch the first cat video that you can find. Little do you know it, but that’s your brilliant plan. It’s twice as powerful as any paid channel advertising strategy, and it’s free. Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM) is your new growth engine.

According to the McKinsey Quarterly, “word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising in categories as diverse as skincare and mobile phones.”

And thanks to digital media, it’s not about neighbor A knocking on neighbor B’s door for advice anymore. Social media, content marketing, and online commenting platforms take WOM marketing to data-driven scale.

WOM is about street smarts, not rocket science

What does it take to get you talking about something? Most likely, it’s made you laugh out loud, saved you time, and solved your most pressing problems. It’s caught you by surprise and has struck an emotional chord.

As Wharton Marketing Professor Jonah Berger puts it: “Any product can be remarkable. Any product can be emotional.”

It’s about the connection you build with your end-user psychologically, functionally, personally, and emotionally.

Take one of the most ordinary products on the market, for instance — a blender. Does the word ‘bada*s’ come to mind? Probably not. Now read the following story about a company called Blendtec.

“In my favorite video, for example, they stick an iPhone in the blender,” Berger says. “They actually drop an iPhone in. They close the top, they press the button, and you watch the iPhone get torn up by this really, really strong blender. It gets reduced to shreds. Little shards of glass and all the other things that make up an iPhone. Lots of smoke. At the end of the day, it’s basically powder. Now you’ve never seen a blender tear an iPhone. You’ve never imagined that a blender could do that to an iPhone. Yet you see it, and it’s pure remarkability.”

What happens next?

You share the video with everybody, and all of a sudden Blendtec is bada*s. You need it in your kitchen to replace the frou-frou blades in your cupboard.

The “mystery” of WOM marketing

Like any good marketing plan, it follows a standard framework. Amazing marketers take the same basic skeletons and flesh them out.

“It doesn’t take a marketing genius — though they are smart marketers — to think about this,” says Berger. “What it takes is understanding the psychology behind social transmission — what makes us talk about and share thing.”

The trick is to stop thinking of your brand-building as a stream of consciousness, creative endeavor.

Think like a system with the following steps:

1. Take Control: Controversy Gets People Talking

Want to be a powerful influencer? Then own it. To be an authority, your brand persona needs to project confidence and charisma. No matter what you do, this mission-critical component will be your wow-factor.

Don’t be afraid to polarize people. If you’re scared to put yourself out there at the risk of pissing people off, you’ll be missing out.

Controversy gets people talking, and in terms of WOM, that’s awesome.

2. Value = What Your Customers Care About

It’s simple, folks. Know what your customers care about. What keeps them up at night, what motivates them to go to work in the morning, and what holds them back. It’s your job to give them exactly what they need.

3. Quit Being Properly Polite and Be Authentic

You probably hate the fluffy ‘be yourself’ advice. Thing is, you need to hear it. It’s natural to feel self-conscious and to hide behind a ‘professional’ mask. It’s natural to want approval from others. Thing is, it’s only going to hold you back. If you’re constantly trying to please others by looking like everyone else, you’re not going to stand out.

For example, take James Altucher, a financial expert and entrepreneur who built some of his biggest businesses through blogging. As he puts it in his Twitter bio: “For some reason, I’ve turned myself inside out and all my guts have spilled onto my blog.”

Why’s he so popular? Well he writes about topics that make us human, not rich. He helps us understand why our bosses are jerks and why we should think twice before judging a genuinely good person.

Ask yourself some questions: Would you say what you’re about to say to your best friend over a beer? What makes you passionate beyond the cubicle? That is what you should bring to the table.

Here’s a fun hypothetical exercise; wear a rubber band on your wrist. When you catch yourself saying something that doesn’t represent you, or that echoes someone else, pull the rubber band and snap it onto your wrist. Not only does that condition you to be more honest, but it is a funny talking point and will make you more remarkable (re: quirky, weird).

“Oh, yeah — I’m trying to be more honest, and I caught myself trying to be someone else. That thing I just said? I didn’t really mean it.”

You know when you meet that really boring person at a networking event or party. Yeah, they’re plenty smart and articulate, but man will they put you to sleep. Don’t be that guy. When you’re authentic, you’re interesting.

Tucker Max is interesting because he’s a jerk. He stands out. You don’t need to be a jerk, but you can and should embrace your inner edge.

4. Where Technology Meets Social Psychology

WOM is not about knocking on your neighbor’s door. It’s about tapping into social psychology to connect with customers on a human-to-human level. Technology amplifies that process and helps you do it at scale.

The brilliant growth hackers at AirBnB, for instance, have built a technology model to auto-post to Craigslist.

“It’s a win-win for everyone involved — both the people renting out their places by tapping into pre-build demand, and for renters, who see much nicer listings with better photos and descriptions,” wrote Andrew Chen for his blog.

5. Be Relentlessly Emotional

Logic keeps people intelligent and informed — but emotions move them. Word of mouth marketing depends on your brand’s ability to keep people engaged, energized, and inspired. It’s about love, anger, and humanity that’s powerful and raw.

Never, at any point in the game, let the fire of your emotional hook die. Write with emotion, tweet with emotion, and no matter what the hell you do, do not hold back. You’re lightning in a bottle.

