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A “downer” is defined here as someone who seems to dwell on the negatives of every business challenge, and loves to highlight bad news or potential problems. No matter how smart or experienced this person may otherwise be, things must change or they will kill your startup. I’m not talking about someone who has an occasional bad day, but rather people who when asked, “How are things?” will proceed to give you a 20-minute dissertation on their latest health symptoms, the latest company problem, and the sad state of the world in general. This brings down the mood of everyone around them, and often leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy

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There is no Place in a Startup For a Downer

Money to build the business is the number one challenge for most startups. Don’t believe the urban myth that you can sketch your idea on a napkin, and people will throw money at you. In reality, there are multiple more productive approaches you should explore in getting your startup moving forward. Of course, there are pros and cons to each of these. For example, with any outside investment, you give up some ownership and control, and with bootstrapping you growth curve will likely be longer and more organic. Yet, I find that startup founders often fixate on one or two sources, often to the detriment of their business. Following is my prioritized larger list of sources, with some “rules of thumb” which may save you a lot of time and energy: Bootstrapping. Self-funding from your savings is the preferred source of cash for your startup – if you have it.

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Ten Top Funding Sources for Startups

I always love to get questions from my readers, and I answer them all, but sometimes I feel like the “Dear Abby’ for entrepreneurs. Many of the questions I get make me realize how well off most of us are, as we understand the challenges that others have to face. If you have some insights, don’t hesitate to let me know. Here are some real cases: Dear StartupPro, I am a minority looking for funding for a Home HealthCare Service business. It has been hard in my years of searching for funds. I have had some unfortunate trying times with the loss of a daughter and baby grandson and having to raise a now 17-year-old, we are upside down in our mortgage.

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‘Dear Abby’ Style Advice to Real Entrepreneurs

A while back I emphasized how important is to have a company website these days ( Startups Without a Website Won’t Start ). I should have added that a website not clearly visible to search engines is lost in the dead zone. Unless someone searches for your company by name, it won’t show up in the results. Search engines like Google depend on website HTML tags, inbound and outbound links, and relevant content to do its ranking and matchmaking, and hopefully get your company found and near the top of customer search requests. Yet my random poll of a dozen company sites found 25% were missing even the most basic tag info. The solution is basic search engine optimization (SEO). These are the high-value elements you need if you hope to see your company on any page of results for relevant user queries: Title tags

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Get Your Website Out of the Internet Dead Zone

Business success begins in the mind of the startup founder and his team. A winning startup is a team of entrepreneurs who build and run the business as an extension of who they are, rather than some extrapolation of the Google or Facebook model. It’s not so easy to fake the important attributes when the going gets rough. So before you risk it all by jumping into a startup, do a reality check on your own mind to see if you can find a majority of the following attributes, based on the book “ You Can Win ” by Shiv Khera: Positive believing

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Entrepreneur Success Begins in the Mind

The traditional mode of starting a company is to plan a serial process, where you complete only once all the steps, leading to the “big bang” launch of the company. I strongly recommend a dramatic departure from this model, called “planned iteration,” where you assume you won’t get it right the first time. This idea was well articulated by Paul Graham in an old essay, called “ Startups in 13 Sentences ” in which he talked about “making a few people really happy rather than making a lot of people semi-happy.” One of his key points is that “launching teaches you what you should have been building,” and I agree. All you old software development types will recognize the analogy to the traditional two year “waterfall model” of software development, which has been totally replaced with the Agile iterative methodology. Agile assumes and plans for iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve as more is known and markets change. Don’t mistake this for a license to launch an incomplete or poor quality solution. Your strategy today should be to define and excellently prepare the absolute minimum product that will excite a selected small segment of your intended customers, and roll it out to them – as a Beta, early promotion, or even a give-away. Then you assess feedback, adjust your offering, and iterate until you get it right (have some very satisfied customers). Plan on multiple small launches, with iterations, rather than a big launch. Here are the advantages I see with this approach: Fast time to market

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Startups Should Launch Early and Iterate

Entrepreneurs who run startups have to be generalists to survive. Yet I’m seeing another critical group of entrepreneurs, self-employed specialists, who are a growing part of this new “ entrepreneurial revolution ” that I discussed a couple of weeks ago. Many of these new entrepreneurs were regular employees a few years ago.

