Startup founders aren't known for their culinary skills. Bill Gates said he "never really learned how to cook." Sam Altman apparently sears using the wrong olive oil. Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta founded his company after looking at a refrigerator only stocked with hot sauce. Nowadays, amid the AI boom and a grind-forward culture of " locking in," many startup founders don't cook at all. Why break your 12-hour coding sprint to grill a burger?
And unlike most tools in the productivity or publishing space, this one comes with a lifetime subscription for $49 (reg. $540)-no monthly fees and no subscription fatigue necessary. Built for busy entrepreneurs with ideas worth sharing Youbooks pulls together the power of multiple AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama) and a 1,000-step production pipeline to create structured, research-backed manuscripts up to 300,000 words. It even integrates real-time online research to keep things current and customizable, down to tone and voice.
Greenlight has one of the strongest synergies between marketing and product in the industry: The firm is a long-running sponsor of the popular podcast Million Bazillion which uses a story-telling format to answer kids' financial queries. And in 2023, it launched Level Up, an interactive, curriculum-based financial literacy game that stood out from all other gamified experiences in the industry at the time.
They also need a basic understanding of how the technology they're trying to build works. This includes grasping concepts like code and AI-driven automation. This knowledge can put them a step ahead of their competitors by allowing them to turn concepts into products, enable data-driven operations, and make smarter decisions as they grow and expand. While some learn code to become software developers, entrepreneurs learn it so they can speak the language of technology.
In the summer of 2016, I was 21, living in New York City, and working as an intern for a private-capital research firm. One weekend, I went to the Jersey shore with a group of friends. I'm from Seattle, so I'm not used to seeing airplanes flying banners every couple of minutes. They looked like they were from the 1940s. They were noisy and emitting a lot of smoke.
To sell or not to sell. That's the major dilemma founders around the world face: Once they've started to get big enough to attract the attention of buyers, they face the decision of whether to cash out now, or use the compliment as fuel to go even bigger. While it may seem like a no-brainer to say yes to an acquisition to the tune of millions-or even billions-it can be hard to later rest easy thinking about how much more you could have made independently.
Tremor tracks volatility on Polymarket , a prediction market that lets traders bet on the outcome of future events. The goal of Saravanan's new tool: Spot sudden swings and identify potentially valuable situations where insiders may know more than the general population. "If the chance of a ceasefire in a war jumps from 50% to 80%, but there's no news, it's likely someone with inside info is acting on Polymarket," Saravanan told me.
The TikTok challenger had just cracked the Apple App Store's top-five ranking. Downloads soared 855% month over month, Sensor Tower data showed, fueled by TikTok's imminent ban in the US. It was a dream scenario for an app that - with over $230 million in funding and a roughly $1.1 billion valuation - promised to reinvent social shopping through a mix of product reviews and entertaining videos.
You check your phone at 3am because your biggest client is eight time zones away. You miss your kid's soccer game because the office "needs" you. You turn down the perfect apartment in Bangkok because your business demands you stay put. Your success has become your prison. Maybe you're the founder who built something amazing but can't leave headquarters. Maybe you're watching friends post from Kyoto while you're stuck in traffic.
But here's the nuance: It's not that you can't proactively sell your startup. It's that acquisitions driven by an acquirer's initial interest usually yield better outcomes, given your situation and the state of the market. Our process started with inbound interest from a few companies looking to buy Kraftful for strategic reasons. To ensure the best deal, I also connected directly with CEOs, CTOs, and chief product officers at 25+ companies, leading to serious conversations with more than 10 companies.
It's not enough to have a great business idea that you think can be scaled up and replicated as a franchise. Your great idea must be a proven success, with a track record spanning at least a year. The whole idea of buying a franchise is that the company has figured things out and made most of the mistakes already, so you don't have to.
