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Business Plans are dead. Most sophisticated investors ignore them, focusing their attention on an entrepreneur's pitch and presentation materials, financial forecast and executive summary. As noted in Entrepreneurs Shouldn't Pitch Their Ideas To Venture Capitalists, most sophisticated investors place their bets on people rather than opportunities. As such, the primary goal of your executive summary is to open the door to an in-person meeting.

Rapidly and repeatedly hiring star employees is a competitive advantage. Although this is a core competency that must be honed over time, there is a cadre of SaaS hiring tools that the world’s leading tech companies deploy to their advantage. No matter how rapidly a startup is growing, it can never afford to sacrifice employee quality as a means of achieving its hiring goals. A hiring mistake early in a startup’s life can be expensive, especially when opportunity costs are considered. The loss in productivity involved in transitioning a struggling employee out an organization, coupled with the time required to conduct a subsequent job search, can cripple a small company’s ability to achieve its strategic objectives.

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch HERE. Successful Olympic athletes share a number of common qualities with entrepreneurs; including boundless energy, uncompromising tenacity and a willingness to innovate. Such innovations include new training routines, inventive diets, and novel gameplay tactics. Entrepreneurs are well served to pay particular attention to two of the most innovative Olympic athletes: Dick Fosbury and David Berkoff, the former of which I discuss in the following 2-minute video.

This article originally appeared on Forbes HERE. As part of UC Santa Barbara’s Distinguished Lecture Series, serial entrepreneur, CEO Coach and Author Lex Sisney shared a preview of his newly released book, Organizational Physics: The Science of Growing a Business. As Co-Founder and CEO of Commission Junction, Lex grew the company from two employees to become the de facto leader in the world of affiliate marketing, beating Google in the process. To this day, Commission Junction remains the dominant player despite Google's significant investment of time, money and resources. Lex's new book, Organizational Physics, is compelling, as it applies the fundamental laws of physics to the world of business. By viewing companies through this prism, one can diagnose organizational problems and identify corresponding solutions, irrespective of a company's size, the markets it serves or even the personalities of its senior executives - which makes the book a powerful toolkit for business leaders. By applying the laws of physics to organizations, the author helps the reader, “understand how your business and team really work… (and) get at the underlying causes of what’s making them fail or succeed.”

This article originally appeared on Forbes HERE. I always enjoy a great guerilla marketing story, such as TestFlight’s use of T-shirts and Tacos to gain Steve Jobs’ attention at Apple’s 2011 developers’ conference. Thus, I was inspired when I heard about the impact collaboration-in-the-cloud innovator Central Desktop made at the April 2012 San Francisco ad:tech conference. Rather than hire the clichéd booth babes (which I have always found to be more than a bit sleazy), the company secured the services of a cigar-smoking, bearded angel with an exaggerated New York accent. By adhering to the following guerilla marketing precepts, Central Desktop’s scruffy angel not only grabbed the attention of the show’s 8,900 attendees, he also effectively conveyed the company’s unique value prop.

Coull Offers Advertisers Video Skimlinks This article originally appeared on Forbes HERE. As noted in YouTubers Come Of Age - Google Scores A Solid Return On Its Video Development Fund, many YouTube personalities are sensitive to the nature of the ads associated with their content. Some reject pre-roll ads because they increase the viewer abandonment rate. Others shun translucent run-of-site Google ads, because they are distracting and monetize at extremely low rates. In addition, a number of advertisers have invested significant resources into creating libraries of video content which effectively communicate brand and product attributes but are incapable of eliciting a particular action, such as: clicking to a landing page, completing a lead form, or initiating a purchase. Fortunately, several startups have devised tools which make it possible for content creators to maintain the entertainment integrity of their videos while embedding relevant calls-to-action. Such solutions combine the power of a video’s capacity to inform with a direct response ad’s ability to facilitate a desired action.

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch HERE. My son recently tried to call one of our older relatives. He dialed the number and quickly hung up with a confused look on his face. I asked him what was wrong and he replied, “I don’t know. There’s something wrong with their phone, it kept beeping.” I called the number and was amused to hear a landline busy signal, something my cell phone centric pre-teen had never encountered. My son is similarly unacquainted with cable TV. Other than the occasional NBA game, he consumes his video content via our iPad and Xbox. Most of his online viewing is spent on YouTube. He is not alone. Mark Suster, fellow venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur, has written extensively about YouTube’s evolution from dogs-on-skateboards to its current status as an entertainment medium rivaling cable television networks. Mark provides an excellent primer regarding the future of Internet TV HERE. YouTube has over 800 million monthly unique visitors who consume over 4 billion videos EACH DAY. Its evolution has resulted in a new class of entertainment entrepreneur, the creators of professional YouTube content, affectionately known as YouTubers.

Some People Are Indispensable, But No One Is Irreplaceable Reginald Martinez Jackson was also often referred to as a “hotdog” for his self-promotional antics and lackadaisical on-field play. In addition to his reputation as a showoff, Reggie was renowned for deriding his teammates in the press and initiating clubhouse fights. While it is not uncommon for losing teams to squabble, Mr. Jackson fought his teammates in good times as well as in bad. Despite his attitude issues, Reggie was a perennial major league baseball all-star throughout most of his 21-year career. He earned the nickname “Mr. October” because of his consistent ability to hit home runs during clutch situations in playoff and World Series games, which contributed to his teams winning five championships.

This article originally appeared on Forbes HERE. Serial entrepreneur Seth Epstein recently gave a keynote address as part of the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Distinguished Lecture Series. During his inspirational talk, Seth shared six hands-on exercises that entrepreneurs can use to harness their fears. Seth began his entrepreneurial career when he dropped out of the University of California, Santa Barbara at 19 years old to start a clothing company, which he eventually built into a national line of denim products featured at Nordstrom, Macy's and Neiman Marcus. Seth was also the Founder and CEO of FUEL, a broadcast design firm that Razorfish acquired for more than $30 million, and is an Emmy Award winner for his work rebranding ESPN's X-Games.