A version of this post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

Dan Martell is the CEO/Founder of Clarity.fm. Co-Founder of Flowtown (Acquired ’11), Founder of Spheric Tech (Acquired ’08), Mentor @ 500Startup. Investor in many.

Founder Spotlight: Danny Boice Co-Founder Speek.com

Danny Boice is the CTO of Speek, a 500 Startups funded startup that lets users do conference calls with a simple link (speek.com/YourName) rather than using phone numbers and PINs. Danny contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, PandoDaily, Fast Company, and other publications. He attended Harvard undergrad and did advanced studies at MIT. Follow him @DannyBoice.

Who is your hero?

Lemmy from Motorhead.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

“Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Charles Bukowski

I take this quote to mean that you should find the thing that you are intensely passionate about first and foremost. Once you have found that thing then spend the rest of your life working your a*s off to be great at it.

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

Only get in bed with people you really like. This applies to co-founders, partners, you name it.

When my first company was acquired I was heavily incentivized to join the management team of the company that acquired us. I really did not get along with the founders of that company and we rarely saw eye to eye. I felt marginalized and believed that my talents were under-appreciated. It was an absolutely miserable experience for me and I spent a couple years being unhappy. It’s just not worth losing years of your life.

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

I put together a to-do list for the day using todoist. Then I get myself to inbox zero. I like starting the day with a conscious plan of what I want to get done and I don’t like checking email throughout the day because it is a barrier to getting things done.

What’s your best financial/cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

Keep your nut low. This applies to personal life and business. The lower the expense structure the more freedom you have.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Become an expert in the Lean Startup methodology. The best management approach I have found to date is using data and science experiments to make decisions.

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

Success means having the freedom to do what I want when I want to do it. Money, time, obligations, and contracts should not be a factor. I call it “airplane money.” If you can wake up in the morning, isolate the place you really want to go today and jump in a plane and go there, then you’ve achieved success.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Danny Boice spoke at this huge startup conference last year and he’s back again this year.

10 Tips For Launching Your Startup At An Industry Event

It’s pretty popular to launch startups at big events. Think Foursquare at SXSW. We even had a couple of launches at this year’s Everywhere Else: The Startup Conference.

But, it can be tricky to launch at a big event. It’s easy to get lost in the noise, and when you choose to launch that publicly, you better have your act together. Here are some more tips from the veteran entrepreneurs at the Young Entrepreneurs Council:

Give a Keynote Speech

“If you want to launch a new company at an industry event or conference, try to secure an opportunity to be a keynote speaker. If you can’t organically secure it ,consider sponsoring and purchasing the opportunity to be a keynote. As a speaker, you’ll have your target audience listening to you and buying into your brand for 30-40 minutes. There is no better way to secure a flurry of leads.”
– Raoul Davis | CEO, Ascendant Group

Learn from Disrupt

“It’s very helpful to check out the winners of TechCrunch Disrupt. Lot to learn from their presentations and products which can you help launch most effectively.”

– Ben Lang | Founder, Mapped In Israel

Don’t Do It!

“Ignore awards, getting press, and all related “recognition” that will just be distractions when launching your company. Focus on your customers and your product!”

– Todd Garland | Founder, BuySellAds

Influence the Influencers

“Find out who will be the influencers at this conference and get them on board with your new company. Try giving away your product or service to them for free to experience if you have to, so they begin talking about it. There is nothing better than word of mouth, especially when from the mouths that influence more people.”

– Louis Lautman | Founder, Supreme Outsourcing

Try Out Sponsorship

“If you really want to launch right, sponsor the event. Get your brand on everything!”

– Roger Bryan | Managing Partner, ROI Marketing Department

Integrate Your Company In

“Most people that try and launch at an event fail because all they do is display a logo, hand out flyers or take an exhibitor booth. Find a unique way your company can be a part of the event and integrate your product into it, so that more people use it and get to experience it.”

– Aron Schoenfeld | Founder & CEO, Do It In Person LLC

Start Before the Conference

“Once the conference is in full swing, it can be hard to meet with the right people. A small amount of time invested in reaching out to key personalities before the event can yield tremendous results. Review speakers, conference organizers, sponsors and other key attendees, and introduce yourself and your product. You’ll have pre-launch momentum to leverage when going into the conference.”

– Christopher Kelly | Co-Founder, Principal, Convene

Get Outside the Board Room

“Business is done after the day’s events, so throw a crazy party! Get your face and handshake in front of everyone, and then create a forum where you can continue interacting after the formal events are over. They’ll remember your name.”

– Jordan Guernsey | CEO, Molding Box

Make Your Presence Known

“Don’t half-ass the event. Get there early and network to build buzz. Do something creative with your booth or product so everyone knows you’re there. Don’t leave until the end, when you’re sure you’ve done everything to let people know about your product or service.”

– John Hall | CEO, Influence & Co.

Get Mentioned Onstage

“Do your research in advance and know who the speakers are. Before the event, find ways to introduce your company and product via social, introductions, etc. Once there, have your team talking to presenters and panelist so what you’re working on is top of mind. Seeding the conversation prior to them hitting the stage improves your chances of getting mentioned by influencers, and peeking the audience’s interest.”

