The plethora of free Wordpress plugins are one of the biggest reasons why Wordpress is my favorite blogging platform. Wordpress is also very easy to customize to your preferences. Blogging is a great marketing strategy with many additional benefits and the free Wordpress plugins below can...

Some of the of the most successful companies in history started by "doing what's working." "Do what's working" means supplying something (or a variation of something) that you know (or have some indication) people have demand for.

The riskiest and hardest part of a startup is not building the...

I just got back to The States after an amazing experience in the South of France mentoring at European Innovation Academy, a three week entrepreneurship education program. I Met some awesome entrepreneurs (both students and mentors) from all over the world. And I was incredibly inspired by how...

It's a quintessential startup story: An entrepreneur spends months, if not years, and more money than they can afford to lose building and launching a product, only to find out that no one actually wanted it! The time and money is gone forever and the hopes and dreams are (at...

Blogging can be incredibly valuable to a variety of people and for a variety of reasons. Blogging is not just for businesses! I've benefited personally, professionally, and financially from blogging. Writing has actually become one of my favorite hobbies. I recommend blogging to almost everyone I meet. Here...

With the collapse of the housing bubble and corresponding financial crisis of 2008 occuring just six years ago as of this writing (2014), concerns over a bubble in higher education are beginning to emerge. It's amazing how many similarities there are between what happened in housing and what's...

Social networks present amazing opportunities for to meet new people and build professional relationships. The internet is an equalizer. Anyone with something that people want can and will be found. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter give networkers access to millions of people with the click of...

Like so many industries today, technology is changing the field of marketing and advertising. The way people buy is changing. The way people consume media is changing. The way marketers can reach buyers is changing too. New technologies present both opportunities and challenges to marketers who are vying for buyer...

You hear the wretched sound of your alarm...you awake...it's 7am on Monday and you have to be at work in two hours...you're tired and grumpy...and it's cold outside...you DO NOT want to get out of bed...

We've all been there and it's not fun. Having a good morning ritual can...

Government may be susceptible to the same forces that are currently changing many major industries. Software is eating government, too.

Therefore government must use customer development to better serve customers else it risks becoming the next Blockbuster, Borders, or what the large publishing and financial services companies are at...

Ideas can come from anywhere. There are no hard fast rules for generating startup ideas. Some of them may turn into profitable businesses, and some may not. There are however frameworks to keep focused, filter ideas, and identify opportunities. Below are some of the strategies I like for coming up...

When practiced effectively, customer development can be an extremely valuable practice for getting startup ideas, testing viability of an idea, or optimizing existing products or ideas. It can be used to gain deep customer insights to help build products people love. When done incorrectly, it can result in...

What exactly is customer development?

Developed by serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, customer development is the practice of gaining customer insights to generate, test, and optimize ideas for products and services through interviews and structured experiments. Customer development is used to help build products that customers want and...

"What makes someone a Connector? The first -- and most obvious -- criterion is that Connectors know lots of people. They are the kinds of people who know everyone. All of us know someone like this. But I don't think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the...

Below is a summary of an interview I did with Scott Pollack. Scott has over ten years of experience in business development in fortune 500 companies and startups. Currently he does digital partnerships and new product development at American Express. Scott also blogs, teaches, and will be publishing...

For better or for worse, it's not just what you know or what you can do, it's who you know. In fact, who you know can sometimes be more important than your qualifications. Some doors simply can't be opened without an existing relationship or strong introduction. An introduction serves as...

Wiley Cerilli founded SinglePlatform in January of 2010 and led the company as CEO to it's acquisition by Constant Contact for $65 million plus incentives up to $100 million. Prior to SinglePlatform, Wiley was was EVP of Sales at Seamless. Seamless was acquired by Aramark. He currently serves...

There's an unequal distribution of power in the venture capital industry: The best firms get the best deals and the best deals provide disproportionately higher returns.

The best deals are super competitive to get in to. Naval Ravikant has said VCs don't have proprietary deal flow, they...

David S. Kidder is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. Currently, he's the co-founder and CEO of Bionic, an enterprise innovation platform. Prior to Bionic, David served as the co-founder and CEO of Clickable (acquired by Syncapse). Prior to Clickable, Kidder co-founded SmartRay Network (acquired by LifeMinders), and Net-X (acquired...

Technology innovation, disruptive new business models, and outsourcing have, and will increasingly continue to, make many jobs irrelevant. Robots are the new middles class. New technologies make old ones, and the corresponding jobs, irrelevant. What used to be done by an entitled young adults with a graduate degree is now...