(Updated: April 21, 2016) Roadblocks and missteps are part of the entrepreneurial journey. In a previous post on top startup mistakes, we discussed how committing mistakes is almost inevitable. They happen to business owners, even to those who graduated from prestigious business schools and those who have already made names in their respective industries. Some of history’s biggest business slip ups were caused by negligence, like the Piper Bravo Oil Rig explosion, and some were due to … [Read more...]

  Setting up a business is always a risk and committing mistakes along the way is inevitable. But this does not mean you cannot avoid common mistakes entrepreneurs fall into or recover from business blunders. In 2014, New York-based CB Insights published a collection of 101 post-mortem essays from startup founders who closed their doors way too early. Forty-two percent of the failed startups stem from the ‘lack of a market’.   Sometimes, startup entrepreneurs build things that … [Read more...]

  In 2013, American Express Canada’s Small Business Services conducted a marketing survey that involves around 529 small business owners in Canada. The research team found that 36 percent of the participants wanted to expand their brand but are clueless as to where to begin. Interestingly, 84 percent of the small businesses understand how important branding is to the success of their companies and yet 86 percent do not want to get expert help.   “It is surprising to see that … [Read more...]

When you start a new business in Singapore, it becomes almost like your newborn child. You want to be involved in every single aspect of its existence. As your business grows, it’s almost similar to overseeing the growth and development of your toddler. You want to be further involved in every single facet of your child’s development and that is absolutely normal. You are not alone.   However, when other people start to interact with your ‘baby’, sometimes, a parental kind of defense … [Read more...]

  It can be frustrating when you try to reach out to people to use your product or solution and give their observations, but they decline or even if they say yes, they usually throw vague and general feedback.   And if it’s really not your day, you’ll get some out-of-this-world comments:     How do you avoid getting creepy sketches and uniform suggestions on your feedback forms?   How will you motivate your clients to take your customer … [Read more...]