– Lauren Perkins | Founder and CEO, Perks Consulting

5 Things To Avoid When Raising Money For Your Startup

Of course, there are a lot of things you need to do when you’re trying to raise money for your startup. But there are also a lot of things you want to avoid. If you’ve landed a meeting with a potential investor, you don’t want to blow it. Avoid the following 5 “don’ts” and you’ll be on the right path to making a favorable impression:

1. Don’t raise more money than you will need. You may be tempted to think more is better when it comes to raising capital, but actually this is not true. Of course you’ll want to build in a little cushion, since nothing ever goes exactly according to plan in startup land, but don’t be tempted to create a huge cushion. We’ve seen time and time again that capital efficiency (that is, raising what you need and no more) is a more telling indicator than capital access of your startup’s success. In other words, it’s what you do with your money — not how much you get — that determines your success.

While the amount of capital you’ll need is dependent on the specifics of your company (e.g. your company type/stage), capital efficiency will stand you in good stead regardless. With less capital it’s harder to scale, and that’s a good thing. Scaling too soon forces you to grow and make decisions before your company is ready. Expectations are lower with less capital. Your milestones will be more manageable.

Also, larger amounts of capital lead to unnecessary dilution at a lower valuation. Conversely, smaller amounts of capital allow you to preserve more ownership—and can lead to higher valuation in future rounds.

2. Don’t talk to investors who don’t traditionally invest in your space or stage of development. If an investor has no history of investing in your space or working with companies at your stage of development, don’t go there. If they’re not familiar with your space, there’s just too big of a learning curve. You’ll be working overtime trying to sell them on the value of your offering.

Likewise, there are two major downsides to working with a potential investor who doesn’t have experience with companies in your development stage. First of all, without a relative benchmark, they may have expectations which are unrealistic for your startup. The may want to see you hit milestones which your company is just not ready to hit, or may push you to scale before you’re ready. Secondly, investors offer more than just money. They offer support, wisdom, and connections. So you want to find an investor who will be a valuable member of your growing startup eco-system, starting from wherever you are.

3. Don’t talk to investors who have invested in a company that is a competitor in your same space. This may seem to contradict my previous statement, but it’s just finessing the point. While you don’t want to work with investors who aren’t active in your same space, there’s no sense in talking with an investor who has recently invested in one of your competitors. Many investors will avoid funding competitors, but you can’t depend on this. An investor’s resources run only so deep. You don’t need a built-in conflict of interest getting in the way of your growth.

4. Don’t fail to do your due diligence on an investor prior to meeting them. Underscoring my previous points, you’ll need to do enough research to know what space and company stages the investor has experience with and what specific companies the investor has funded (keeping an eye out for your competitors). Look out for investor activity: has the investor recently made any investments? You also want to know the person behind the investment: who are they? If you can speak with other entrepreneurs they have backed, that can be a helpful way to learn more about investors personally and figure out if they are someone you can work with. If you don’t know this ahead of time, you are just wasting your time and theirs.

5. Don’t wing an investor meeting. If you’re meeting with an investor, it’s never just a casual chat. You are there to pitch. Have your pitch deck ready and be prepared to present it. See my previous post on Pitching Made Perfect for details on exactly what should be included in your pitch deck. Be ready to answer questions—and if you can’t answer a question on the spot, make sure you follow up.

If you can steer clear of these 5 “don’ts,” you’ll be demonstrating to potential investors an understanding of, and a respect for, the funding process. Observe the protocol and you and your company will be in good position to earn reciprocal respect from potential investors.

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

David Ehrenberg is the founder and CEO of Early Growth Financial Services, a financial services firm providing a complete suite of financial services to companies at every stage of the development process. He’s a financial expert and startup mentor, whose passion is helping businesses focus on what they do best. Follow David @EarlyGrowthFS.

How To Start That Online Startup You’ve Been Thinking About

Is this the year you will finally launch that brilliant new business idea?

It’s a good time to start — never before has it been easier or cheaper to build your own Web-based business. Technology has come a long way in the last few years in making tools for building sites more accessible to everyone (not just technologists).

Here are some easy ways to get a head start:

Map your “lean canvas,” not your business plan. Business plans are so last century. Don’t waste time writing multi-paged business plans that are just layer upon layer of hypotheses based on market research. Experienced entrepreneurs know the secret to success lies in execution rather than extensive planning. So instead, invest your initial planning in a Lean Canvas: a succinct approach to proving hypotheses about your business.
Pick a great domain name. The domain name of your site should be memorable and preferably have a dot-com. That means there are likely slim pickings, so you may have to pick the name of your site based on what domain is available. LeanDomainSearch is the perfect tool to figure this out. Just enter a word you like and their search engine will comb the Web for available dot-com combinations.
Find a developer to build your website. A great website takes a great developer who will help you build exactly what you want. Although you could outsource your site, in my experience, it’s better to hire someone you trust and can collaborate with directly — particularly if you’re building an e-commerce site. If you don’t have a referral or a developer in mind, check out matchist – a service we built specifically to bring together entrepreneurs and top U.S.-based freelance developers. The site helps you understand what technologies and skills are needed to build exactly what you’re looking for so you can find the right developer to make that dream a reality.
Put up a landing page ASAP. While your site is getting built, start building buzz (and collecting data) by putting up a landing page. New sites like LaunchRock make this super easy. You can start gathering email addresses for people interested in learning about when your site launches right away for a head start on marketing.
Start testing — and keep learning! Get up to date on Lean Startup Methodology, an approach to building a business (pioneered by Eric Ries) that involves making and testing hypotheses to figure out exactly what combination of product and marketing will make your business successful. And read blogs like KISSMetrics, Startup Lessons Learned, and Practice Trumps Theory to learn how other online businesses are paving the way quickly and cheaply.

