Topics Archives • ROCK CENTER STARTUP GUIDE

Tips for Technical Hardware Startups Working with Enterprise Customers

Rescale’s co-founder and CEO Joris Poort shares valuable insights about the challenges and cycles for market testing and sales cycles unique to hardware startups.

What Founders Need to Understand about the Sales Process

Every entrepreneur begins by selling an idea. But, often, founder-CEOs lack fundamental knowledge about the sales process that underlies selling products. In a focused interview, sales expert Lou Shipley defines fundamentals that all founder-CEOs should know and understand about the sales process.

Quick Tips for Finding Co-Founder Fit from Sunil Nagaraj

Sunil Nagaraj, founding partner of Ubiquity Ventures and co-founder of Triangulate, shares why having too many similarities with your co-founder could damage business.

Two business partners having a difficult conversation

How to Mentally Prepare for a Difficult Conversation

How do you mentally prepare for that difficult conversation? Matthew Bellows shares how meditation can help you mentally prepare for the dreaded conversation of firing a colleague. And he shares a three-minute guided meditation you can do before any stressful situation.

Kevin Ryan shares tips on how to identify a big idea and launch a successful business

How Do You Identify a Big Idea? AlleyCorp’s Kevin Ryan Shares Tips

Kevin Ryan, founder of multiple billion-dollar tech companies, shares his insights on identifying big ideas in an exclusive interview with Shikhar Ghosh.

woman working remotely video conferencing with team

Strengthening Your Team while Working Remotely

It’s challenging to create a sense of community when the newly assembled team of your early-stage startup is forced to work remotely. But it’s not impossible. Sanchali Pal, co-founder and CEO of Joro—a technology platform that enables users to track and improve their carbon footprints on their smartphones—shares tips on how she strengthens her team as they work remotely through the COVID-19 crisis.

Business leader building team cohesion while working remotely

Joro’s CEO on Adapting Plans & Building Your Team While Working Remotely

COVID-19 is having long-term impacts on startups, affecting everything from daily operations to future fundraising. In this, a series of interviews with entrepreneurs of all stages, Sanchali Pal, Co-Founder and CEO of Joro, shares how COVID-19 affected her team, business development, product plans, and fundraising. Her perspective and creative approaches, such as effective ways to build your team’s morale online, are inspiring.

Image of piece of blue paper with a piece peeled back to reveal "Uncover Your Customer Needs." This illustrates customer interviewing tecniques that can help founders uncover meaningful data

Customer Interviewing Techniques That Uncover Your Users’ Unmet Needs

Customer interviews can help you understand users’ needs and yield invaluable data. But often, people ask questions that yield irrelevant responses that send them in the wrong direction. Julia Austin and Wendy Tsu share their insights on how to conduct better customer interviews to obtain more meaningful feedback and gain a deeper understanding of market needs.

Raising Money at an Early-Stage Startup? Tips from Joro’s CEO

Perfecting your pitch deck and following best practices doesn’t guarantee you’ll receive a term sheet. How and when you present the details of your pitch matters. Sanchali Pal shares how repeatedly hearing “no” from VCs helped her strengthen her pitch, tighten her focus, and successfully raise from the most appropriate investors.

Four empty chairs in a line. The words "Join Our Team, appear across 3 white chairs. One black chair, with no words, appears between "join" and "our." Illustrative of the need to spend more time on recruiting.

Want to Build a Strong Team? Spend More Time on Recruiting—Not Money

Studies show that companies spend more money on hiring today than ever before. Despite the infusion of resources, conventional hiring tactics yield poor results. Shikhar Ghosh talks with six experienced entrepreneurs about how to attract and retain top talent by spending time recruiting outside of conventional channels.

How to Value Your Equity at an Early Stage Startup

Deciding to start or join a startup entails risks that many believe receiving equity in the company offsets. But how do you know how to value the equity shares you’re offered? HBS professor and exert in entrepreneurial management, Chris Stanton, shares a simple formula to help you understand how to value your equity.

Tinder’s Co-Founder Shares B2C Marketing Strategies

How can you save time and money while maximizing your marketing techniques? Dinesh Moorjani shares some core tactics he applied at Tinder that every consumer-focused startup can use to get their products to market more successfully.

Turn Your Idea into a Product Users Want: Identify the Right Problem

Ready to start building a prototype? Before you start, it’s important to validate that the problem your product addresses is a problem worth solving. Julia Austin, Senior Lecturer at HBS and expert in product development, shares helpful tips and tools to help you ensure that you’re on the right track.

Business owner struggling with depression, staring out of a window

Entrepreneurs and Depression—Ways to Help Yourself or a Colleague Who Is Struggling

Entrepreneur, investor, and advisor, Andrew Dubowec’s professional and personal experience make him uniquely positioned to discuss mental health in the startup community. In a dialogue with Shikhar Ghosh, he shares tips on how to help protect your mental health or help a colleague who’s struggling.

Underwater snapshot of woman alone after diving into the deep end of a pool. Symbolizes being a solo-founder in business.

Going Solo: Founding a Startup without a Co-Founder

Anecdotal evidence suggests that being a solo founder carries more risk than co-founding a startup. Hind Hobeika discusses her reasons for not adding a co-founder and provides ways to rethink the critical decision of having a partner or going solo.