Instead of stomping his foot in protest, he found a like-minded teen on Facebook, Cameron Zoub, to help him build a bot that would buy limited-edition sneakers for people before they sell out. "We basically spent the next eight years building a ton of different products," Schwartz tells Fortune. "We built marketplaces, we built consumer apps, we built games, we built social networks, we built SAS companies, people agencies, and we did pretty well."
During the pandemic, one of our toughest challenges was sourcing enough supplies to keep up with surging demand. In the years since, we've seen our fair share of ups and downs on that front, but one thing has remained constant: the importance of strong, trusted relationships with our suppliers. They've been incredible partners through it all, and those collaborations have been key to helping us navigate post-pandemic growth with resilience and adaptability.
Entrepreneurs perhaps expect to lose sleep (and all sense of control over their inbox) when scaling their venture from a startup into a unicorn. However, one millennial founder was warned he'd have to also lose his entire leadership team in the process. When Alex Bouaziz launched the HR platform Deel in 2019, he was just 25 years old. Although he had already put his weight behind a couple of "nice but very small scale" startups, he insists that this was a "completely different beast".
Every founder eventually hits the same growth killers-isolation, decision fatigue, skill overload, stalled momentum, and a lack of real accountability. In this on-demand session you'll see why these five barriers show up and why quick fixes rarely stick. You'll also be introduced to The Boardroom, Entrepreneur Media's new six-month mastermind that pairs you with a hand-picked peer group and expert mentors who turn those obstacles into weekly breakthroughs.
Starting a business from scratch may feel overwhelming, but the journey becomes easier with clear steps. Begin by finding a problem to solve and making sure there's real demand for your idea. Create a simple plan that covers your goals, budget, and strategy. Secure the right funding, complete the legal formalities, and focus on building a strong brand presence. Start small, test your product or service, and improve based on feedback. Use marketing to reach your audience and grow steadily.
When Jared Pobre and his wife, former WWE star Stacy Keibler, moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he expected more time outdoors, skiing, hiking, fly-fishing. What he experienced was how extreme conditions accelerate skin aging and damage, leaving his skin raw and red. When searching for solutions for his skincare, not only were options limited, but nothing seemed to help. Out of frustration, he tried one of Keibler's pricey serums.
Replit has raised a $250 million round, valuing the company at $3 billion. Unlike other fast-growing vibe coders, Replit has not been running to VCs every few months, though we'll see if that changes. Its last raise was in 2023 when it raised about $100 million that valued the company at $1.16 billion post-money. Replit has now raised a total of about $478 million, PitchBook estimates.
He calls b.s. when he sees it, but he isn't a hater. As fast as O'Leary is to declare "I'm out!" he also doesn't hesitate to throw his full energy behind the things he loves. If you follow Mr. Wonderful on social, you know he loves watches. WORSHIPS watches. We talked about where his passion for collecting rare timepieces came from and how that obsession led to his latest venture, WonderCare, a partnership with the 1916 company.
They're no longer alone among legal technology providers, with Filevine announcing a helmet sponsor deal with the newly minted Utah Mammoth. As Utah Mammoth branding decisions go, not to denigrate the Filevine partnership, but it's a distant second behind changing the name to Mammoth after playing its first season with the very I-forgot-my-homework-was-due-today name of "Utah Hockey Club." Filevine, who showed off one of the coolest products I saw last year with its Depo Copilot, will appear on both Utah's home and away helmets.
The company announced Wednesday it has signed a contract of that value with Curtin Maritime, a tug and barge operator. The new hybrid-electric tugs are expected to hit the waters around the Los Angeles port in 2027. Curtin has ordered eight tugs - at around $20 million apiece - and Arc will build them in conjunction with Snow & Co. shipyard.
Every founder wants top-tier talent. But when your company is young, two obstacles loom. The first one is that no one knows you. The second one is that, likely, you can't afford a full-time senior hire. The irony is that this is when you most need experienced leadership, because without it, you risk mistakes that cost more than the salary you were aiming to save.
