From the category archives:

Startups

Health Care Industry Professionals Give Advice To Startups At TEDMED Conference

by steven on April 23, 2013

If your startup revolves around health care, you need to be ready for the series of regulatory hurdles that you’ll have to overcome if you want to be successful. Some of the top entrepreneurs and investors in the industry gave advice to hopeful startups at this month’s TEDMED conference; check out what they had to say!

  • Don’t rely too heavily on the inspirational powers of your startup story. “There are a lot of entrepreneurs that may have experienced their own situation or the situation of someone close to them. And they’re developing a solution for that without actually going out and talking to enough people to make sure they’re not solving the need for one institution… and that they’re building something that has the ability to scale,” said Nina Nashif, founder and CEO of the Chicago-based health startup accelerator HealthBox. “You can’t just sit behind your computer and code in health care, you have to be out in the trenches.”
  • Don’t build a business for the sake of selling it. “I think the key to innovation is building something because you really want to build it not because you want to build to sell it,” said entrepreneur Michael Weintraub, who has sold or taken public six startups during his career. “There are a lot of people working for you and counting on you to make the right decision. You’re not flipping the business to cash out, [you’re] putting it in a place that has greater leverage and impact potential.”
  • Figure out the where and how of your startup first. “It’s important for entrepreneurs to understand the complexities of the industry and that’s not always easy because entrepreneurs and industry aren’t always speaking the same language,” said Nashif. “Entrepreneurs really need to put their solutions in context.”
  • Be honest with yourself regarding the company’s future. “There’s a point in the life of the company [when] the entrepreneur has to ask himself and the management team the hard question: ‘Can we build the company to last or are we better off as a feature of a bigger product?’ You have to be really honest with yourself,” said Castlight CEO and co-founder Giovanni Colella, adding that it’s critical to find investors and a management team that will hold you accountable and force you to think.
  • Put experienced people on your team. “As you’re thinking about starting companies, if you’re young, put a little bit of gray hair into your team of people who have failed and people who are not afraid to say I screwed up… and these are some of the lessons learned,” said Juan Enriquez, managing director at Excel Ventures and the founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project.

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Personal Finance Tips To Help You Start Your Business WIthout Going Broke

by steven on April 19, 2013

It’s easy for the personal finances of an entrepreneur to suffer when the majority of their company’s net worth is wrapped up in the success of their business. If you’re forced to put all of your money into your startup, make sure you follow these Entrepreneur personal finance tips to get your business started smoothly… without forcing you to hit up the nearest pawn shop.

  • Give yourself a cash cushion. Having money reserved for a rainy day is incredibly important when you’re starting a business. Try to have one year’s worth of personal expenses set aside in a liquid account, in case of an emergency.
  • Reduce your cost of living. Trimming expenses like cable television, expensive cell phone plans and fancy dinners will help make your cash cushion a little larger without drastically reducing your happiness.
  • Ask for help. Don’t be afraid to ask friends and family for loans in exchange for equity in the company – that deal may actually turn out to be incredibly beneficial to them when your business does well! Just make sure the loans are simple and documented to avoid future complications.
  • Avoid giving away shares too early. Giving away large chunks of equity to employees, family or friends could decrease your ownership percentage. If your primary goal is to make as much money as possible, you are going to want to have a concentrated position in your business. Offer investors no more than 20 to 40 percent of the ownership.
  • Consider pausing retirement saving. This is a better option than running up a lot of credit card debt or giant home equity lines to fund your business.

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Teenager Becomes Millionaire After Selling News App To Yahoo

by steven on April 9, 2013

You may not have heard of 17-year-old Wimbledon-native Nick D’Aloisio yet, but he’s just proven that anyone with a revolutionary tech idea - regardless of age or experience – has what it takes to make it big.

D’Aloisio just sold his smartphone news app Summly to Yahoo for a reported $30-million. So what’s his best advice for others who hope to do the same? “Just do it!”

“If you have a good idea, or you think there’s a gap in the market, just go out and launch it because there are investors across the world right now looking for companies to invest in,” he told Reuters.

