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Entrepreneurship Lessons from Abercrombie & Fitch

You’ve probably heard about the Twitter hashtag #FitchTheHomeless. A Los Angeles-based writer Greg Karber launched a campaign against Abercrombie & Fitch. You can learn about the campaign in this YouTube video. This blog post is not to validate or criticize the campaign or A&F, but to glean a very important entrepreneurial insight from how A&F operates….

Healthy Eating for the Healthy Entrepreneur

As you’re doing your planning for the Memorial Day weekend, consider some of your healthier options. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 35.9 percent of American adults, age 20 years and over, are considered obese. While the number has fluctuated over the last decade, the truth is that what Americans eat, and how…

Ryan Downs of Proxibid: You Have to Take a Personal Risk

Ryan Downs, CEO and president of real-time online auction marketplace Proxibid, has it easy. Or at least he thinks he does. That’s because he learned to work hard early. When Downs was a kid, he worked at the family farm in Nebraska. “We put in long hours doing difficult, physical work with outdated equipment. It…

MakerSquare Produces Industry-Ready Coders in 10 Weeks

MakerSquare is the kind of idea that inspires ideas. In its simplest form, it is a 10-week, intensive, full-time, full-stack web development program. But if you talk to cofounder Ravi Parikh about the company, the discussion quickly moves from the simple logistics to wider (borderline philosophical) issues about technology, empowerment, community, and innovation. Even Parikh’s…

5 Ways to Get Investors Interested in Your Startup

Entrepreneurs have a number of funding options available to them. From crowdsourcing to angel investors and venture capitalists, there are many organizations and individuals interested in backing startups. Businesses can avoid going into debt from high-interest business loans by securing funding through investors. As startups grow increasingly competitive, a new company must really set itself…

10 Words, 20 Letters: Being Accountable

I was fortunate early in my career to get some valuable, but simple advice. I don’t remember where it came from – probably from some motivational speaker or maybe the Dale Carnegie Course, since I spent my first few years out of college immersed in personal development. The advice is embodied in ten words, 20…

Find Lawyers through FairDocument and Reduce Legal Fees

If you died tomorrow, who would get your stuff? What song do you want played at your funeral? The government will decide for you, if you do not have a will (everything but the music, that is). Parents are not the only ones who need to have a will. Basically, anyone with financial obligations or…

Sharetown: Rent from Your Neighbors and Reduce Your Consumption

Think about your neighborhood (at home or work). How many people within an easily accessible radius have some kind of basic household, office, or event equipment that you need, but would rather not buy? Think about what you have on hand that’s really useful every once in a while, but just sits around a lot…

We Live In a User-Driven World: It’s Time to Adapt

From the moment you walk in the door at work in the morning, to the moment you switch off start ignoring your iPhone at night, your mind should be on one thing – your customers. If your mind is on anything other than your users when making business decisions, it’s likely because you are operating…

Should Your Startup Be HubSpotting?

HubSpot reminded us all of its industry dominance in the inbound marketing arena with the recent release of its State of Inbound Marketing report. To summarize the 164-page report (…no, I did not read it all): Inbound marketing is growing. More companies are adopting its methodology as well as the philosophy behind it – namely, that…

8 Attributes of a Great Startup Intern

No internship is quite alike. The same can be said for interns. This alone creates a challenge for startups looking to find the perfect match for their internship opportunities. Startup internships often top their corporate counterparts in a variety of areas. Interns have a chance to experience a one-of-a-kind company culture, interact with an extremely…

How to Find a Guru (Mentor) the Old-Fashioned Way

The importance of working with a Guru has been thoroughly emphasized in Hinduism. One cannot imagine salvation without a Guru. In one of the most important texts in Hinduism, Sri Bhagavad Gita, the role of a Guru is beautifully highlighted as: “Acquire the transcendental knowledge from a self-realized master by humble reverence, by sincere inquiry,…

Lean Analytics: An Interview with Alistair Croll [VIDEO]

Risk is one of the biggest reasons more people don’t become entrepreneurs. You can’t guarantee income while you’re starting up; and if your idea fails, you (or your investors) could lose every dollar spent building it. But what if you could effectively assess your chance at success before spending what’s needed to bring your product…

Make Wedding Planning Easy with Appy Couple

Let’s be honest: when it comes to planning a wedding, it can be a full-time job. Between the coordination, the details, the RSVPs, and even the post-event sharing of memories, it’s a headache. When I was done with my wedding, I felt like the honeymoon was just a necessary vacation to recover from the craziness…

Arden Reed is Making Custom Suiting Simple and Affordable

Custom menswear brand Arden Reed was founded in 2008 by Mike Abadi and Carlos Solorio. After leaving their investment banking jobs in New York, the two turned to Kickstarter and launched the company last year. They ended up raising over five times their original goal and became the men behind Kickstarter’s 12th most funded fashion…

Who Needs Preschool? AppTalia: Apps for Early Childhood Education

Everything is changing, and everybody knows it. There is a palpable sense of anxiety over what the future holds for America and what it means for the coming generations. The new fluid workforce, global economics, and disruptive information technologies are going to have a significant impact on American competitiveness and, as a result, the opportunities…