How to Start a Business
The Podcasting Platform That Became Twitter
Long before Twitter existed, its founders were running a different company entirely — a podcasting platform called Odeo, built on the bet that podcasting was about to become mainstream. The bet had reasonably good timing until it didn't. Shortly after Odeo launched,...
Shopify Started as a Failed Snowboard Store
Some of the most recognizable companies in tech exist because a founder's original business idea simply didn't work — and Shopify is one of the clearer examples of a pivot that turned a frustration into a much bigger company than the one it replaced. In 2004, Tobias...
How to Tell If You’re About to Quit Too Early
Not every struggling business is one pivot away from a turnaround story. Plenty of businesses fail because the underlying idea genuinely doesn't work, and continuing to push isn't wisdom — it's just delay. The harder question, and the one worth asking honestly, is how...
How to Raise Your Rates Without Losing Your Best Clients
The tactic: Raise prices on new business first, give existing clients a dated notice, and hold the number when someone pushes back. Most independent operators are underpriced, and they know it. The reason they don't fix it is straightforward: the fear of hearing no...
The 80/20 Rule: Finding the 20% of Work That Actually Moves Your Business
The Pareto Principle — the observation that roughly 80% of outcomes tend to come from roughly 20% of inputs — shows up constantly in business, whether or not anyone's deliberately applying it. A minority of customers usually generate the majority of revenue. A...
Play-Doh Was Never Supposed to Be a Toy
Most inventions don't start out as what they eventually become. Few examples make that point as clearly as Play-Doh, which began its life not as a children's toy but as a wallpaper cleaner. In the 1930s, coal furnaces left soot on walls throughout the winter, and a...
Nintendo Sold Playing Cards for 70 Years Before It Made a Single Video Game
Few companies illustrate the value of reinvention as dramatically as Nintendo, a name now inseparable from video games — but one that spent the better part of a century in an entirely different business first. Founded in 1889 in Kyoto, Japan, Nintendo's original...
3 Questions to Ask Before You Kill a Failing Product
Deciding whether to shut down a struggling product or service is one of the harder calls a business owner has to make, and it's a decision often driven more by frustration or sunk-cost attachment than by a clear-eyed look at the actual situation. Three questions tend...
8 Steps to Reinvent a Struggling Business and Find Success
A struggling business does not always have to shut down. Sometimes the better answer is reinvention. When a business model stops working, the most productive response is to understand why, make targeted changes, and remain flexible enough to try a new direction....
How Failure Can Become the Foundation for Success
Failure can feel like a sign that you are falling behind, but in business and in life, setbacks can become some of the most valuable turning points. Success rarely follows a perfect path. What matters most is learning from what went wrong and continuing to move...
Entrepreneur Magazine
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- AI Is Moving Faster Than Higher Education. Here’s Who Can Close the Gap. September 7, 2026AI has already replaced the skills we're teaching students. The capability a degree certifies now has a half-life measured in years, not decades, and no policy closes that distance fast enough.