A lot of people see still see diversity as a Nice to Have, rather than something that affects their bottomline. Although most coverage and research have been done primarily by niche market groups, even McKinsey early in 2015 put out this big report, touting real data: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/why_diversity_matters. If you'd like to discuss diversity hiring practices through various stages, shoot me a call!

yes. Many jurisdictions have rights in a mark that arise simply from use. That said, it is not the same as the rights flowing from registration and in some jurisdictions, it is not available. A quick call to a trademark lawyer should allow you to clear up if the rights you get through use are sufficient for your purposes. Note: Branding and brand strategy is the most overlooked aspect to starting a business and a little expense now can save you a whole lot of problems later on.

neither. Your name is too broad and has no catch. Try writing a user profile. who she or he is, what are they doing in the morning? where do they live? are they married? financial status... type of hurdle, what are they seeking? what's most valuable to them - advice or step by step... based on questions like these you can find a catchy psychological name that triggers your audience interests like - clarity.fm people here are looking for advice in other words clarity.

I was just speaking with a colleague about this as we are both starting new startups and were reflecting on our previous projects together. In hindsight we recognize that one of the main challenges was proper expectation setting around adoption and engagement. If someone else is setting those expectations for you, it can be challenging to live up to them unless that person is familiar tech startup analytics. Not every business is a unicorn. You have to learn how to survive and grow when things don't go viral. Once you set expectations accordingly you're able to focus on what really matters and hone in on the user experience to identify what is sticky. You may have a long roadmap of features on your wish list, but it may not be what people want or need. Be open to pivoting and listen to your users. One of my favorite quotes is actually by LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late." Being in tech B2B and product development for almost 9 years now, I completely agree with this statement. There is so much you can learn from getting your product out into the world and in people's hands; invaluable lessons that you can't learn coding in a silo. Here's a great book for user engagement analytics: Lean Analytics. Also, happy to share my experiences on this topic.

Hi there, I've built and scaled 3 management consulting businesses to $1M+ in the past 5 years. I'm a little unsure as to what your problem is. Are you wanting to help designers with their business or are you trying to hire talented designers to complete some work? For really good designers, their desire is to do quality work, with clients they like and be compensated well for it. If you have a proven methodology or process that helps them get those types of clients you'll be off the races. But, you have to communicate clearly the specific problem you address for them. So if they are a landscape designers you can say "With my program and coaching we will get you in front of architects and seen as the go-to expert who does awesome work." Does that make sense?

I've been in a very similar situation as yourself. In our case the company split into two for better operational flow. I was the CEO of one company and was trying to figure out how to structure the other one. Unfortunately, the answer to many of your questions depends on further details. But I'll give some general feedback: 1. Depends on how much time you actual put into this new company. You sound like a CEO role but having a CEO that only spends 10hrs in the company a week would make the company look weak. You can start out as CEO and change roles later. 2. What's your exit strategy? If you plan on exiting soon, then you shouldn't; you'll make money when the company exits. But if it's more of a long-term play, then perhaps you should setup a dividend structure. I don't think it's good for company culture when someone takes a salary for not doing work. 3. Depends on growth but usually early founders become a board member. Depending on the company, they can meet as frequently as once a month, but typically a quarterly meeting is more likely. 4. This is a complex question which requires much more info. 5. This is tied in with #4.

I have worked on projects handling transfer of large image files across multiple vendors and being served on web for different targets (mobile, web etc.). I have also implemented cloud and DevOps solutions for high volume/scale of data and transactions. While I could tell you a list of technologies which can be used - the problem here is more of design and architecture. So I will start with that. Also a lot of decisions are based on more information and the use case - so I will need information on certain aspects of your application. 1) For searching an image users will enter search terms. You will have to associate the search terms/tags to actual images. While there are multiple ways to do this association - what is the link between a search term and image in your case. Do you have a separate database/service which will link given search terms to given set of images? 2) Since you are talking about handling millions of images - they will need to be partitioned logically or bucketized for optimum way to store and search. Is there a natural distribution? Do your users access all the images all over the world? 3) For any data storage related to images - we will need to go one detail further. While relational DB might serve a lot of needs, there might be use cases where considering other storages will be needed. Some questions which will lead to answers are - what kind of data per image will be stored? How frequently this data might change? How many new additions will happen on this archive? How fast would you want the updates to be visible to users/consumers? 4) What kind of traffic do you expect roughly? This will decide a lot design around auto scaling, load balancing and other aspects. 5) I am not a front end expert - but similar principles of scaling would apply to front end stack. Though I can not necessarily answer what technologies might fit your needs best.

I believe the only way to do that would be to get the download into Amazon for digital download. Otherwise, people have to email it to their kindle accounts.

Have great conversations with qualified prospects. That's the simple answer. Do this enough times and you WILL get a client. Now the hard part: How do you get great conversations with qualified prospects? 1. Find a group of people who have a serious problem *they acknowledge they have* (that's critical; it can't just be you alone saying they have it) that you can fix. 2. Get in front of them and explain their situation better than anyone else. Show them you understand where they're at. 3. Ask if they want the problem solved (this is also called "asking for the order," and it's something newbies are terrified to do.) 4. Solve the problem competently. 5. Get referrals. I have sales training programs and also coach executives on selling. If you'd like to find out more, please get in touch.

I love this question! Gets my creative mind flowing early morning. Here a few from top of my head: -Heart2Heart -Tete (tete a tete reflects a deep personal conversation between 2 people) -InterCo (for interaction & communcation) -InAccord (self explanatory) -tootalk -chatspot -lucidity (play on clarifty) Even if you don't like them, I kind of like some of these. Please feel free to google me, if you feel i can be of any help let me know. I'm one of Arizona's best commercial strategists.