D’Aloisio dreamed up the mobile software while revising for a history exam in 2011 – inspired by the frustrating experience of trawling through Google searches and separate websites to find information when revising for the test, he went on to create a prototype of the app that distils news stories into chunks of text readable on small smartphone screens (he taught himself coding when he was merely 12, right after Apple’s App Store was launched, and went on to create several apps including Facemood and music discovery service SongStumblr). Trimit, an early version of the app, caught the eye of Horizons Ventures, which put in $250,000. That investment attracted other celebrity backers, including Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry, Yoko Ono, and News Corp media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

“It’s been super-exciting, (the investors) found out about it in 2012 once the original investment from Li Ka-shing had gone public,” said D’Aloisio. “They all believed in the idea, but they all offered different experiences to help us out.”

His business worked with around 250 content publishers, and people reading the summaries could easily click through to the full article, driving traffic to newspaper websites.

“The great deal about joining Yahoo is that they have a lot of publishers, they have deals with who we can work with now,” said D’Aloisio said.

He plans to continue his studies while also working at Yahoo’s offices in London, and then go on to university to study humanities.

 

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Creating Your Start-Up Dream Team: How To Convince The Right Employees To Join

by steven on April 1, 2013

If you’re trying to get a start-up off the ground, you’re probably facing the challenge that is finding the right individuals to join your team. Experienced and knowledgeable employees look for several particular key factors before joining with an early-stage start-up; by proving to them that you can offer what they’re looking for, you can increase your chances of getting the best people on board. Check out the four aspects Forbes believe you should showcase during the interview and hiring process: 

  • The Opportunity to Make Significant Contributions. Working at a large company usually provides greater career security, a higher salary, and better benefits. Your start-up can’t offer that… but it can offer the chance to wear multiple hats and manage multiple parts of the business. The ability to make a difference is appealing, so prove that you can grant employees that. Discuss the ways in which they’ll be expected to contribute to the team and build out their role in the company. 
  • The Chance to Build Something Meaningful. Your team is building something from nothing, and was created to solve a particular problem or fill a vacancy in the world… chances are you’re not the only one who recognizes the problem and that your employees want to be part of the solution, too. Spend plenty of time getting people excited about what you’re creating.
  • Your Great Team. Knowing that they’ll be surrounded by smart, fun people can make a big difference. Take candidates to drinks, dinner, or coffee to get to know each other in a more casual environment, and we make sure they have the chance to get to meet multiple members of the team.
  • The Possibility of Making a Lot of Money. What you may not be able to offer your employees in salary, you can give in stock options… granting them the opportunity to own a portion of the company.

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New York Becoming As Solid A Hub For Tech Startups As Silicon Valley

by steven on March 21, 2013

While California’s Silicon Valley is known for being the biggest tech startup hum in the country for decades, New York City is finally starting to rival it. According to data from SeedTable.com, 127 startups were founded in NYC over the past year, nearly equal to the combined 131 that launched in San Francisco and Palo Alto.

“New York is booming — here to stay as a big tech center,” Eric Hippeau, a partner at Lerer Ventures, told CNBC’s ”Squawk Box” he sees a shift from Silicon Valley to New York. “It’s very different than the Valley. I don’t think the people in New York are trying to replicate what’s going on in the Valley. New York is doing what New York is good at — commerce, media, publishing, enterprise, marketplaces.”

“The old adage that ‘if you want to be a true tech entrepreneur, go west’ — shown in the Facebook movie ‘The Social Network,’ when a young Mark Zuckerberg was told he must move to Silicon Valley for any hope of succeeding — no longer holds true, our data confirms,” said Sam Hamadeh, PrivCo’s chief executive. “One can now start a company in New York City, and find top venture capital firms and a thriving tech ecosystem for the first time. New York’s tech ecosystem is now built to last.”

New York’s diversity, both occupationally and demographically, is one of its biggest draws. However, despite the fact that the venture capital scene seems to be improving in the city,  the scarcity of nearby colleges that put a heavy emphasis on tech poses challenges.

“One of the things that’s not quite as well developed in New York is the university system,” said Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson. “For example, in the Bay Area, you have Berkeley and Stanford as feeder schools, and they’re right in the heart of the Bay Area. In New York, we have NYU, but NYU’s not really sort of a tech school.”

In an attempt to continue to foster additional growth, a number of initiatives have emerged in New York to aid fledgling companies. The city government extended its “We are Made in NY” campaign to the tech sector last month, leading to more than 900 tech startups signing up to post job openings on the campaign’s site. The program’s website also provides links to find subsidized office space, apply for funding through NYC Seed, bid on government contracts and seek out up to $400,000 in training grants.

While New York’s tech scene still trails Silicon Valley, it has become apparent that it is transforming the state’s economy and continuing to improve.

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