When you’re thinking about starting a company or first in the entrepreneurial trenches, any nugget of advice you can get from someone who’s been there before is like gold.

But as time goes on, you’ll realize that some of those tips are better—and more applicable to your business—than others. Our amazing creators at CoFoundersTown have contributed some really informative and insightful articles last year that could help entrepreneurs, founders, business owners, and startup enthusiasts in getting their ventures to new heights.

Here’s a compilation of the best articles in Startup & Entrepreneurship featured on CoFoundersTown in 2020.

Netflix’s Co-Founder Has 5 Pieces of Advice For Aspiring Entrepreneurs (by Omar Itani)

Marc Randolph was 38 years old when he started Netflix, but he had successfully launched over five ventures beforehand. From sharing tips about a startup idea to running a business and maintaining a work-life balance, here are 5 pieces of advice from the co-founder of Netflix, a company founded in 1998, that is now generating over 20.16 billion USD in annual revenue.

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How to Launch Your Startup (by Russell Weigandt)

Launching a business can be a massive undertaking and risky proposition in the best of markets. In today’s market, the naysayers will probably tell you it’s a death wish.

Russell Weigandt shares some words of counsel before you take the leap into the great unknown.

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How to deal with the “naming your business problem” without tearing your hair out (by Rodney Daut)

McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Sprite, Pepsi, Tylenol, Amazon. What do these names have in common? Sure, they’re recognizable around the world. And they’re all parts of multi-billion dollar companies.

But there’s one other thing. They’re also words that tell you nothing about what the company does. Yet, despite this, the average business owner can fret quite a bit about what to call their company. Will this strategy work for your business?

Rodney Daut shares what should be the thought process behind naming an organisation!

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What are the coolest startup culture hacks you've heard of? (by Orest Hudziy)

“Startup culture.” The phrase conjures images of working at home whenever you want, happy hours, unlimited PTOs, and having to act like “one big happy family.” Pet-friendly offices. Ping-pong tables. Zen rooms.

While these might be great benefits for startup employees, increasing comfort and sparking creativity, they’re not what truly defines a startup’s culture. This intangible but vital quality can make or break a new business, and adding benefits and perks isn’t enough to create it.

To thrive in the new decade, entrepreneurs and founders will need to know how to effectively define and cultivate their own startup culture. Orest Hudziy shares 3 startup culture hacks used by organizations that could help you to create a positive environment in your team.

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4 Key Things to Include in an Investor Pitch Deck (by Amir Emadi)

A pitch deck is the tip of the iceberg that is your business. Investors need to see the bottom to know you’ve thought about all the inner workings.

How would they know they can even help your business, let alone take a financial risk on it, if they know little about it? Amir Emadi shares 4 key things you should definitely include in your pitch deck!

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What We Learned From 100+ Presentations of Startups (by ILYA GALUSHIN)

Whether your pitch deck will receive investment or not depends fiercely on how convincing the presentation looks. A number of authors, venture capitalists, startup founders and evangelists have created different versions of what they consider required elements to successful pitching presentations.

Ilya Galushin shares he and his team learnt after analysing more than 100+ startup presentations.

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The Most Important Metric for Early-Stage Startups During a Recession (by Luca Cartechini)

Like it or not, recessions and economic contraction are a part of the market cycle and such environments can also create some of the best opportunities for early-stage companies to thrive.

A lot of VCs have been giving similar advice to founders on how to navigate difficult environments: “you need to cut the operating expenses and reduce your burn rate, you need to postpone your fundraising plan and extend your runaway to at least 18–24 months”.

It all makes sense — but in reality, it is a bit harder than that if you are an early-stage founder and you have never experienced something similar before.

In this article, Luca Cartechini outlines the “most important metrics” VCs use to assess and screen investment opportunities during a recession!

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How to Measure Product Maturity- a Guide for Early Stage Investors & Founders (by Liron Pergament Gal)

In most new products today, the technological risk is minuscule in comparison with the risk of not achieving product market fit. Entrepreneurs (and therefore their investors) have X amount of time and Y amount of money to create a successful product.

Any investment that doesn’t align with reducing the most critical risks (the first of them being attaining product market fit) leads to waste.

Liron Pergament Gal shares a framework that would help to gauge the maturity of a new product in an early stare startup!

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The Small Mistakes of Fundraising (by Liron Azrielant)

A lot has been written about mistakes founders make in fundraising. The large mistakes — while hard to avoid — are very easy to notice.

