Previously Published on LinkedIn By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker How much do you need to know before starting up? You may never launch your business if you get caught up trying to answer every single question that pops up. On the other hand, launching your business without answering essential questions can put you on [...]

“The Ten Commandments of Startup Profit” are core profit principles that get at the nub of how to build a sustainable business- one that is scalable and results in profit, growth, and social impact. These are the tried and true principles that we factored into every business decision we made for my company, USI, that [...]

Previously published on LinkedIn By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker There are now 131 unicorns – startups that have over a billion dollar valuation. Some of them have become household names: Airbnb, Uber, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Spotify, for example. Privately held startups with such lofty valuations used to be so unusual that investor Aileen Lee [...]

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Certainly, entrepreneurs know that they are going to have to work hard and persevere. If you are planning to start up, you need to prepare for the sacrifice to get through some very tough years before you see the light at the end of the tunnel. You may have [...]

Previously Published on LinkedIn By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker You’ve launched your business. Congratulations! Now, how will you scale it? Scaling can be your biggest risk and your greatest opportunity. If you are setting out to raise funding, your investors will ask you how you plan to scale. If you are using your own [...]

  By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker “How does somebody that's sleeping 12 and 14 hours a day compete with someone that's sleeping three or four?” asked Donald Trump in The New York Daily News. He can say this because he sleeps only four hours a night, is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization, [...]

Previously Published on LinkedIn By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Is profit evil? We raise this question to frame the debate: What is the reward for taking the risk to start and build a business? As I see it, if you develop a value-added idea and start a business by putting capital, reputation, and sweat [...]

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker If you’ve been wondering if you should work for a startup or launch your own, we’ve assembled some arguments on both sides: 15 reasons to work for a startup and 15 reasons to launch your own. What’s your opinion?   15 Reasons to Work for a Startup Reasons 1 [...]

              By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Do you want to launch your own business, but just don’t know where to start? You are not alone. I had made a written promise to myself that I would start a business, but I couldn’t settle on the idea. I kept [...]

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker Investors often claim that they invest in people – not ideas. They bet on the jockey, not the horse. But what makes a funder choose the jockey he or she wants to fund? Investors can look at track records, character, and/or credentials. When an entrepreneur can demonstrate a proven [...]