3. Being The Best/ Owning A Niche
● You are small so use this to your advantage
● What’s your niche?
● Are you focused enough?
● Can you be #1 at what you do?
● What expertise do you and your team bring?
● My situation over 20 years
○ Search marketing in 1998
○ Social media ads in 2008
○ Coliving for Digital Nomads in 2018
4. Founders, Interns and Consultants vs Employees
● How flexible is your company’s model?
● Employees vs contractors?
● What’s optimal?
● What did I do?
○ Founding partners
○ Interns
○ Expert Consultants
○ Acquired expertise
○ Do it yourself
○ Hire a proven team
5. Customer vs Investor Funding
● Work for free then scale
● Get testimonial/ reference accounts
● Minimize recurring overhead
● Get a line of credit when you don’t need one
● What’s the timing of customer payments?
● How did I do it?
○ Lots of retainer clients
○ One big customer(s)
○ Line of credit
○ Cash flow management
6. The Startup Year, Then The Pivot
● 1st year is experimental
● If you could restart what would you change?
● How differentiate? David vs Goliath
● Annual / quarterly planning
● Reimagine your business
● How did I do it?
○ Focus on niche emerging digital services
○ Focus on verticals
○ Focus on geography
○ Added tech for scale later
7.
8. Write a 60 second pitch of your business
- Overview of Your business
- The Niche you are focused on
- How do you make money?
- When do you get paid?
- Do you use consultants?
- How long in business?
- Biggest pain point/ opportunity