2025

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How to Launch Your Startup Without a Launch

This is going to be BIG.

Gone are the days of the startup launch party. Remember those nights of trying to explain to a Techcrunch reporter why your app was going to change the world over thumping music and bad venue WiFi? RIP. Most startups know not to blow a bunch of money on a big party before they have their first users, but legitimate questions remain about what you do in its placeand how you open yourself up to the world that gets attention.

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BE 2.0: Focus on Responsibility, Not Tasks – The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Paul G. Silva

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). Beyond the To-Do List In BE 2.0, Collins draws a critical distinction that transforms how we approach work: Tasks are things you do; responsibilities are outcomes you own. This ties in nicely with a concept I often teach my students about Features vs Benefits.

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Steve Case Testifies on Expanding Access to Capital Across America

Revolution

Steve Case Testifies at U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Hearing, Beyond Silicon Valley: Expanding Access to Capital AcrossAmerica On March 25, 2025, Revolutions Chairman and CEO, Steve Case, testified before the Committee during a session examining policy proposals to improve capital access. Watch the hearing and read his full testimony here andbelow.

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A Founder's Guide: Essential Management Advice for Startups

Tomasz Tunguz

As startups scale, effective management becomes the difference between chaotic growth and sustainable success. After analyzing hundreds of posts on startup management, I’ve distilled the key pieces of advice that founders and leaders should keep in mind. 1. Management Philosophy Management is a design pattern : Just like engineering has patterns, management has best practices that can be learned and applied systematically.

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From Curiosity to Competitive Edge: How Mid-Market CEOs Are Using AI to Scale Smarter

Speaker: Lee Andrews, Founder at LJA New Media & Tony Karrer, Founder and CTO at Aggregage

This session will walk you through how one CEO used generative AI, workflow automation, and sales personalization to transform an entire security company—then built the Zero to Strategy framework that other mid-market leaders are now using to unlock 3.5x ROI. As a business executive, you’ll learn how to assess AI opportunities in your business, drive adoption across teams, and overcome internal resource constraints—without hiring a single data scientist.

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Maki’s Conversational AI Agents Transform Talent Acquisition, Series A Funded

American Entrepreneurship

The company’s AI agents streamline clients’ human resources workflows, enhance data-driven decision-making, and drive organizational impact. With major global companies like BNP Paribas, PwC, Deloitte, FIFA, Abercrombie, and Capgemini in its fold, Maki is accelerating the use of its AI agents throughout companies’ human resources. Its conversational AI agents are transforming how organizations recruit and manage talent. “Our mission is to give human resources more-than-hu

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Ultimate Event for Entrepreneurs Comes to New Zealand: INSPIRE & SUCCEED

NZ Entrepreneur

The ultimate live event for entrepreneurs, INSPIRE + SUCCEED is coming to New Zealand for the first time in April-May, presented by Success Resources. Taking place in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington, the premiere event will present pioneers in business, innovation and leadership, including innovative founders Brianne West , Nadia Lim , Sam Stubbs , Iyia Liu , special guest Dan Carter and more.

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Tyler Bosmeny built Clever into a $500M company–now he’s helping YC founders do the same as General Partner

Y Combinator

When Tyler applied to YC in 2012, his startup idea was an unusual one. An API for schools? But outliers always sound unusual at the outset. At Demo Day, he shocked the room when he announced that he’d already signed on 1,000 schools. Over the next 10 years, he and his cofounders grew Clever into an educational powerhouse, used every day by over half of K-12 students in the USA– my kids included.

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What if your business runs out of money?   

Berkonomics

Money in the bank is like oil in the car. Certainly, you have many ways you are pulled every day, both tactical and strategic. But when money is the issue, your time, energy and focus are drained from other important areas of your life or business. Running out of money is not always synonymous with going broke. Many great businesses in their growth periods find themselves stretched for cash.

