Meet Cohort Four Of The Northwest Ohio Impact Program
Cohort four of our Northwest Ohio Impact Program is officially underway! Over the next three months, these five entrepreneurs will be learning and working together with our Northwest Ohio team. The program will culminate in a demo day-style showcase on December 1, where all five will use their new knowledge and skills to pitch to
Meet Cohort Ten of the Core City: Cleveland Impact Program
We are excited to welcome the tenth cohort to our Core City: Cleveland Impact Program! This 12-week business assistance program is designed to drive economic impact in the city of Cleveland by helping individuals overcome obstacles to entrepreneurship through hands-on advising and industry-specific mentoring. Over the course of the three-month program, these entrepreneurs are learning
Angela Flowers Built A Business To Change Kids’ Lives
Angela Flowers has spent her career counseling at-risk kids challenged with mental health and social issues. Her years working in Cleveland’s public schools showed her the power of providing intervention directly in the learning environment. That set the stage for her to develop a business model to bring specialized support to as many kids as
Work Smarter, Not Harder: Implementing & Enhancing Your Internal Tools
No one is born with the innate knowledge of what it takes to start and run a company. It is a learned experience that cannot be taught in a book. In that vein, there is no magical list of internal tools, processes and software that you would know of or have used that let you
Growth, Retention & Relationships Make the Dollars Flow
If you are following the Entrepreneur Roadmap as laid out, you’ve developed a launched a product, and are reaping the fruits of your hard work. New customers are rolling in, and you are getting great feedback on your product. You are keeping a close eye on all your KPIs, and you’ve had some great conversations
5 Things To Think About When Expanding Your MVP’s Features
You’ve launched your MVP and its working like you expected. You’re satisfying a need for your users, collecting tons of data and analytics and likely generating some revenue. How do you capitalize to get the most of this data and your early-stage traction? If you have dedicated users for your product, they are likely willing
Securing Your First Pilot: Where The Rubber Meets The Road
You have arrived at that fateful moment when you need customers (prospects actually) to try your product. You have been developing, started marketing and selling, and now you need to get someone to commit to putting your product into active use in a real-world setting. The question is: How do you get someone to do
Engagement Is A Trip, Plan Wisely
As you move from the Development stage of product build into the Launch stage of the Entrepreneur Roadmap, you are going to find yourself making the sharp turn from inwardly-focused activities to rapid dives into marketing and demand generation. You’ll know you’re making this turn on your path when you find yourself caught up in
Wireframes or Prototypes… Worth the Investment?
Imagine explaining all of Facebook’s features to someone who has never used it. How would they remember how it all worked? Even if they could remember, what if their interpretation was different than what you said? The functionality of web and mobile applications, much simpler than Facebook, gets lost in translation often. There are plenty
Who, or What, is the MVP?
As an entrepreneur in our digital age, MVP is an acronym you will hear often. And, unless they’re specifically talking about you, MVP probably doesn’t stand for most valuable player. In fact, they more than likely mean minimum viable product. And by minimum viable product, they mean the product/project version you can release with the
From Try To Buy: Converting A Pilot To A Paying Customer
The goal of a pilot is to build up enough proof in your prospect’s mind that they can decide to purchase your product (or not). Contrary to what you might think—a valid and valuable outcome for an entrepreneur is to have the prospect choose not to buy what you are offering or you to choose
Diversity in the workplace
No matter how cautious or forward-thinking, few organizations had plans in place for simultaneously dealing with a global pandemic, an economic shutdown and political and social unrest. Our natural instincts lead us to stick with the basics, set aside the nonessential and ride out the storm until conditions improve. But if the status quo does