Don’t spend yet another year dreaming of starting a business — instead, take these steps to get started as early as possible. The quicker you start learning, testing and collecting data, the quicker you will build that successful venture you’ve been dreaming of.

Tim Jahn is the co-founder of matchist, a curated service for freelance developers to connect with quality clients and projects. He’s also the co-founder of Entrepreneurs Unpluggd, an events and media company that helps entrepreneurs move their businesses forward. As an active member of the Chicago tech community, Tim has made his mark interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs from all over the world.

Why You Shouldn’t Learn To Code For Your Startup

I get emails like this one all the time:

I am wondering if I could ask for help for a friend. Mike, a good friend of mine, has been working on a startup idea. …He is looking for really great co-founding developers who can help him build out the product in a short period of time. I am wondering if you could tap into your network for leads. Many thanks in advance!

I wish I could help. It can be very difficult for a non-technical entrepreneur to find a technical co-founder if he/she doesn’t already have friends who code. And these days, just about everyone would tell Mike to skip the talent search and learn how to code himself.

Journalists in TechCrunch, Business Insider, Fast Company and dozens of other publications, including VentureBeat, write frequently about how you, as a non-technical founder, are up a creek if you don’t learn how to code. Even Harvard Business School students are learning how to code – despite paying very good money to learn business skills. In short, if you’re starting an Internet company, you can’t go anywhere without hearing about how important it is to know how to code.

Silicon Valley has followed suit. In the last two years alone, online education companies have developed a variety of courses to teach programming skills. Companies like Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, Treehouse, Codecademy, EdX, and Lynda, are just a handful of the many companies serving the programming education market. For those who prefer to learn in person, there are now a wealth of choices in developer training camps too, including Hack Reactor, Coder Camps, Dev Bootcamp, and the Hackbright Academy. These camps hold class every day for several weeks, teaching basic front-end and back-end skills.

The real reason startups fail (hint: it’s not bad code)

On the surface, it would seem the solution for finding a technical co-founder is to become one yourself.

But you have to question whether turning non-technical entrepreneurs into developers is really the best solution for starting a company. Startups become successful when they have users and customers — and they die when they don’t. Tech startups don’t fail because they have poorly written code. If you look at TechCrunch’s deadpool of startups, almost all listed companies failed because they ran out of money. They didn’t have enough users to make their business model work.

I started my first company, Beat the GMAT, without knowing how to program at all. Didn’t matter: I built a loyal following of prospective MBA students for my blog first, which was focused on solving GMAT problems. Later, this audience became active participants in my first forums. Finally, I hired developers to build the most recent version of my site before selling it to Hobson’s. Had I focused on building the site first, I’m not sure that’s how things would have panned out.

Don’t get me wrong: Increasing the opportunities for people to learn is great, and those who want to learn how to program definitely should. But if you’re learning how to code merely to launch a startup, you’re wasting valuable time.

The economic tenet of comparative advantage suggests that people should become really good at their core skills, use them effectively to make money, and then hire others to complement their skills. So, if you are mediocre at acquiring customers and know nothing about programming, shouldn’t you work to become awesome at customer acquisition rather than become a bad developer? I would’ve expected Harvard Business School to understand this better than anyone.

Paying it forward

In the Valley, entrepreneurs and investors often talk about how so many seed startups fail because they can’t get enough customers to become profitable. But we shouldn’t just talk — we should do something. That’s why Elizabeth Yin and I started Hustle Con: to teach non-technical entrepreneurs tactical tips in acquiring customers to build a sustainable business. Others, such as Noah Kagan, have done the same in creating his course called “How to make your first dollar.” And, there are a smattering of meetup groups trying to teach marketing and sales for startups.

But we can do better. If you know something about lead generation, sales, and marketing, I encourage you to pay it forward and teach other entrepreneurs to improve their customer acquisition skills. And finally, to the would-be founders out there: Stop talking about learning how to code, and instead, start hustling.

Eric Bahn is the co-founder of Hustle Con, a one-day conference on July 9, 2013 in Mountain View, CA. Hustle Con features successful entrepreneurs who will talk about how they grew their companies from $0 to $5M in just a couple of years, how they raised money, and how they grew an audience before releasing a product. Join us with this special code to get 25% off: yec-hustler

Sequoia’s Aaref Hilaly believes everyone should know how to code.

6 Reasons To Start Your Startup Now!

You don’t have to have a Harvard MBA to know that the economy hasn’t climbed out of its slump entirely just yet. Household debt has grown, unemployment remains relatively high, and Americans aren’t spending the way they once did. With all these obstacles, you’d think it would be the worst time to start your own business. But a struggling economy presents opportunities for ambitious entrepreneurs — you just have to know where to find them.

1. Real Estate Is Cheap
With so many businesses failing in recent years, commercial real estate is widely available. Do your research — find a space that’s conveniently located and reasonably priced. Once you narrow the field to a few candidates, play hardball with your prospective landlord. If you can’t get a reduced monthly rent, try to get other concessions, such as paid utilities, free renovations, or lease termination flexibility.