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Startup Taxes and Handling Early Money

Gust

In the turbulent journey of entrepreneurship, dealing with taxes seems the furthest of priorities, however, understandingjustenough of the intricacies of taxes and accounting can save you a lot of hassle and money. In Q1 we do a lot of extra programming around tax and compliance to help founders find the balance between preparedness and growing the business.

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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You have to create the best content in 2025 to get eyeballs for your business.

Founder Bounty

Content creation is essential and almost everyone from hedge fund managers to content creators like mr beast the absolute war online never stops with billions of pieces of content being created on a daily basis. Your content has to stand out. At founderbounty we understand the importance of creating content that turns eyeballs. Our content is informative as well as education from VC-backed founders who have experience in building companies from scratch and helps you navigate the online world thi

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VCs Don't Owe You a Response or a Follow Up

This is going to be BIG.

Recently, Lightspeeds Mercedes Bent offered founders some reasons why a VC might ghost a founder. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation that basically boiled down to VCs are busy and theres no upside to hurting your feelings or getting into a debate. The post was met with a bunch of founders responses, mostly from men, that equated a lack of response with disrespect.

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BE 2.0: Self-Correction is Vital – Recognizing When Change is Needed

Paul G. Silva

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). The Challenge of Seeing the Truth In BE 2.0, Jim Collins makes a powerful observation: the most successful organizations don’t stagnatethey continuously self-correct. But as leaders, we often find it remarkably difficult to recognize when correction is needed, especially when we’re busy, successful, or have a long track record.

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Local, Circular, Resilient: How Cambium is Shaping the Future of Material Supply Chains

Revolution

At Rise of the Rest, we back companies building solutions that are both transformational and tangible. Cambium s model is exactly thatredefining how supply chains function, starting withlumber. When we first invested in Cambium, we were drawn to the clarity of the teams vision: create a transparent and traceable logistics operating system that takes local, fallen trees (that would otherwise end up in landfills) and turns them into high-quality, lower carbon building materials.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

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The Complete Guide to SaaS Pricing Strategy

Tomasz Tunguz

Most startups play defense when discussing pricing with customers. They dance between asking for too little, leaving money on the table, and asking for too much, only to lose the customer’s interest. The very best companies lead their customers in that dance. They use pricing as an offensive tool to reinforce their product’s value and underscore the company’s core marketing message.

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How to Build a Strong Founding Team for Your Startup: Key Roles and Responsibilities

American Entrepreneurship

Two entrepreneurs share their experiences building a strong team followed by an outline of key areas to know. Building a startup is an exhilarating journey, but the road to success is rarely a solo endeavor. While great ideas can be the catalyst for success, the team behind the idea truly drives a startup forward. A well-balanced founding team is critical for laying the business foundation and also navigating the challenges that arise in the early stages.

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Praise Our Lord For Secondary Markets, Because Selling Shares Is Now an Essential Part of (Seed) Venture Capital

Hunter Walk

Soon I’ll have spent more time on cap tables than org charts. That’s a 2025 milestone as Homebrew turns 12.5 years old, surpassing my combined working tenure across Second Life, Google and YouTube. I entered venture capital with some beliefs – many of which still hold true (such as ‘your LPs are your business partners, not your customers’).

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Tariffs Are Hurting My Business--Should I Cut Expenses?

Red Rocket

With all the chaos in the economic and financial markets these days, largely around the impact of new tariffs, it is causing unexpected and unfortunate turmoil for many businesses today. Businesses that used to be growing are seeing declines, and businesses that used to be generating healthy profits may now be experiencing losses. That can be a scary time for the most seasoned executives, and even more so for startup executives living it for the first time.

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How Top Tech CFOs Solve Annual Planning’s Biggest Challenges

Gearing up for 2025 annual planning? Our latest eBook from the Operators Guild is your ultimate guide. Discover real-world solutions and best practices shared by top CFOs, drawn directly from discussions within OG’s vibrant online community. Learn from senior executives at high-growth tech startups as they outline financial planning strategies, align CEO and board goals, and coordinate budgets across departments.

