Beware of These 6 Assumptions in Your Startup

It’s easier to dream than to do, and by necessity, entrepreneurs are some of the the most daring dreamers around.

However, they also have to be the "doers" to make those dreams reality. And to get there, each entrepreneur has to figure out this "doing" part. Even when you're sure you've got your industry figured out down to a science, you'll find hurdles along the way to success.
Yet by keeping an open mind and lending an ear to advice from the experts in your field, you'll succeed -- especially if you avoid the following assumptions as you move your startup to launch. 

5 Business Lessons From Billionaire Mentors

If you scour the Internet looking for tips on entrepreneurship, you can read forever. Unfortunately, a lot of the advice is of mixed quality and comes from people who haven’t necessarily succeeded at anything. To me, the “who” behind the advice matters as much as the “what,” because ultimately, you have to believe that the person giving you advice has actually been in your shoes.

This is why I’ve built my startup strategy using advice from billionaire mentors such as Mark Cuban and Richard Branson. They are the ultimate sounding board. I can test my ideas with them and feel confident that I will get honest feedback based on their depth of experience and success. Here, I’d like to share the five most important business lessons these billionaire mentors have inspired.

The 8 Key Rules of Starting the Business of Your Dreams on a Shoestring Budget

A few years ago, before the Internet was pervasive, before everyone carried a smartphone and before do-it-yourself software tools were available for free, it was difficult to reach a critical mass of new customers without spending a million dollars on a website, custom software and television advertising. Now you can match a big company with worldwide reach for a few thousand dollars.

It’s a new age for aspiring entrepreneurs, where anyone with a dream or a hobby should be turning it into a business. The bad news is that many are already doing it, with competition growing, so the longer you wait, the less chance you have of getting there first. The good news is that most haven’t learned the new rules, so there is still room to surge ahead of the crowd.

Here are some of the key new rules I have learned by starting my own company, investing as an angel in other startups and mentoring many more new entrepreneurs over the last few years: