I’m a huge fan of Techstars. Brad Feld was one of my investors in Gist back in 2009, about the time that Techstars was getting off the ground and David Cohen and the Techstars fund is an investor in Rival IQ. I’ve mentored Techstars teams in Boulder, New

As entrepreneurs, we all have a story to tell that often includes disparate and seemingly unconnected experiences that lead us to the point where we could start our next companies. Rarely do I see a story told as well as Xiao Wang (founder and CEO of Boundless, a PSL company)

When you talk to experienced investors and founders of startups, they tell you it’s all about “focus”, but how do you make that actionable and structured? As the business changes and evolves, a founder (you) will also get lots of ideas (some good, some bad) from your team, customers,

Raising money from VC’s creates a long-term relationship, so you may as well get a good understanding of each other and set up the foundation for a strong two-way dialog.  The VC needs you as much as you need them, so the discussions should feel balanced where you’re

“What details should we use for the final closing documents” is something that every entrepreneur wants to hear. I’d been working on a new idea for over 6 months, had a great team lined up and was on the eve of closing a $1.5M seed round with some

I was recently asked to talk to a bunch of budding entrepreneurs about how to use Twitter to grow their own personal brands and therefore additional value to their companies.  The presentation talks about the “why” and the “how” to achieve this and includes some very cool stats from other

Understanding social media is critical and grocking the trends is a good start.  Our team at Rival IQ just put together some good data to get you started.  For more like this, check out our blog – blog.rivaliq.com or download the whole report with data from our massive survey

I went to Purdue and studied mechanical engineering.  It was an amazing education and prepared me in many ways for the work I do now as a software entrepreneur. (technology, software development, critical thinking, data>>opinion, math…). Recently, I was contacted by a student looking for an internship.

For a startup, raising a seed round is a daunting endeavor.  Techstars Seattle Demo Day is looming, and I recently finished mentoring the teams at the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator. I’ve written about fundraising before here and here, but I recently saw Brad Feld (who is awesome and was an

Troy Henikoff is the managing director of TechStars Chicago.  I recently saw him do a great talk outlining the tools and strategies around building your financial models.  Lucky for you, the Techstars team in NYC, where Troy spoke, videotaped the whole thing, but I thought I would pull out a