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The Impact of Angel Investing: Interview with Anne Maghas

Venture Well

After successfully founding three companies, Maghas realized she had valuable insights to share with other founders, particularly those facing similar challenges, as Black women in the innovation and entrepreneurship space. The post The Impact of Angel Investing: Interview with Anne Maghas appeared first on VentureWell.

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What founders often get wrong!

Berkonomics

Thoughts from BERKONOMICS – Dave Berkus After 50 years in entrepreneurship and 200+ startup investments, here’s what most first-time founders get dangerously wrong: They obsess over the wrong metrics. The five most important metrics I’ve watched brilliant ideas fail because founders tracked vanity numbers while ignoring the real drivers of sustainable growth.

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Avoid Diligence Pitfalls with Gust’s new Corporate Diligence Tool

Gust

Corporate structure issues can quickly kill a fundraising deal for early startups, so we've built Gust's Corporate Diligence Review to provide startups with a report card highlighting their possible red flags before they pitch to investors. The post Avoid Diligence Pitfalls with Gust’s new Corporate Diligence Tool appeared first on Gust.

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HPA Announces Acquisition of Portfolio Company Simple Mills by Flower Foods, Inc.

HPA

Chicago, IL – January 8, 2025 – Hyde Park Angels ( HPA ), a premier early-stage venture capital group specializing in investing through its unique People First model, is pleased to announce that its portfolio company, Simple Mills , has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Flowers Foods , Inc. (NYSE: FLO) for $795 m illion in cash.

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Your Fractional Finance and Accounting Team

Mighty Financial specializes in supporting the financial aspirations of small businesses and entrepreneurs. With our comprehensive bookkeeping and precise accounting expertise with decades of experience across diverse financial roles, our team offers tailor-made services ranging from essential bookkeeping to strategic fractional CFO support, catered specifically to the unique challenges of technology companies, startups, and SMEs.

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Let's Talk About Anxiety, Fear of Failure, and Why I Didn't Go to The Dentist for 27 Years

This is going to be BIG.

This week, I got my wisdom teeth outall four of them. You might be wondering what took me so long. Im 45 and most people have them out between the ages of 17 and 25. One helpful bit of context is that until very recently, I hadnt been to the dentist since 1998. Heres what happened I never had a cavity growing up. I did a lot of things pretty perfectly growing upstraight As, never got into trouble, never started drinking, etc., and I got a lot of love an affection from my parents because of it.

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BE 2.0: Lead by Example – Turning Feedback into Growth

Paul G. Silva

This post is part of my ongoing series exploring lessons from Jim Collins’s book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). When Leaders Grow, Teams Follow In BE 2.0 , Jim Collins emphasizes a powerful truth: organizations can only grow as much as their leaders do. When leaders commit to self-improvement, they create a culture where growth becomes the standard.

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Bark Tank and the Spirit of D.C.: The Future of Entrepreneurship in our Nation’s Capital

Revolution

Reflections on Georgetowns 2025 pitch competition from TedLeonsis Last week, Georgetown Universitys McDonough School of Business once again became a launchpad for the next generation of bold thinkers and doers. At this years Bark Tank Pitch Competition , eight teams took the stage to pitch their ventures to a panel of expert judges, competing for a record $150,000 in prizes.

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What do Tariffs Mean for Startupland?

Tomasz Tunguz

The new tariffs have markets down broadly. What do they mean for startups? 1 In terms of first order effects, tariffs can impact a startup in two ways : the input costs and consumers’ demand. Most software companies don’t import or source critical components of the software from abroad so the COGS / gross margin structure of the company shouldn’t change unless they rely on significant hardware purchases, for example GPUs or robotics components.

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Digitalization: 5 Tech Updates That Will Help You Survive The Recession & Thrive

Lack of digitalization decreases business competitiveness. To thrive, embracing modern solutions becomes essential. The approach to digitalization often aligns with a company's business model. This shift not only boosts productivity but also automates processes and improves security. The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.