Entrepreneurs have a natural inclination to go it alone. While this do-it-yourself spirit can help you move forward, adding an element of collaboration into the mix can make you unstoppable. Partnering with another brand lets you broaden your reach, accomplish more with fewer resources, and create extraordinary experiences for your...

Making the leap into starting your own business is a brave and bold move, and everyone's path is different. There are plenty of things I wish I'd known when I decided to quit my position at IBM and work on the idea that later became TaskRabbit. Maybe that's...

In the wake of the economic downturn of 2008, many lost their jobs, their savings, their homes. It was a tumultuous time that proved many things, but none so clearly as this: Following the "rules" doesn't necessarily earn you a secure future. As they pulled themselves from financial devastation, many...

Hiring's tough. It's not just filtering through hundreds of applications and blocking out big chunks of your day for interviews -- those are the simple parts. The difficult thing is the nagging feeling that, despite your best efforts, the perfect candidate will somehow fall through the cracks.

This feeling...

As founder and CEO of an early stage tech startup, I get to decide exactly what our office is like. From the SOMA location within a short stroll of some of San Francisco's best restaurants to the color of the walls (neon green, bright blue, and stark white),...

It seems like those of us who run a business can't go five minutes without encountering the term "company culture." The phrase is always uttered with extreme adoration, yet the very concept seems as nebulous as it is elusive. I could use this column to chime in with my two...

We find our homes on Craigslist, score our most treasured items with eBay, send gifts via Amazon, and order dinner through GrubHub. There's no denying it, we're all creatures of the Internet now. Online transactions, once relegated to leaps of faith,...

Trust is the mechanism that inspires people to expect good things from other people and products. Expecting good things isn't just what keeps us coming back to brands we love, it's what leads us to try new products and services in the first place. As an entrepreneur, it seems clear...

When a person decides to open up a brick-and-mortar business, push "go" on a startup concept, or venture in any other way into full-fledged business ownership, a lot of questions pop up. Questions about money, product viability, staffing, working space, equipment costs, and about whether their company will be welcomed...

The term "nine-to-five" has long symbolized a kind of drudgery that sucks up our lives and eclipses our identities, but it wasn't until the Great Recession that the pejorative phrase was crowned with an entirely new distinction: old-fashioned. Even as the jobless rate continues its slow decline, the still-anemic U.S....