Category: Business Skills

85 Platforms Where You Can Boost Your Startup’s SEO

hand pointing to digital marketing metrics on a laptop

Phoebe Yao is the Founder and CEO of Pareto. She realized that while talent is equally distributed around the world, access to economic opportunity is not. She also realized that while there are many online freelance marketplaces, securing virtual work is not easy. The goal of her company, Pareto, is to build a set of scalable communication guidelines for the future of work.

One free resource that Pareto made available is this compilation of 85 active platforms where you can showcase your venture or side project. This marketing resource contains brief summaries, traffic levels, and submission complexity for each platform.

Link to webinar: “Raising Capital During a Crisis”

Picture of Olivia Owens from webinar zoom session

Click this link to access the August 18, 2020 webinar entitled “Raising Capital During A Crisis: Launch and Grow Your Business With Crowdfunding”

Olivia Owens, Head of Partnerships at IFundWomen, discusses how to leverage crowdfunding for your business. You’ll come away from this workshop with a honed pitch, a network map, a winning rewards strategy, and a marketing plan for your crowdfunding campaign.

Exploring Funding Opportunities For A Variety of Business Models

In this 15 minute video segment, Liz Ngonzi looks at the spectrum of business models from not-for-profits to social enterprises to traditional for-profits and then explores a variety of sources of funding that apply to each model. She also discusses organizations such as incubators and accelerators that can provide both monetary and consulting support to start-up businesses.

Elizabeth (Liz) Ngonzi is the Founder and CEO of Liz Ngonzi Transforms who as an international educator, speaker, executive coach, and consultant, helps impact-driven leaders, entrepreneurs and organizations to more effectively define and tell their stories, enabling them to improve engagement with their stakeholders.  In helping clients she aims to INSPIRE, CONNECT with and ACTIVATE them to create the TRANSFORMATION they seek in their lives and/or organizations.  Additionally, Liz proudly supports women leaders and entrepreneurs as a facilitator in the Bank of America Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell.  Previously as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Cornell Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship, she helped aspiring entrepreneurs develop and present their unique value proposition to funders.

Amplify Speaker Series

"Amplify" speaker series logo

“Amplify” is a free speaker series designed to support and empower underrepresented communities in entrepreneurship and venture capital. In 2018, only 1% of venture capital funding went to Black startup founders. Black female entrepreneurs were only allocated 0.02% of VC funding. 

Entrepreneurship organizations at Yale, Harvard, Fordham, Cornell, Brown, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Stanford, UPenn, and Vanderbilt have come together to schedule weekly speakers. Amplify’s mission is to educate, inspire, and pave new paths forward for underrepresented voices in the world of startups.

The Cornell Entrepreneurship Club and the Sullivan Foundation at Rust College present AMPLIFY Week 4 – on Tuesday, August 4th at 5pm ET – which will feature a conversation with Jean-Pierre Adéchi, the CEO/Co-Founder of Wheeli. He will share thoughts on raising capital as a black founder and include specific lessons for women, minority, and other outside-the-box founders. To sign up for this event, click here.

To add your name to the Amplify mailing list to be alerted to future speakers, click here.

Interview with Jessica O. Matthews

logo for Uncharted Power

Jessica O. Matthews is the CEO and founder of Uncharted Power, a full-scale renewable energy company. The initial goal of the company was to create a smarter energy grid for sub-Saharan Africa (Matthews is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Nigeria) but the impact of natural disasters such as flooding and wildfires on the US energy grid encouraged Matthews to broaden her focus and create a more global solution. Read more about this incredible entrepreneur in a July 14, 2020 interview in Politico.

Can Government Programs Counter the COVID-19 Impact on Women Entrepreneurs?

Big red button with word "help" in white letters

In this July 15, 2020 piece in Forbes, author Geri Stengel explores the explosion of women-owned businesses from 2008 to present as well as inequities that still exist (and were made more apparent with the impact of COVID-19) for women and more specifically, women of color. She also discusses how federal, state, and local governments can do more to support women entrepreneurs.

Count Me In Revival Grant Application Is Open

Count Me In Revival Logo

Count Me In is the first national not for profit founded to help women grow their micro-businesses to million-dollar enterprises. They are currently accepting grant applications.

There are 15 grants available at $10K and 4 grants available at $25K each. Contestants have two weeks to complete the application starting on Wed June 24th when the link to the official application will be live. All applications are due no later than Thursday July 8, 2020 COB 5pm PST. More information can be found here.

Survival Plan for Small Businesses Handling Impacts from Coronavirus

woman in white shirt with facemask applying hand sanitizer

While published in late March (which seems like *more* than only a few months ago) this article in Entrepreneur highlights ten important items to consider as your are navigating how to keep your small business afloat during this challenging time. While you may have already addressed many of these items, it is still a useful list to skim through.

Link to Webinar “The Search for Money: How Women Can Negotiate Better Startup Financing”

Victoria Yampolsky screenshot from webinar

Click this link to access the May 27, 2020 webinar entitled “The Search For Money: How Women Can Negotiate Better Startup Financing“. Victoria Yampolsky shares strategies on how to position your company in the best light and how to create an effective fundraising strategy.

Several resources mentioned in the webinar included:

  • Diversity & Inclusion Event on June 11, 2020 with The Cavu Group (link)
  • Tech Crunch “Disrupt Now” event on Sept 14-18, 2020 (link) – you can get 10% off with Startup Station discount code: stationstartingup10
  • Startup Station’s Courses (link) – you can get 20% off with discount code: CORNELL
  • Free resources available at the Startup Station (link). The Startup Investor Search Guide is available if you join the mailing list on the homepage.