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Entrepreneurs can be Specialists or Generalists

For survival, the objective of every business should be to garner revenues which exceed their costs. Even non-profits have to do this to cover overhead costs, unless they rely totally on donations. Yet I continue to see business plans, or even talk to founders, and can’t find a clear business model. As Guy Kawasaki says in his book “ The Art of the Start ,” if you can’t describe your business model in ten words or less, you don’t have a business model. Avoid whatever business jargon is currently hip, like strategic, mission-critical, world-class, synergistic, first-mover, or scalable. Try something like, “the product costs X dollars, and we sell it for Y dollars.” Guy also says that the smart approach is to copy somebody else. You can innovate in technology, markets, and customers, but inventing a new business model is a bad bet. Try to relate your business model to one that’s already successful and understood.

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Adopt a Clear Business Model to Survive

Being a risk taker in business is not the same as being reckless. Nevertheless, the word “risk” has a negative connotation to most of us, implying danger and possible loss. For true entrepreneurs, risk is viewed as a positive, with its implied challenge to overcome the unknown and hitting the big return. In fact, risk is an integral part of life, as well as every business, yet so few people learn to manage it properly, or even want to think about it. One way to learn is to understand better how successful entrepreneurs approach risk, and look at actual strategies they use for success. I found a great summary of key strategies used, with life stories, in a new book titled “ The Risk Takers ,” by Renee and Don Martin. Here is their list, with a little prioritizing and comments of my own: Spot a new trend and pounce. Often, a shift in cultural or economic trends will create new entrepreneurial opportunities. The challenge is to recognize the shift early, and then act on it, despite the risk.

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Ten Top Strategies of Business Risk Takers

People tell me there are over 5,000 online dating sites, but I couldn’t find one that focused on matchmaking business-to-business (B2B) relationships. Yet, every business expert tells me that finding good business partners is just as tricky as a good marriage, without the sex. Business partnerships come in all shapes and sizes, from finding a single partner to help you run your startup, to signing a strategic agreement with another large company for development, marketing, distribution, or sales. As with personal relationships, unbalanced deals don’t work, since the dominating entity finds it hard to adapt and appreciate the value of a partner. Everyone agrees that successful business partnerships can provide cash for growth, reduce costs, provide new geographic markets, or bring whole new customer sets to the table. Bad ones will suck the energy out of your company, and leave you wanting more. The thrill of the chase is always the fun part, but making it work is a lot harder. Just like personal relationships, if you are contemplating a business partnership, the first consideration should be the characteristics of the key people involved. In addition, your company engines have to synchronize, which requires changes beyond the honeymoon period

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We Need Dating Sites for Business Partnerships

If the dreaded “red ring of death” has affected your Xbox 360 then you won’t be able to play your favorite games, watch HD-DVD movies, or go on Xbox Live until the problem is fixed. Today you are going to get a basic introduction on Microsoft Xbox 360 repair, including whether it is worth sending your console away to have someone else fix it for you, or whether you can, and should, do the job yourself.Before you can learn how to repair your Xbox 360, it is important that you understand the causes of the “red lights error”

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Xbox 360 Repair – Microsoft Xbox 360 Repair – An Preface

There are lots of people who look for making money online opportunities. Often they are not the newcomers to the Internet, they have their own blogs or sites.If you have the blog too, perhaps you are willing to make money with it. There are different ways of achieving this aim

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Making Money Online Opportunities.

It is highly believed that for any Online Marketing campaign to be effective you will need to obtain the trust and recognition from the main Search Engines that control the Internet.

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The Best Ways For Your Company To Get Recognised By The Net Community.

A tax credit for U.S. small businesses proposed in President Barack Obama’s $3.8 trillion fiscal 2011 budget may not cover the set-up costs of a mandatory retirement savings plan, a Washington-based trade group said.