2. Staffing Will Be a Breeze
With the national unemployment rate hovering just under 8 percent, there are a lot of qualified workers out there looking for a good opportunity. Dig deep during the interview process to find folks who share your vision and passion. You should get a lot of resume submissions, so be discerning. When you interview candidates, try to get a sense of who’s in it for the long haul. Overqualified applicants may intend to coast through a job until the one they really want comes along.

3. You Have Protection Against Unemployment
When layoffs and cutbacks are rampant, the best way to avoid being fired is to be your own boss. You may not be able to control how successful your business is, but you can control every decision, work every hour of every day, and if your business fails, it won’t be because some faraway board decided to cut 10,000 jobs. Success or failure lie primarily in your hands when you run the show.

4. The Economy Doesn’t Matter
When Steve Jobs dropped out of college to found Apple Computer in 1976, the United States was coming out one of its worst recessions in recent memory. Do you think his parents thought that was a good idea? Ambition, intelligence, and drive are three entrepreneurial essentials that cannot be stopped, even by the weakest economy. If you surround yourself with the right people, create a work-friendly environment, and keep customer service at a high level, you can succeed in any economic climate.

5. History Is on Your Side
Not only Apple, but CNN, Microsoft, and Burger King were all launched during recessions. Add to that MTV, Hyatt, FedEx, and General Electric and you’ve got an all-star roster of American success stories. The founders of these companies didn’t let a challenging economy stop them from pursuing their dreams. If the entrepreneurial bug has bitten you, waiting around for three years won’t increase your chances of success. Work hard, market yourself aggressively, and don’t take no for an answer.

Final Thoughts
When you do pull the trigger on that startup, make sure you save on costs wherever you can. Market your business for free through social media, hire free labor from students looking to bolster their resume with internships, and negotiate with every contractor and vendor. Remember, they’re more likely to give you a discount in today’s economy. Success is out there waiting for you, so don’t let it wait any longer.

If you have a business idea in mind, what are you waiting for?

Andrew Schrage is co-owner of the MoneyCrashers.com Personal Finance website. The site strives to educate readers on a wide variety of topics, including how to budget for retirement, tips to increase your income, and the best small business credit cards. Schrage hopes to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives as they work to gain and maintain financial freedom.

Image: Transitionaldata.com

Here It Is, The Secret To Entrepreneurial Happiness

During our childhood years, measuring success was as simple as counting gold stars and smiley face stickers. In high school and college, we relied on report cards. But how do we determine success now, as entrepreneurs?

In Southern California’s bustling startup scene, known as “Silicon Beach,” many professionals leave the comfort of a steady paycheck to pursue the American dream of starting something they can call their own. And after numerous conversations with like-minded entrepreneurs, we found that many of these entrepreneurs measured their venture’s success not in dollars, but by their own satisfaction or happiness.

It’s no secret that money can’t buy happiness. In fact, according to an oft-cited study by Stanford University economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, once you’re pulling in a salary of $75,000, any additional dollar earned does nothing more to increase personal life satisfaction.

So if happiness cannot be bought — and yet we use it to measure our business success — what can we do to attain it? Over the last decade, researchers in Positive Psychology have discovered a number of behaviors that boost happiness. To boost your own, practice these four behaviors:

1. Create a social circle of like-minded entrepreneurs.

Two heads are better than one when it comes to problem solving. A team of entrepreneurial peers can see what escapes our own attention, point out pitfalls ahead of time, and become a sounding board for critical decisions and actions.

Commit to creating a circle of like-minded entrepreneurs in which no money is exchanged between members.

2. Give your time away.

Many entrepreneurs think that devoting every waking moment to their company will ultimately be the key to success. But when you spend time helping others instead of yourself, your sense of time expands.

Professor Cassie Mogilner, a researcher on happiness and time management atthe Wharton School, explained this recently: “The results show that giving your time to others can make you feel more ‘time affluent’ and less time-constrained than wasting your time, spending it on yourself, or even getting a windfall of free time.”

Whether it be through mentorship, volunteering, showing interest, or lending an ear to a friend, giving time to others expands your sense of time and results in greater life satisfaction.

3. Set attainable goals.

The art of goal-setting can take years to master. As entrepreneurs, we all have big goals, and to experience success we have to learn to break large goals into smaller goals that are within our daily reach.

Try creating one goal per day that you want to accomplish outside of your day-to-day emails and meeting commitments — then do everything in your power to turn this into a lasting habit.

4. Practice gratitude.

There are a variety of ways to practice gratitude that entrepreneurs can easily incorporate into their daily routine. One approach is to set aside time every week to write thank you notes, sent via snail mail or over email.

If you thank a client, that’s expected. But if you thank someone for an unexpected task, research from Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California suggests that your mind becomes more sensitive to positive interactions — and less sensitive to negative ones.

By practicing gratitude, you will begin to cultivate a chronic state of happiness.

Happiness is the new gold standard.

The traditional gold standard for measuring professional success is money, yet entrepreneurs almost always cite happiness as the highest-priority goal for attaining success.

Do you already practice any of these four happiness-promoting behaviors? If not, try integrating them into your daily practice today.

