Martin Zwilling
Founder and CEO,Martin is a veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech professional, and angel investor. He is the Founder and CEO of Startup Professionals, a company that provides products and services to startup founders and small business owners.
Posted by Martin Zwilling on September 1st, 2014
The universal challenge of every startup founder is to get everything done that needs to get done, and still have a life. Even outside of business, everyone wants to accomplish more, while working less. I’ve been a student of these techniques for some time, but some time ago I saw a great summary that seems to pull
Posted by Martin Zwilling on August 24th, 2014
One of the toughest decisions for a startup is how to price their product or service. The alternatives range from giving it away for free, to pricing based on costs, to charging what the market will bear (premium pricing). The implications of the decision you make are huge, defining your brand image, your funding requirements, and your long-term business viability.
Posted by Martin Zwilling on August 17th, 2014
One of the most common failures I see in startups is lack of focus. Unfocused entrepreneurs boast that their new technology will generate multiple disruptive products for consumers as well as enterprises around the world. Investors hear this as trying to do too many things with limited resources, meaning the startup will not shine at anything, and will not survive
Posted by Martin Zwilling on August 10th, 2014
Most entrepreneurs struggle with financial projections, not wanting to commit to numbers they can’t deliver, and having no clue what investors might consider reasonable. However, making no projections, or non-credible projections will get your startup marked as unfundable. I recommend a simple set of guidelines, which work for at least 80% of the business domains I see.
Equally important, you
Posted by Martin Zwilling on August 3rd, 2014
In my experience, inventors and technologists aren’t interested or aren’t very good at building a business, and entrepreneurs aren’t usually good scientists. These people need to find each other, and can jointly make a great team for a new startup. Without the synergy, companies like Apple might never have gotten off the ground.
Historically, it’s also not often that a
Posted by Martin Zwilling on July 27th, 2014
People are always asking me for an inside tip on Internet sites that will be “the next big thing.” Those are hard, since someone has to invent something innovative, but I do have some views on other ideas whose time has come and gone.
In some cases, these are concepts that have already been done too many times, and the
Posted by Martin Zwilling on July 20th, 2014
As an entrepreneur, your personal integrity is critical for getting and keeping the support of investors and team members, and your company’s integrity is critical for getting and keeping customers and vendors. But in a practical sense, what does that really mean?
Most definitions of integrity include something like “the quality of being honest and morally upright.” Yet, I’ve found
Posted by Martin Zwilling on July 13th, 2014
Where did this sense of entitlement in our business culture come from? I’ve written about this before, but I was reminded again a while back at a conference for startups when an entrepreneur started berating investors for not funding early-stage startups. It sounded to investors like me that they felt a funding entitlement for their startup idea. Of course, I’m
Posted by Martin Zwilling on July 6th, 2014
I talk to many people who have spent years struggling up the corporate ladder who dream of jumping ship and becoming an entrepreneur. I hasten to tell them that every job move is fraught with risk, but the move from employee to entrepreneur is on the high end of the risk curve. It’s a big jump, especially in today’s economy,
Posted by Martin Zwilling on June 29th, 2014
The Hype Cycle was a concept put forward by Gartner, Inc. back in 1995 meant to apply to technology product evolution and acceptance. As I was reading about it a while back, it occurred to me that the concept relates directly to how investors see startup opportunities and potential success as well, at least those with technology in their offerings.