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Obama Tax Credit May Not Cover IRA Cost, Business Group Says

Not too long gone by I became lucky enough to get asked to become a Beta tester for the new product released by Jason Katzenback together with Jason Potash, that is titled Web 2 Mayhem. I just want to tell you right now, It was simply the best thing that’s happened to in a long, long time! I’d prefer to speak to you as blunt as I would a very good family member or friend in this posting, so I I am sorry if this particular article is less than formal. You really, seriously will be needing to pay a visit to Web 2 Mayhem. Believe me about this one! Seriously, I had been just about to give up on seeing any results with sending Targeted Traffic to my Web site until I took part in the Web 2 Mayhem Beta Testing, in which merely 2 hundred consumers ended up asked to get involved! If you’re like me and think you have to be advised every step of the way through each one of the steps it will take to get on the primary page of Google as well as various other top Search Engines, then you might want to do yourself a large favor and look into Web 2 Mayhem (details Below). It will explain to you, in extreme fine detail, through PDF and videos, the precise steps and tactics you should follow to obtain a leading position in the search engines like google. Let us discuss a few of the best parts of the Web 2 Mayhem System that I will include in my Web 2 Mayhem Review .

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My Personal Web 2 Mayhem Review

Internet connection via high speed cable is a very used method to get connected in many residential areas having cable TV already installed.High speed cable Internet connection has been of the primary alternatives for the older and much slower telephone line based modem (dial-up). This is a much faster method to access the Internet. It was created due to the ongoing demand from users for high speed connection. Such connection do allow streaming videos and live Internet based casts. Go here High Speed Internet Service to learn a lot more about this connection method. About anyone getting a regular salary can afford the actual price of having a high speed Internet connection (at home, …). The popularity of this method of accessing the Internet has grown over the past years at such a rate that most Internet Service Providers have declared it as one of their primary offers.

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Learn More About High Speed Internet Service

Whether you’ve decided to create a blog about your favorite sports team or a website dedicated to selling your custom made bracelets, you need to know at least a little bit about internet marketing so that you can gain a following. Some parts of the process are pretty easy, but there are some things that can be a little tricky and pretty frustrating, too

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Simple Six Figures -Promoting Your Web Site Through Internet Advertising

Not matter what kind of business one has, on web or off the web, in order to earn money spinning profits it is very necessary to have more leads. In case you have been looking at an alternative for the same, you should start blogging as soon as possible. Blog marketing is one of the fastest ways to get a lot of genuine people to turn their attention towards your products and services

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Social Networking Sites Are Helping To Ease Internet Marketing

Most people in business seem to expect their leaders just to give orders. According to Gary B. Cohen in his new book, “ Just Ask Leadership : Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions,” as leaders advance, they tend to oblige by asking fewer questions and providing more answers. This is precisely the wrong approach. I’m a big fan of the old adage “There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.” We have all heard questions that begin, “This may be a dumb question, but …” used effectively by smart people who are not afraid of risking ridicule by challenging a questionable assertion from an intimidating speaker. Entrepreneurs and business executives have to keep reign over a very broad domain. They need to ask the right questions in the right contexts to stay ahead of the game, and to empower coworkers to find solutions, embrace responsibility, and become accountable. Cohen provides specific questions to pose in particular situations while also explaining how to create a culture of question-based leadership. He addresses these five critical areas: Improving vision. Good vision requires insight from all levels of the organization

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Entrepreneurs Need to Ask the Right Questions

I used to think that an investment bank was a place where I could somehow deposit my investments, and maybe even earn a little interest. Then I learned that these banks really negotiate investments and collect fees on the transactions, sort of like commercial banks do with loans to businesses. None really provide funds for early-stage startups. Many investment banks even call themselves “boutiques.” As near as I can tell these are smaller ones, who don’t sell clothes, but typically sell companies and securities in a particular set of industries. All investment banks have to be staffed by licensed specialists, called broker-dealers. Very confusing. None of these investment banks offer traditional banking services, as you would expect from one of the following: Retail banks Commercial banks Credit unions Savings and loans As startup founders, you first need to deal with one of these banks, probably a commercial bank. Commercial banking is also known as business banking. That would be almost any bank that provides checking accounts, savings accounts, and money market accounts to businesses, and also makes loans to businesses

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Use Investment Banks for Exit, not Startup