My Top 10 online resources
Notoriously overreaching and underresourced, entrepreneurs are continually navigating unknown territories and encountering new problems. The best business owners are perpetual students, although there are no textbooks to tell them what to do next.
Still, the Web overflows with robust resources for entrepreneurs looking to source products, hire smarter or sell more. In fact, there’s way too much out there, much of it mediocre or more geared to selling than informing.
The following is my guide to the online business resources every entrepreneur should know. The catch is it’s a twopart, interactive column. I’m hoping if I write the first 10, you’ll contribute to next week’s 10 by emailing me your favourite online resources. These resources can help save time, money and aggravation: 1. Founded in 2012 by New Brunswick entrepreneur Dan Martell, Clarity.fm connects entrepreneurs with problems to accomplished business leaders. For a fee (starting at $1 per minute, but sometimes $10 or more), you can talk by phone with: Dan Martell, Brad Feld, Gerry Pond or Mark Cuban, or an app developer, media planner, venture capitalist, etiquette specialist, or department-store buyer. 2. Ever wish you could hang with Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs? Stanford University’s e Corner (e corner. stanford. edu/) features video panels, keynotes, interviews and confessions with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Marissa Mayer and Guy Kawasaki. You can search by speaker or subject, and many videos have been edited into short segments labeled by topics, such as Becoming a Better Storyteller; How the Founders Met; and The Extreme Relevance of Cash Flow. 3. CanadaOne.com bristles with articles, videos and howto guides covering day-to-day issues such as “What is the Cost to Open a Business Office?”, “Finding Qualified Customers,” and “When Contracts Fail.” There’s also an “Ask the Expert” section, where you can pose a problem or browse through other people’s questions and answers. My favourite: “Closing down the business for the Christmas break: Do workers need to be paid?” 4. Women 2.0(women2.com) is committed to developing more female tech innovators, but its in-depth, inspirational content should interest any ambitious entrepreneur. Sample articles include: Show Me the Money: A Women’s Guide to Securing VC Backing; Creating Company Culture: It’s about Why, not What; and How to Make Meetings Actually Awesome. The community includes online hangouts, real-life meetups (including Vancouver and Toronto), conferences and events. 5. The federal government’s Canada Business Network (canada business. ca) is about as dull as you’d expect. But it contains extensive information on financing, including grants, loans, tax credits and wage subsidies. It also offers primer-type modules on market research, marketing, e-business and security, importing and exporting, and managing employees. 6. If you’re into trade, Export Development Canada’s ExportWise.ca has timely articles on export opportunities, analyses of key markets and emerging opportunities, how-to guides, and profiles of successful exporters. EDC also posts a “Question of the Week” (recent example: “Can individuals export potash?”) 7. Profitguide.com is the online archive containing more than a dozen years of articles from Profit. (Fair disclosure: I used to run that publication.) Although it stopped being a stand-alone magazine 18 months ago, it lives on as a branded department inside Canadian Business, and the website regularly adds new content. Fair warning: The search function doesn’t function very well, so be persistent. 8. Want answers or resources from a global community of entrepreneurs? Expect fast responses from reddit.com/r/ startups, a bulletin board of questions and answers from community members, or redditors. Reddit is a busy, chaotic social-media site that attracts thoughtful commentators, critics and crackpots alike — all anonymous. Recent posts included requests for business partners, a copywriter offering to edit your marketing materials for free, and questions about hiring, payments, networking, creating products and more. 9. Smart Company (smartc o mpany. co m. a u ) is an Australian site that offers a free daily newsletter covering finance, growth, leadership, marketing, legal and other business topics. The journalism isn’t quite as strong as on mainstream North American sites, but you’ll get new takes on familiar issues — perspectives your competitors probably aren’t reading. 10. If this isn’t enough, check out a 2013 feature from Forbes magazine, “100 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs.” You’ ll find links to specialty sites for young entrepreneurs, tech startups, women and social entrepreneurs, topic-specific sites on law, financing, case studies, media, technology and business opportunities, as well as blogs from such grandmasters as Lean Startup guru Steve Blank, Toronto tech entrepreneur Ben Yoskovitz, Mark Cuban (again), and celebrity VCs Fred Wilson, Paul Graham and David Skok. Say goodbye to the rest of your day.
Now it’s your turn. What’s your favourite web resource, blog, app, content archive, or whatever? Why do you love it? Send me an email by July 9 and I’ll share the best suggestions next week.