And guess what? Happiness can also lead to better health, more energy, productivity, and yes — more money.

Dmitriy Katsel is the founder of Spring Theory, an organization that matches corporations with universities in semester-long collaborations to explore solutions to big challenges. Sara Gershfeld, behavior analyst and founder of LoveMyProvider, also contributed to this article.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Startup Tips: 9 Challenges To Partnering With A Bigger Company

Question: Are there any disadvantages to partnering with a company much bigger than yours, and how do you manage them?

Where’s the Control?

“The chief disadvantage of partnering with larger companies is loosing control over timeline and positioning. Typically, you are rate-limited in progress by how fast the larger organization can move, and you won’t be able to directly control the channel partner to do what you want. You can’t manage your partners, but what you can do is set firm expectations and legal obligations from the onset.”

– Victor Wong | CEO, PaperG

Watch the Time Sink

“Bigger companies, by their nature, move much slower than your company. Keeping things moving can be a struggle when you aren’t use to dealing with as much bureaucracy.”

– Wade Foster | Co-founder, Zapier

Beware of Bureaucracy

“When working with a large company, it is important to recognize that it may take some time to identify the appropriate contact, and that the person you’re working with may or may not have the influence or bandwidth to get things done. Consequently, these relationships are time-consuming to build and can take a lot of effort for a small team to manage effectively.”

– Garrett Neiman | Co-founder and CEO, CollegeSpring

Just Word of Mouth?

“Partnering with a larger company can be great, but when it comes down to it, you are just another word of mouth for them. You sometimes do more work for them while they just let your name “appear” with them. Do what works best for you and do ask yourself if you really need to partner with them. If not, then don’t even jump on the boat.”

– Ashley Bodi | co-founder, Business Beware

Getting Lost in the Shuffle

“A good partnership means that you have to have clear communication, which can be tough when you’re dealing with a company with multiple layers of stakeholders — each of whom may leave her position, veto a step or otherwise make the partnership more difficult to deal with. It’s not impossible to deal with, but when you have fewer personnel to shepherd a deal, it’s something you need to be aware of.”

– Thursday Bram | Consultant, Hyper Modern Consulting

Feature Creep!

“When you partner with a large company, beware the “just add one more thing” disease. Large companies are used to getting what they want and will try to push you to write more features, add more support or customize your business around their needs, sometimes to the overall detriment of your business.”

– Nathan Lustig | cofounder, Entrustet

Retention vs. Innovation

“Working with partners much bigger than you are rarely works out. Big companies are often very inflexible, slow moving, and sometimes require massive contracts that take months to negotiate and that they have no hesitation about pulling out of very quickly. The culture at many big businesses is about “job retention” rather than “innovation”, and biz dev people often keep themselves busy with meetings that go nowhere while trying to cover their behind. Despite numerous attempts, and thousands of hours, I’ve never had a partnership that made a big difference to our bottom line.”

– Matt Mickiewicz | Co-Founder, Flippa and 99designsAdjust Your Timelin

“Manage your expectations regarding timelines. Everything takes forever in larger bureaucracies. Decisions have to be reviewed and approved by three layers of management and usually one committee — the red tape can really hamper your plans if you’re not realistic about the timelines you’re working with.”

– Brent Beshore | Owner/CEO, AdVentures

Don’t Be Bullied

“A bigger company can sometimes bully you around since you are the smaller partner. You can easily manage the relationship by being very clear with expectations and and terms of the relationship.”

– John Hall | CEO, Influence & Co.

Now check out: Learn to pitch BEFORE you raise capital.

Why The Perfect Startup Pitch Isn’t A Pitch At All

Everyone loves a good story. Some of our favorite stories are from movies we watched as children. They all have the same ending: “…and they lived happily ever after.”

We know the ending before the movie even begins, so why do we watch them? We watch to see the journey. The journey that started with a struggle or a problem is finally resolved as the prince and princess ride off into the sunset.

So why, then, do most investment pitches start with, “And my company is the next Apple or Facebook”? I mean, that’s the fairytale ending, isn’t it? That our startup is the next multibillion-dollar company?

Apple and Facebook didn’t start out as multibillion-dollar companies. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built their first product, the Apple I, on the mere vision that computers would be used by consumers — at a time when computers were exclusively used by businesses. Through innovation after innovation, Apple evolved into the company we know today, but the journey was not done without its struggles. (If you want to get the full picture of all the company’s struggles, read the nearly 600-page biography of Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson.)

Besides, as an early-stage startup, there are no great revenue numbers to put on a slide – only predictions. You may have a business plan, but it could completely change tomorrow.

What you do have is a story. You have experienced a problem or seen a need. Now you are actively working to provide a solution to that problem, or fill that need. Not only that, there have been bumps in the road thus far and there will be even more in the future — so your determination and passion to get the job done needs to show.

For example, my company provides expiration date management software to the grocery industry, but my investment pitch never starts out with, “I made Date Check Pro, and it will make millions!”

Instead, I start out by describing how I used to work in a grocery store. I checked far too many expiration dates on far too many cereal boxes, and realized there had to be a better way.

The goal of starting with the story is to show that you are personally connected to the problem you are looking to solve, and that you are the right person for the job.

