I spent the last week in Tallinn, Estonia attending the Startup Nations Summit and the European Commission’s SME Assembly. The conferences, respectively, were meant to bridge the gap between public policy makers and entrepreneurs and to bring entrepreneurial ecosystem builders from across Europe together to share insights, lessons learned and challenges. Pretty worldly stuff. While […]
The World of Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Building
As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at The Kauffman Foundation, I’m exposed to some of the most creative, innovative and strategic thinking on entrepreneurial ecosystem building in the world. Ecosystems are defined as all of the components, usually at a local level, that help entrepreneurs and small businesses thrives in local communities. As defined in this awesome new […]
Why Designers Belong on Your Founding Team
People thought I was crazy starting Rivet & Sway with a Design Team. Seriously, when I told potential investors that employee #3 and #4 would be a Creative Director and Graphics Designer, they just laughed. I needed a technologist as part of the Founding Team, not a designer. In fact, I recall receiving affirmation on […]
The Fallacy of Brand Building
I love creating and building new brands. There’s just something about creating something that truly invokes some kind of emotional reaction with a customer. Whether that customers is a consumer, a business, an agency, it doesn’t matter to me. The whole idea of just invoking that emotion, (ideally a positive, happy, incredibly delighted emotion), and […]
Pay Vendors On Time, Get More Customers
I’m a big fan of using outside contractors and vendors when you’re first starting a company or even when you’re launching a new product or service. Until you actually know what you have and you’ve got a good read on product/market fit, there’s really no reason to fully invest in internal resources. I mean, you […]
Customers As A Company Value
I love customers. Honestly. I love talking to them. I love hearing from them. I love serving them. I believe that businesses ultimately exist to serve customers. I also believe that if each and every human were to ultimately take on the ideal that we were put on this Earth to serve others, we’d live […]
Creating an Exceptional Customer Experience
People keep telling me how great the customer service is at Rivet & Sway. That’s awesome. We’ve emphasized delivering phenomenal customer service since Day 1, so it feels good to get that validation. But I prefer if people would use the term ‘customer experience’ instead of ‘customer service’. In my mind, the customer service function […]
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