Never. However look to enhance any customer reviews that embrace such differences. Revolve your campaign around 1 or 2 particular reviews or customer reflections. Read about blue ocean, ignore your competition (they will confuse you and kill your focus - do you think they are studying you? hell no!) Don't give them that validation. My name is Humberto Valle, an actual commercial strategist and consultant with clients and projects around the world. I am also one of Arizona's best marketing strategists. That's where I reside. Feel free to google me, if there is anything I can help you with let me know ;)

I've done this on a small scale for my product, but it worked nicely, and I learned some useful techniques. I'd be happy to talk with you about the process, and also answer any other startup questions you might have. Best of luck, Lee

When we did this for our own company we implemented in house, but we were at a high level of execution and resources (<100 employees). If you are small I'd recommend http://www.referralcandy.com/. It's a very simple system that you can implement and the payment tiers let you get it fairly "invisible" if you so desire.

Where? The world is a big place. Short answer, conferences are not that useful unless you are on a panel/speaking etc. Recommend you focus on building grass roots. Conferences can be a part of it, but how you do conferences matters, otherwise is an expensive use of cash.

What is the quality of that $140 per lead? Does that lead into a $1000 sale? We often think that a lead that costs $100+ or more is an expensive Cost per lead, but if it brings high quality leads that turns into a significant profit, I'll be happy to spend more $140 to get more of these types of leads. The next is to find optimize your working lead generation channel based on specific segments (is this segment get a better ROI).

The best way to build an MVP is to distill the solution to the smaller unit of value to deliver something to a customer. Start small, time box it and focus on solving the problem at it's core even if it's ghetto (I call the best MVP's ghetto but useful). Here's an image that represents my thinking on this https://twitter.com/danmartell/status/516316632126586883

No reason whatsoever. Sacrificing all of your time (consequently trading that in for your health) is a very dangerous and unsustainable approach. I've seen many entrepreneurs burn out quickly because of this. When I'm coaching other entrepreneurs, I always encourage putting yourself first (food, exercise, leisure) to be at your 110% for your startup and family.

The best way to get leads for a B2B solution is to do prospecting research online. What should you look for? Very depends on your type and stage of business. Assuming you are completely new here are some questions that would get you started: 1) What problem are the business you are looking for having or what goal do they have? 2) Do they have a burning need to solve it? 3) How does what you offer help them solve their problem or their goal? 4) What stage of business are they in? What industry? What size? And that is just for starters. Best approach for online research from there on out depends on your answers to the above. Once you have them, set up a call and I can help you further.

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There will be a lot of learning and adapting, but it should happen in a staged approach; much of it before actually 'launching'. Launching generally means exposing your full product/site/whatever to the entire general public. Before doing that you should do smaller scare, more targeted testing. Before launching, but after you have a prototype / MVP, you need to gather data on whether people want to pay for it. There are many ways to do this before a full launch. The methods vary depending on the type of product. Without further description of your product I can't help you further in terms of those methods. Send me a message if you'd like to discuss it further, best of luck, Lee

The previous answers given here are great, but I've copied a trick from legendary investor Monish Pabrai that I've used in previous startups that seems to work wonders -- especially if your company does direct B2B sales. Many Founders/ CEOs are hung up on having the Founder/ CEO/ President title. As others have mentioned, those titles have become somewhat devalued in today's world -- especially if you are in a sales meeting with a large organization. Many purchasing agents at large organizations are bombarded by Founders/ CEOs/ Presidents visiting them all day. This conveys the image that a) your company is relatively small (the CEO of GM never personally sells you a car) and b) you are probably the most knowledgeable person in the organization about your product, but once you land the account the client company will mostly be dealing with newly hired second level staff. Monish recommends that Founder/ CEOs hand out a business card that has the title "Head of Sales" or "VP of Sales". By working in the Head of Sales role, and by your ability to speak knowledgeably about the product, you will convey the message that a) every person in the organization is very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of the product (even the sales guys) and b) you will personally be available to answer the client's questions over the long run. I've used this effectively many times myself.

Quite a broad question. Agencies and publicists that are experienced have learnt many things over the years, which will all play part of best practice. As a staring point, would suggest you think about the following: - Ensure your pitch is concise and to the point. Lead with what is most newsworthy to readers of the publication you are targeting - Be harsh. Consider if what you are sending them really news? - Rearsearch the journalist and tailor pitch to reference articles they have written or areas they have an interest in - Go to the right person. Don't sent an irrelevant story to the journalist. Make sure they actually write about what you are sending them - Be prepared. Have facts and information ready - Use the phone. Imagine how many emails they get each day! You're far better pitching on the phone, and talking over the news and then following up with tailored into based on their feedback If you get the approach wrong then your pitch is going to be sent to the junk folder and you simply won't get a reply or answer. Hope that's not too blunt! Hope it helps. Thanks.

Never launch before your value prop is clear. If your product is new and innovative you must pair it with affordability. If you have that even a buggy incomplete value prop will be preordered and otherwise welcomed. If your value prop is unclear you won't be able to efficiently edit and then re introduce much less price appropriately. Futuristic/new services often get priced out of the customers minds because it seems expensive or not really that useful. You avoid this by following my suggestion. #unthink

Really depends on the content and what you mean by content. You talking video, images, press releases? Need a bit more info to help with this one.

You really have to think about the objective. Why do you want to do it? Assume it is to drive traffic? Best way, is to focus on creating content that people want to read and share, then pushing out with paid support via social platforms, influencers and partners.