Category: Entrepreneurship

How to Use a Financial Pro Forma

One of the most important aspects of business is financial planning. While that may seem obvious, many business owners tend to focus on day-to-day issues without a clear idea of their long term trajectory. A financial pro forma is an excellent tool for setting realistic expectations for the future.  I recently interviewed Jason Niehaus, an […]

Voice-to-MIDI: A More Intuitive Way to Interact with Music

Joe Shanley recently co-authored an article for the MIDI Association of America as a co-founder of Bace Technologies, LLC. The article highlights the company’s music technology, Bace. Bace is a real-time AI technology that translates vocal sounds into usable drum MIDI notes for music recordings. MIDI is the technical standard for communication between musical instruments […]

Four Things to Consider When Raising Money

To raise money or not to raise money? That is the question. I find that a number of my startup clients want to bring on investors to jump start their business. It’s as if raising money is inevitable. With outside investment, however, comes added responsibility and organizational change. In this article, I am going to […]

Who is your Competition?

You’ve picked a problem to solve and you’ve identified the market. Great! However, did that preliminary Google search  really yield no results? You must ask yourself, who is your competition? Who is your competition? Many entrepreneurs operate in a vacuum. They generally assume that their solution is undeniably better than anything in market and it […]

Establish a Market for Your Idea

You’ve decided to become a problem-solver, great! However, in order to become a great problem solver, you need to establish a market for your idea. Using the Problem Paradigm, how scalable is the market for the problem you are trying to solve? You can address this question by qualitatively and quantitatively defining the market.  Establish a Qualitative Market The […]

The Problem Paradigm for Entrepreneurs

We’ve all had that light bulb moment in bed at night or out on the town with friends. “I just know that this is going to be the next multi-million-dollar idea, it’s genius!”, you tell yourself. You open your laptop, consult Google, and find no comparable results! Bingo. Excitement builds as you ideate over the […]