Spend the first six to 12 months building a great product or service that people love, rather than chasing investors. When the time comes to engage investors, you will be meeting them from a position of strength. This makes all the difference.
I played with different words like 'home run,' 'megahit,' and they just all sounded kind of 'blah.' So I put in 'unicorn' because they are - these are very rare companies in the sense that there are thousands of startups in tech every year, and only a handful will wind up becoming a unicorn company. They're really rare.
When I was growing up, I had lots of smart classmates that were girls, but none of us were really pushed into math or computers or anything like that. Girls took AP history and AP English and AP European history. And boys took calculus and physics.
There needs to be more deliberate effort on the part of folks at VC firms to bring in a more diverse team of talent. You have to make a more concerted effort to bring in people who are different and who may not be in your network.
Comscore, Nielsen, MediaMetrix and Quantcast studies all show women are the driving force of the most important net trend of the decade, the social web.
Starting a company and being a founder is really hard, and most companies fail. You really have to have a deep commitment and belief in it and be willing to see it through many ups and downs.
Consider the social proof of a line of people standing behind a velvet rope, waiting to get into a club. The line makes most people walking by want to find out what's worth the wait. The digital equivalent of the velvet rope helped build viral growth for initially invite-only launches like Gmail, Gilt Groupe, Spotify, and Turntable.fm.
Some investors may grumble about entrepreneurs wanting 'unicorn valuations.' But let's be honest: most investors want them, too, and are supporting the massive capitalization of these companies.
If you're looking to grow your user base, is there a best way to cost-effectively attract valuable users? I'm increasingly convinced the best way is by harnessing a concept called social proof, a relatively untapped gold mine in the age of the social web.
Female users are the unsung heroines behind the most engaging, fastest growing, and most valuable consumer Internet and e-commerce companies.
If you're a digital startup, building and highlighting your social proof is the best way for new users to learn about you.
I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be an engineer. I had read some articles about girls becoming increasingly scientifically illiterate and that girls lacked confidence in their capabilities when it came to quantitative skills. And I just thought that was kind of wrong.
What is social proof? Put simply, it's the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something. It's also known as informational social influence.
We're in this incredible age where new brands are making people's lives easier, more convenient, more personalized.
You have to get under the hood and spend some quality time with someone to understand what they're really good at.
Savvy companies are quietly changing up their boards of directors and teams, and this is giving them better collective intelligence, more community admiration, and better financial results.
Seed stage is an investment area that is really important for early stage startups. It feels like there is a need for trusted, experienced people to work with and to guide startups at this level.
Having been a venture-backed CEO, and having an established background in working with consumer-focused companies, I've built a strong network of entrepreneurs and people who can help startups.
Immigrants play a huge role in the founding and value creation of today's tech companies. We wonder how much more value could be created if it were easier to get a work visa.
Over the long term, there will be many more billion-dollar technology companies than there are today.
