Entrepreneurship Starts Here

I’m Jeff Solomon. Welcome to my blog.

Starting a business is hard. Building a company is hard. Acquiring new users is hard. But that doesn’t mean you won’t fall in love with entrepreneurship once you start your journey. You will!

This blog contains articles, courses and best practices for first time entrepreneurs, those with a track record and even professionals and executives.

Whether you’re about to start your first company and need help with finding a problem worth solving. Or if you’re an old hack at building startups. I’m here to guide you and share my experience as an entrepreneur for the past 25 years. I’ve had big wins and equally disastrous losses. I promise to be transparent — sharing the good, the bad and the ugly sides of being a lifelong entrepreneur. So join me and start reading.

Online Courses

Check out my new customer development essential training online course launching on Udemy in Feburary 2021.

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coursescustomer developmentcustomer relationshipsentrepreneurshipfundraisinglifestyleproblem hypothesisstartups
What Is Customer Development?

What Is Customer Development?

January 17, 2021

Customer development is the most important skill for any entrepreneur when launching a business. Here’s what it’s all about.

How to Pitch Your Startup to Investors

How to Pitch Your Startup to Investors

July 24, 2021

Pitching your startup to investors takes practice. But here are 11 tips that will help you understand the art and science of good presenting.

Startup Tips #5 – Why Startups Fail

July 13, 2021

A case study of OUYA and the entrepreneurs’ trap

The truth is that most startups fail. But this statistic would be much lower if founders simply embarked on the simple, but not easy, process of Customer Development. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs neglect to do this before launching their business — mostly because it’s hard and not nearly as fun as building your product or service. But also because most people really don’t even know how to do it.

Why Startups Fail

But how do you extract the real need from potential customers so you

We’ve all heard stories of startups who had rocket-powered growth and an equally fast crash and burn. Companies like Ouya, YikYak, and Jawbone raised tons of money, launched a product, invested millions in sales and marketing only to come crashing down soon after they ran out of money.

In simple terms, they never did the work required to achieve product-market fit.

This customer development tip looks at one of these companies, OUYA, and figure out why they failed.

Get my entire 57 lecture course and learn to take action, start doing customer development and build a business that lasts. Available on Udemy for only $29.99.

Startup Tips #4 – Problems are Found in the Why

June 7, 2021

How to extract real pain points from customers

Interviewing potential customers is the only way to know if your business idea is going to work. It’s an essential process to be done BEFORE you launch your product or service.

Problems are Found in the Why

But how do you extract the real need from potential customers so you can validate a problem and confirm you are solving is the right one. Use customer development to extract real pain points from customers.

Get my entire 57 lecture course and learn to take action, start doing customer development and build a business that lasts. Available on Udemy for only $29.99.

Intro to Entrepreneurship

Intro to Entrepreneurship

May 7, 2021

Learning to be an entrepreneur isn’t rocket science. In fact, most people are inherently entrepreneurial. This course teaches the basic principles and practices of being an entrepreneur.

Startup Tips #3 – What is a Problem Hypothesis

April 27, 2021

The basic building block of starting a business.

The most essential aspect of business building is solving a significant problem or need for a specific segment of customers. The most effective way to identify a problem worth solving is to start with a problem hypothesis.

What is a Problem Hypothesis

This is a process that informs your entire customer development process by helping you frame who you think the customer is, what problem they have, and what benefit they get after solving it.

Get my entire 57 lecture course and learn to take action, start doing customer development and build a business that lasts. Available on Udemy for only $29.99.