Two decades of lessons on launching, funding and marketing a startup

Hi, this is Marin from DULO. This week we talked to Diane Tarshis - an experienced startup consultant who started her career in the middle of the dot-com boom and is now the founder of Startup Distillery, where she works with companies to help them navigate the muddy waters of their early days.

With two decades of experience from the entrepreneurial trenches, working with founders from all walks of life and industries, we wanted to talk with Diane about the messy beginnings of small businesses. We covered important lessons around launching a startup, such as the importance of having a roadmap and doing extra homework in preparation, we discussed the pros and cons of self-funding versus raising venture capital and when is it a good time to rely on each. We also touched on the topic of marketing and messaging - a topic near and dear to us, since we are in the middle of figuring out how to talk to our target audience.

As usual, you can find a bunch of resources mentioned in this episode with links below, as well as the main topics we covered in the episode.

##Some of the things we covered:

• How to figure out what to charge

• The most common problems startups get stuck on

• The importance of having a roadmap before launch

• How to convince a stubborn founder to change direction

• There's always another way

• Bootstrapping versus Venture Funding

Get the full list of topics and useful resources here. You can listen here. Or watch the whole thing on YouTube here.

Thanks!