Knowing this, investors are more likely to connect with you, the entrepreneur. One of our investors — Peter Layton, a former partner at Goldman Sachs turned serial entrepreneur and angel investor – told me recently, “I invest in people first and the idea second. I want to hear the entrepreneur’s experience with the problem they are looking to solve, their passion to solve it, and how they plan to do so. If the story is good, I am more likely to invest since I know there is a good founder behind the idea.”

So before your next pitch, remember these key tips:

Share your story instead of pitching your company.
Keep it short — six minutes or less.
You’re running an early-stage startup. You don’t have perfect financial projections or a fireproof business plan. Include your plan to grow the company into your story, but be open to suggestions.
Practice, practice, practice. Yes it’s a cliché, but you don’t write your story in one sitting. How could you tell it perfectly on the first try?
Remember: You’re not “pitching,” just telling a story. Relax!

Andrew Hoeft is the founder of Pinpoint Software, Inc. His company has created Date Check Pro, expiration date management software that allows for proactive management of inventory and will be launching a second product late 2013. He is a co-founder of StartupMKE, a founding member of StartupWI, and a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater studying entrepreneurship. In addition, his company is a member of the Gener8tor accelerator program which provides numerous resources to start-up technology companies.

Now read: Why bootstrapping might be the smartest choice you make

3 Reasons Women Should Pitch Their Startups More Often

Women entrepreneurs don’t pitch as often as their male peers. I encourage women to step up to the plate, whether it’s asking for capital to fund their startup, or asking for a raise at work.

In 2012, only 16 percent of startups pitching to angels in the U.S. were women-led, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. Out of that 16 percent, 25 percent secured funding.

3 benefits of pitching your startup:

Feedback

Pitching your startup is a way that you can receive advice and suggestions from potential investors that can help your business model get closer to meeting market needs.

Connections

Don’t view pitching as a zero-sum game, where you either get funding or you don’t. Instead, view pitching as an opportunity for you to meet key influencers. While a potential investor may not be interested in investing in your startup, she/he may know someone who might want to learn more and, by pitching, you increase your network, as well as you chances of securing a relevant introduction.

And yes, capital.

One of my favorite sayings is, “If you want money, ask for feedback” (and we come full circle…). Pitching is an opportunity for you to share your startup, engage people, and secure funding. Whether someone wants to invest on the spot, or you receive a referral to a potential investor, remember that putting yourself out there can get you closer to raising capital.

Need a pep talk before venturing out to pitch? Check out the Pipeline Fellowship Blog, which features candid interviews with members of our community, as well as an Entrepreneur Prep section.

Article originally posted at Ideas Lab.

Natalia (aka Ms. Oberti Noguera) is Founder and CEO of the Pipeline Fellowship, an angel investing bootcamp for women philanthropists. Natalia holds a BA in Comparative Literature & Economics from Yale. Women’s eNews recognized her as one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century for 2012 and Business Insider included her on its 2013 list “The 30 Most Important Women in Tech under 30.” You can find Natalia on Twitter (@nakisnakis).

A programmer’s guide to getting hired by a startup

Why Bootstrapping Might Be The Smartest Choice You Make

One of the earliest and most critical decisions an entrepreneur must make is whether to self-fund a startup by bootstrapping, or raise outside funding through venture capital. The implications of each decision are significant.

How you fund your company will help determine its chances of success, its scale, its long-term prospects, and ultimately, your relationship with it.

As an entrepreneur who has invested significantly in my own company, I believe that bootstrapping is the best option. It’s never easy, and it’s not always glamorous, but bootstrapping will force you to become a better, stronger entrepreneur with a more vibrant business. Here’s why:

Creative Freedom: The creative and executive freedom that entrepreneurs have at the beginning of their projects is priceless. Bootstrapping a company with your own funds protects that freedom without the (often stifling) accountability to an outside voice protecting its investment. When you bootstrap, you are that voice — and you’re the creator too. Even if you supplement with outside funding down the road, bootstrapping gives you far more control over your own business in those critical early days.
Smaller = Scrappier: With less capital to work with, you will be forced to start small, test your assumptions carefully, and then scale up. Along the way, you will learn about your products, markets and customers more intimately. And if you make mistakes — as all entrepreneurs do — they will almost certainly be smaller in scale and impact. Meanwhile, you will learn to become a scrappier, more vigilant founder.
Better Products: Another advantage of a limited budget is a greater focus on your products and services. The pressure of a shorter runway will force you to get your products right. When every last dollar matters, you need to pay attention to your customers and their needs by building a superior offering. That insight and dedication will increase the likelihood of generating revenue and building a brand more quickly.
High Stakes (But Higher Rewards): As a bootstrapper and founder, you are your company’s original (and only) shareholder. As a result, you will retain control and equity. Bootstrapping also aligns your incentives with the success of the company: If it fails, so do you; if it succeeds, you succeed too — and at higher multiples. This also keeps ownership clear and manageable; no other investors will claim parts of the company or impede the important, rapid decisions you have to make in a startup’s early days.
Smarter Decisions: You will rarely be as cautious with other people’s money as you are with your own. Bootstrapping will almost certainly make you a better manager and incentivize you to intelligently grow your business. Learning how to do more with less is one of the most important skills of an entrepreneur — and a key principle of 21^st-century business.
Better Profit Margins: Bootstrapping a business is one of the best ways to stay lean, which will do wonders for your profitability and valuation. Plus, companies running with low overhead, often enjoy a much larger profit margin. If they succeed and begin to consider exit opportunities, a low-cost margin can have a dramatic impact on earnings, which is a common basis for valuation. One of the most compelling ways to increase your exit multiple is to cut costs — a skill that bootstrapping entrepreneurs understand well.
Faster Progress: Bootstrapping usually keeps a company’s runway short — with less cash, there is less time to get a company off the ground. This is one of the greatest motivators to quickly build a product and get it to market. Rapidly testing and iterating on your offering is an efficient and cost-effective way to develop a product. It will also dramatically increase your chances of success. Outside investment often reduces that pressure, creating a cushion that can add months or even years to your timeline.
Less Outside Influence: Raising outside investment often attracts a great deal of attention, particularly when the investors are high profile or the deal is widely publicized. While glamorous and exciting, it also raises your profile significantly. In contrast, entrepreneurs who bootstrap have a major advantage: They can operate in relative secrecy for a period of time, staying off the radar as they fund their own operations. And that can make all the difference in maneuvering around competitors and building a great product .

