Author Archives: sam_plecic

The jobs act promised small individual investors the ability to invest in the next Google. It also pledged founders an alternative route to raising money. Why should only the already rich get the benefits of investing in the next Google or Amazon?

Less risk for the new startup investors.

According to Entrepreneur, “Seventy-five percent of venture-backed startups fail.” Investing in startups is a risky affair, yet investors are will to take these risks because of the potential of significant upsides.

For founders, having a new source of capital has a definite upside.

Having access to crowdfunding platforms are not just for small startups anymore. As of 2018, “since its launch, nearly 1,000 companies have registered with the SEC on 50 platforms, and over $127 million has been committed to campaigns.”

Before acquisition the then SeedInvest CEO Ryan Feit previously said, “With over 37,000 accredited investors,

Earlier this year, Twitter quietly removed its vowels and released Twttr, a platform that essentially acted as a prototype for design changes and feature tweaks the company was considering for its regular site. By creating a separate application under the platform’s original name, the company signaled an attempt to get back to its startup roots. Unlike its more popular brother, Twttr is a place where the company can (if it wants) fail fast and often to find out what truly works best for users. You can create a product that truly delights customers.

For entrepreneurs, this prototype should serve as an example of what it takes to build a continuously successful product.

By introducing this platform, Twitter is attempting to create something that does more than keeping the lights on: It’s trying to create a minimum delightful product or MDP.

The pure beauty of an MDP

Many entrepreneurs are already familiar with the concept of

Within this format of podcast and content, I want to provide you with the best tools to become a fantastic CEO. I realized that the most beneficial way for me to add value to your life so that you can stay relevant (both professionally and personally), will be to place some of the best CEOs in the world — in front of you. Here is the first of the How to CEO podcast interviews.

You can use each of these CEO podcasts to put together your own combined knowledge to become the qualified, quality individual you are working toward becoming. Make yourself a leader that merits being listed here among the “greats.”

In this episode, I welcome Cynthia Johnson, my first guest on the podcast.

As the co-founder and CEO of Bell + Ivy, a marketing and PR firm in Santa Monica, CA, and Las Vegas, NV. Cynthia talks about the lessons that kept her going as she tried to start her own company. Cynthia also reveals her favorite management books and her tak

Cloud adoption is picking up steam and for a good reason. There are myriad advantages to running a business in the cloud and fewer risks than ever before. According to a LogicMonitor survey, 83% of enterprise workloads will be cloud-based by 2020.

While the odds are good that your business could reap significant benefits, cloud adoption isn’t as easy as flipping a switch.

Instead, you must create a well-defined strategy for your cloud endeavor to help your company realize its vision.

What’s Your Intent?

The first step of plotting out an ideal cloud strategy is determining what type of cloud environment will best meet your needs. If your primary goals are flexibility and scalability, internet-housed public cloud models such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure are optimal.

On the other hand, a private cloud allows you to maintain some on-premise resources and deliver computing power over a secure and pri

Today, we have millions of cameras deployed throughout various industries, organizations, and global borders around the world. However, with each of these individual cameras monitoring continuously and collecting vast amounts of data points, what good is it if not actionable or context applied?

Trueface, a US-based leader in computer vision, utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to augment camera data into actionable intelligence. This technology is working to make both public and private environments safer and smarter.

Computer vision as a market was valued at $9.28 billion in 2017 and is set to grow towards $48.32 billion by the end of 2023, according to Market Report World. As adoption continues to increase, we’ll see computer visions being applied to several industries, including entertainment, gaming, manufacturing, supply chain, retail, hospitality, healthcare, and financial services.

The company has now raise

Let’s say a startup has defied the odds and survived its first several years. The entrepreneur has found a niche market, launched a product, secured funding, and continued to assemble an effective team. The business is moving forward. As the business grows, and entrepreneurs feel they have a safety net where there was none before. But how to stay hungry? Helping startups commit to improvement at every stage has to be the goal.

Staying Hungry: Helping Startups Commit to Improvement.

When things are tough — a startups attitudes and sense of urgency often begin to change. A startups’ attitude changes when they feel that all is well. As the company milestones become less urgent, the intensity of their attention ebbs and start to diminish. This relaxing time is the period when it is most likely to see competitors swoop in and gain market share. Using an improved product offering, or a better customer service, or just a better market

Paying back small business loans (SBL) has become a nightmare for so many entrepreneurs in this millennial age. The research by Main Street Lender on over 10,000 business loan applicants in the U.S disclosed that about 64 percent of applicants were unable to secure any type of financing. About 82 percent of applicants were denied financing by their bank. There are four painless ways to pay off small business loans early.

While several factors make it difficult for small business owners to meet their loan payments, there are unconventional ways to pay off you SBL early and with ease. #1 Apply for a loan that doesn’t exceed your current business worth:

While getting a SBL from a finance company to expand your business is part of your business plan, working towards paying back what your borrowed shouldn’t be left out.

Interestingly, one of the ways to pay off your small business loan earlier than expected is to apply for a loan

Pitch decks are underestimated and overestimated. Some founders dismiss the deck as pure “show” and cobble together a few slides for their venture capital (VC) audience. But I suspect that most founders spend tens of hours perfecting their deck. I worry that their efforts are concentrated in the right place but on the wrong problems.

Pitch decks are powerful because they reflect on your brand and style. They can give life to your argument and supporting stories, but they cannot close the deal without you, the presenter. 

To get this three-part series on pitch decks rolling, let’s cover the purpose of a pitch, what it has to answer, and where it can go wrong. Let’s also identify some problems that are worth concentrating on.

Presenter v. Presentation

There’s a difference between the presenter, who does the heavy lifting in a pitch, and the deck, which supports the presenter. In a str