You speak at a lot of events. What advice do you find yourself giving to entrepreneurs most often?

Answer the questions: Why me? Why now? Why this? Entrepreneurs get bolloxed up in a billion other things, when those are the questions investors are asking themselves as they listen to the pitch.

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I'm trying to start a career-help website for Northwestern Students. I'm not getting a lot of feedback. What's my next step? My vision is to create a site where Northwes...

Answered by Dan Martell – Founder & Investor.

The way I would fix this is talk to 10 students, put the site in front of them and ask them what they think. You've got a lot of information on the site, but does it easil... (more)

Do you have any examples of web services that were free to begin with and then started charging after acquiring a substantial amount of users? What advice would you have fo...

Answered by Mark MacLeod – Partner, Real Ventures

I know many that started with free and launched premium on top. Tungle, Freshbooks, all the 37 signals services, dropbox are just a few examples. If you start charging for... (more)

You've called a lot of winners (Aardvark, Evite, Tickle etc) - what did you see in these companies that made you invest? How many startups do you evaluate, how many do you ...

Answered by David Hornik – Partner, August Capital Posted in Lessons

I probably get between 500 and 1,000 executive summaries sent to me a year. Of those, let's say, 750, I probably meet with 100 in a year. Of those 100 I meet with I proba... (more)

Hi Amber. I am the founder of a start-up launching a product geared towards college students in a week. I'm very interested in starting a video campaign, and would love to ...

Answered by Amber MacArthur – Entrepreneur and tech journalist. Posted in Marketing

It's always tough to create a viral video. However, if you look at a lot of the most popular viral videos they are musical. In other words, a music video spoof can always... (more)

What advice do you have on forming a content strategy for a new SaS business?

Answered by Benjamin Yoskovitz – Partner, Year One Labs Posted in Marketing

I still believe that writing a good blog is a cornerstone for a content strategy for almost any business. You have to do some research into your audience - are they online,... (more)

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