Every entrepreneurial venture is different, of course. The one constant, however, is that success depends on an entrepreneur’s ability to execute effectively. And my years of experience as an entrepreneur have taught me that bootstrapping is a powerful, fulfilling, intelligent way to execute.

Jay leads Innovation at Best Drug Rehabilitation. In his startup experience, he has built a digital marketing agency, a content network, and an e-commerce store. Jay speaks in the Bay area about social media marketing, SEO, and current trends in the internet-startup industry.

Now check out 5 tips to succeeding in an emerging industry.

3 Components Of An Indispensable Product

At Shop It To Me, we believe companies can disrupt a market and have long-term loyalty not just by building a great or insanely fun product, but by building an indispensable product.

Look at some of the services today with the most avid users — Google Search, Apple’s iPhone (when it first came out), Twitter, Etsy, eBay, Pinterest — all have one thing in common: they have built a product that is indispensable for certain audiences.

What is indispensable?

So, what exactly is an indispensable product? I believe you can divide it into three different components:

1. An indispensable product solves an important or meaningful problem.

Every indispensable product out there solves important problems for its users. VCs often refer to this as as the “aspirin” vs “vitamin” scenario (whenever you have a headache or pain, aspirin is a must-have; vitamins are a nice-to-have).

There’s a reason Google Search is so popular — it is indispensable in two ways. Users of Google search trust it to give them answers to the most important questions. For advertisers, Google SEM and SEO has traditionally been the best place to find customers with active intent to buy their service. Selling your amazing new tax software for businesses? Get to be at the top of the search results for “business tax software” and you’ll have the huge number of highly targeted leads you need to crush your quarterly goals.

2. An indispensable product has no good substitutes.

To gain real traction, an indispensable product not only needs to solve an important need; it must lack good substitutes when it first comes out. Your product won’t be indispensable if users can easily find an alternative.

When the Apple iPhone first came out, there were no other products remotely like it. It was terrible as an actual phone, but it was the only phone out there for consumers that would let you actually search and view real web pages (as opposed to just mobile versions), or see your emails in a visually appealing and simple way.

If you want to build an indispensable product, you need to make your product unique for the customers you are going after — you can’t just be a slightly better version of a popular product and expect people to switch.

3. An indispensable product is ideally something you need on a frequent basis.

The third point is not a true requirement of indispensability, but an important attribute if you want to build a habit and get frequent usage. If people find your product indispensable but only need it once every 5 years (or once at all), you may have a great product, but you won’t be building a habit for when competitors enter the space. On the other hand, if people need your product frequently, you have the ability to train them to be accustomed to your service. This will keep users coming back long after other competitors make similar products (think of the millions of people still using MyYahoo! 10 years later).

A quick test for indispensability

So you think your product has all three of the criteria for an indispensable product. How do you know for sure that it’s indispensable? Here’s one easy test: take it away from your users and see how they react. If people start screaming that the service you provide is gone, there’s a pretty decent chance you have an indispensable product.

Think about the products that are indispensable to you. Smartphones, webmail and Twitter are all indispensable to certain people. Think of how people tense up when their phone goes missing for 15 minutes, or how a reporter would feel if they could not access their Twitter feed and had to wait until news appeared on a website.

From inadvertent tests, we know our Shop It To Me emails can be indispensable. Every once in a while our emails get delayed. When that happens, we often hear about it not only from our data but from our support box — users email us demanding (occasionally with profanity) why their salemail has not yet arrived. And with our new product, Shop It To Me Threads, we occasionally test the waters of indispensability by asking user-testers how they would feel if we removed certain features. We’ve had a number of features that users say are “really great” that we removed from our system because they didn’t notice when they were gone.

So for all of you working on the next big thing: as you build out your product, and start prioritizing features, figure out what parts are needed to make your product more indispensable. Focus your energies on that. You’ll build a stronger product and have a much larger chance of turning your idea into a wild success.

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

Charlie Graham is the founder and CEO of Shop It To Me, an intuitive personal shopping assistant that knows what you want and delivers it on sale in your size.

Are today’s “world changing” startups, really world changing?