In a long-awaited follow up to an earlier post,"10 Common Mistakes That Startup and Small Companies Make," here are 10 suggestions to improve the chances of your startup's success.

A reader asks:

“How do you set a valuation for a start-up company?”

I’ll answer the question with a few other questions (and answers) of my own:

How much money do you need?

If you are looking for an investor and decide to work with a group or an individual angel investor you need to know what they are likely to propose for a deal structure. If you are a working with an experienced angel investor it is very likely you will find terms such as:

Generation Y entrepreneurs are more positive, are more likely to hire and most likely to implement employee-friendly practices to battle the recession than Gen X or Baby Boomer small business owners.

First, I don’t believe the government should be the ones telling banks what to lend or not to lend.  The banker is the one that needs to decide if someone is a good credit risk or not based on what level of risk they want to or can take on at the time they are going to lend. 

Three tips to make 2010 more successful.

Recently we discussed the possibility of SBA lending becoming more difficult.

Today hearings are going on in Washington to decide how to clean up the financial mess that has been building over the last decade or more. They are trying to figure out how to bail out big businesses so they don’t fail and cause more of a mess for us all. What are they really doing for us? Can they help the small business owner? Are they even considering the small business owner?

Go to our blog post to read more…