“We invested in you, go figure it out”

How do you tell your investorsther business isn’t working? What if they then told you to go and sort it out in 30 days?

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We welcome back Apu Gupta of Curalate to discuss the world of startup investing. Apu’s story includes the successful pivot of Storably to Curalate as well as advice for any startup founder looking for the right investor for them.

For more episodes on startup investing click here, or to hear from startup founders, click here.

7 minutes of simple learnings for future startup founders

Today’s episode is a collation of useful sound bites from four previous Breaking Biz guests, all of whom run their own successful businesses. It’s basic advice/learnings delivered in around 7 minutes.

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The contributors are: Tucker Max, Lucas Carlson, Apu Gupta, Charlie Hoehn and Nathan Kontny. Access the original episodes by clicking on the respective name. All Breaking Biz interviews with CEO’s can be found here.

Lauren Maillian Bias gives advice for startups seeking investment

After selling her first startup (a boutique winery), Lauren Maillian Bias moved on to become the founder and CEO of Luxury Market Branding and founding partner at Gen Y Capital Partners.

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Lauren gives us some great insight into what she looks for in a company before investing and what she looks for in a pitch. In addition to this, Lauren has also released her new book ‘The Path Redefined’ which is definitely worth checking out.

“It’s a synthesis of my story of an entrepreneur and I hope people will learn to embrace what makes them unique”

Although we originally wanted to talk about the book with her, it was just too tempting to squeeze out some advice for startups who are preparing to pitch to experienced investors.

Locket- how an Investment Banker became an App Developer

To put it simply, Locket provides stuff you care about on your phone’s lock screen. The story behind Locket is less simple but a great one for aspiring entrepreneurs.

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/breakingbiz/LocketBreakingBiz.mp3 ]

Meet Yunha Kim. Since co-founding Locket, she’s built up a strong client list, experienced sexism in a male dominated industry, and landed Tyra Banks as an investor.

Today we chat about Yunha’s journey since leaving her role in Investment Banking and what some of the most important lessons are when running your own company.

‘Passion does not pay the bills’ – startup lessons from AppFog founder Lucas Carlson

Lucas Carlson is an entrepreneur featured in the NYT Bestselling Book, The Lean Entrepreneur. He’s also an author, speaker and leader in the cloud space. He founded the startup AppFog which was acquired by CenturyLink in 2013.

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AppFog has signed up more than 100,000 developers, raised nearly $10M in venture funding and has become an industry leading Platform-as-a-Service. Today we benefit from his entrepreneurial knowledge with insights that include:

 Passion does not pay the bills

Why is ‘money’ the worst motivator for anyone starting their own company

The dangers of falling in love with your business ideas

Why every business owner needs to know their unit cost