Starting a new business is always hard. From what should you spend on, to who to hire, there are countless decisions to make. In this series, we take a look at some of the common pitfalls startups make, and ways for you to avoid them. All done from the perspective of your friendly neighborhood venture capital. It’s been a grueling 5 months. Sleepless nights, pitch deck after pitch deck and countless cups of coffee, all leading you up to this very moment. You’ve finally gotten funding. Congrats, you made it. Now what? For many startups, the answer is obvious. It’s time to move to a better offic ..read more

At a time when women have forayed relentlessly into fields previously dominated by men – from politics to entrepreneurship and technology – there remain some industries where females are very much the minority. One such field is venture capital (VC) funding. According to networking community European Women in Venture, only about 9% of investing partners for seed and early-stage phases in Europe are women. Among US venture capital firms, only 9.65% of decision makers are women according to the latest study by Axios. Specifically, this translates to 105 women decision makers out of 1,088 from fi ..read more

Venture capital (VC) funding activities have long been concentrated in New York, Los Angeles, San Franciso and other key cities in the US. Though the country remains the epicenter of VC investments, other countries are fast catching up. Startups have mushroomed in China, India, UK, Germany, and UAE, among others. Naturally, these early-stage ventures are on the lookout for much-needed financial resources –  either early-stage funding or expansion funding. In UAE, 2017 saw startups getting $400 million worth of VC funding. It also accounted for 84% of overall deal value in the MENA region with ..read more

Businesses exert tremendous amounts of effort to reel in potential buyers, but can the same be said when it comes to making them stay? According to Bain & Company, acquiring a new customer is 6 to 7 times more expensive than retaining the current one. Here’s where customer service enters the scene. If marketing tells people why they must try you out, customer service shows them why they should keep coming back.   The power of feedback It’s no secret that word-of-mouth advertising is still the most effective marketing tool, and with social media, receiving a negative review can spell disast ..read more

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