No matter how much we stand to lose, there is always a way to recover.

At the time it sure doesn't feel that way. Nothing keeps us up at night more than playing out every possible scenario of catastrophic outcomes for our startup. We think about the cost of losing our startup, our team, our investor's trust, and ultimately, our personal well-being.

And yes, all of this is super terrifying. But here's the thing, Founders have an amazing ability to recover from catastrophic losses because, in the end, we never consider the fact that the one thing we can't lose is our own tenacity.

It's important to think beyond the "monster in the corner" and play out the entire scenario of what a big loss means, looking all the way past to the other side of ...

Making prototypes in China is a cost-effective way to test your product idea before selling it to consumers, but it is a detailed process that takes a lot of work to initially set up. In order to get a prototype made in China, you need to have an idea of the steps needed to follow before getting your product in mass production.

In this article, we will explore what these steps are and how to go about them with extended insight from members of the Startups.com community.

What Is A Prototype?

A prototype is a preliminary model of a product which is used to demonstrate the product's form, fit, and function. Prototypes are made with the intent of testing out different aspects of a design to see how they work.

Prototypes help you make decisions abo...

Nearly every Founder feels woefully behind their friends in life.

As it happens, we picked a particularly shitty profession to ever feel "ahead" of our friends and colleagues. Most of our friends have regular jobs where they actually get paid every week, whereas we spend the entire month wondering if and how we'll get paid at all.

The problem compounds when we start to look at our successful Founder colleagues because the delta in success can be so astronomical so quickly. We start to assume that their successes become a reflection of our failures. But what we're missing in that comparison is how the benchmarks themselves are completely broken.

We Fight Ourselves

It all starts when we try to invent where we should be in life as if our pat...

A crypto startup is a business that deals with cryptocurrencies. Crypto startups have been popping up all over the world in recent years. With the rise of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies, many entrepreneurs are looking to create their own cryptocurrency or blockchain-based startup.

There are five main steps to starting a crypto startup (we'll expand more on this below):

1. Identify a problem that needs solving.

2. Create a white paper outlining the idea (i.e. a solution to the problem) and how it will work.

3. Find or create a team of developers to build the platform.

4. Raise money through an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) or VC funding.

5. Develop the company and buy/sell tokens.

Understanding Crypto Networks and why they matter.

We'...

Becoming a startup CEO requires zero qualifications — that's because we're often not really CEOs.

Anyone who founds a company is by default the CEO. My 9-year-old daughter incorporated her pet sitting business and is technically its CEO. But she doesn't walk around comparing herself to Jeff Bezos.

As Founder-CEOs, we need to have a very sober outlook on our new title and as such, so do all of the people around us. We basically need to take the title with a grain of salt while we prove what job we're supposed to have.

Titled Doesn't Mean Qualified

I coach my 5-year-old son's basketball team and according to everyone, I'm the "Coach." Is that because I'm a good coach, or know anything about basketball? No. I have no clue what a Point Guard i...

A capitalization table or "cap table" is a record of the equity ownership and actual ownership percentage of each member of the company. Private companies typically develop a cap table when they are first formed to capture the stock ownership of the co-founders and then later begin recording stock ownership of employees, advisors, and investors.

Why do Startups need Cap Tables?

The moment the number of shares in our startup expands to more than one owner, we typically create the company's cap table. This is just a ledger of where the company's ownership stands and can be captured in something as simple as a spreadsheet.

As our startup expands, cap table management becomes more complex, such as when we take on a funding round with a venture cap...

Startups use their elevator pitch to quickly communicate their startup idea and value proposition in one or two sentences.

In our previous idea validation lessons, we focused on the importance of taking your initial idea and defining your problem, particular market, advantages, and customer needs. Now it’s time to refine those learnings into a polished Elevator Pitch and continue our startup idea validation.

The heart of every great Elevator Pitch includes 4 essential components:

ONE Nail The Problem

As we learned, great business ideas start with a well-defined problem and the ability to identify how painful that problem is. Now, we’ll concentrate on how to effectively articulate it in your elevator pitch.

TWO Explain The Solution

You’ve zeroed i...

Intro to the Customer discovery process

Up to this point, we’ve made sure that there is a problem in the market for your business idea to solve through idea validation research and notable experts have verified that you’re on the right path. Now we begin the last test of the business idea validation process — customer discovery.

We’re using customer discovery as a methodical approach to ensuring the product idea you’ve identified aligns with what potential customers actually want at a price they are willing to pay.

Key Takeaway

Use idea validation to confirm that the problem, solution, and revenue model aligns with what potential customers really want.

Customer Discovery

Customer Discovery centers around 3 critical pillars of your business model ...

Intro to using experts to validate your startup ideasNow that we know there is an opportunity in the market for our startup idea, we want to get some expert advice on how to approach that problem, target market, and industry.Think of this phase as asking your college professor what the answers to the idea validation test are before you ever start the course.In almost every case there are experts out there that know many of the answers you're looking for and are willing to share that information with you.The challenge is to find the right experts and present them with very specific questions about your business idea, and in return get highly specific feedback.Their feedback can help shortcut the market validation process, market research, ev...

Before we spend a dime on building anything, we’re first going to learn how to assess the feasibility and viability of our startup idea to see whether we should forge ahead with confidence, pivot, or go back to the drawing board altogether.

This should always be the first step for every Founder who is considering pursuing a startup idea. Broadly, this process is called idea validation.

Intro to the Business Idea Validation Process

As a Founder, chances are you’ve experienced the “eureka” moment — that feeling of capturing lightning in a bottle when you suddenly strike upon an idea that has you running to tell your friends, family members, and baffled strangers you encounter on the street (but probably not your target audience).

Nine times out o...