In this article, Liron Azrielant to sheds some light on the smaller, less obvious mistakes founders make — the ones easier to fix.

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What Poker Can Teach You About Startups (by Dima Syrotkin)

Some of the best entrepreneurs like Tony Hsieh, Sam Altman, and Chamath Palihapitiya say they learned a lot about business from poker.

Poker has a few lessons to teach every entrepreneur. Poker can teach you about choosing a startup idea, timing, luck, risk, and dealing with people.

Dima Syrotkin shares some important lessons that could be learnt from Poker about startups!

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McKinsey or a startup? (by Jonathan Woahn)

How to choose between working at Mckinsey and working at a startup? What’s the right choice for you? What factors you should consider before choosing one between the two?

Having been on both sides, Jonathan Woahn shares how to decide between working at McKinsey and a startup!

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What I have learned in this tech startup era (by Richard Fan)

If it‘s the money attracting you to start a company, you won’t have a sense of ownership. Instead, you want to sell the business as quickly as possible, before the problem emerge. In this case, the project is going to fail because no one cares about its future.

But owning too much is also a problem. Many startups want to be perfect in the first stage, and they tend to compare their products with existing ones. Richard Fan has penned down his experieneces of working in a tech startup era!

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How to Ideate Concepts for Your Future Products and Startups (by Michael Stroev)

If you try and ideate using a single thought or question, such as: “I want to create a new business in the perfume industry,” you might not get very far in your thinking.

But if you combine the notion “perfume industry” with other keywords, business models, or tools, you might come up with something unexpected.

Michael Stroev shares non-standard combinations to ideate concepts for future products and startups!

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A great lesson learned from the start-up of a Fortune 500 company (by Kenan Kolday)

Kenan Kolday shares his start-up experience of working in the automotive Fortune 500 company that required him to lead the start-up of a benchmark plant in a new country, in a new culture, in a specialized industrial zone with different regulations and the use of new technologies, new processes, and new materials.

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Humble founders will rule the world (by Pietro invernizzi)

Every organisation dedicated to supporting startups emphasises the importance of people / founders in their mission statement. If you want to build great things, it helps to be driven by a spirit of benevolence. The startup founders who end up richest are not the ones driven by money.

Pietro Invernizzi opines why humility — or humble confidence — should make every investor’s top 3 qualities list!

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Why I decided to forgo an MBA and chose to start-up instead (by Sagar Sheth)

Doing an MBA from a top-tier school almost seemed like a default option for many people out there. Sagar Sheth shares his personal experience of opting out after getting a great score in GMAT and how to demystify the MBA vs entrepreneurship question.

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What are the top 5 entrepreneurship skills you should learn before starting a business? (by Saurabh Leekha)

The transformation of an entrepreneur into a Market Creator helps to create innovative businesses that solve huge problems and provide constant value to the customers.

Market Creator is also an entrepreneur, but he goes a step forward in turning innovative business ideas into practical, sustainable, and profitable realities.

Saurabh Leekha shares top 5 entrepreneurship skills you should learn before starting a business!

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The Mistake That Will Doom Your B2B Startup (by Nadav Gur)

You are a brilliant engineer and/or product manager. You saw an opportunity in a market, teamed up with your favorite co-founder(s) and hacked together an MVP. Through personal relationships, endless cold-calling or some elevator pitch at an industry event you managed to land your first customer.

Early success led to the second and third. You raised funding and turned the company into a business. You even hired business development or sales people.

You have a great pipeline, the trend-line is up and to the right. Marketing? You have a website, you have beautiful PDFs you send customers. Your business development (sales) people attend all of the best industry conferences. You have all the marketing you need. You’re covered. Right?

Nadav Gur cautions against one mistake that could still mess everything up for you!

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In 2030, business models that enable a smaller circle of connections could prove more profitable. (by Richard Fouts)

While smart homes sound appealing, some people are reverting back to manual switches and knobs, saying “it makes me feel alive to turn things on myself.” No matter what happens, companies will need to invest in universal brand principles that have existed for centuries: trust.

For many users, individual privacy, reliability and predictability will be just as important.As the future unfolds, every brand should be investing in how it can be the most trusted in its industry.

One way to avoid getting caught or surprised by the future is to start behaving like the future is already here (as Bezos did with Amazon).

Richard Fouts presents an interesting read about the business models that would dominate the ecosystem in 2030!

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