All posts in Startups

How to Start a Media Company and Actually Make Money

how to start a media company and actually make moneyThe Guardian is a 195 year old British newspaper which expects to burn through £90m in 2017 after incurring damage of £200m the year before.

The Economist once described The Guardian as:

“[T]he most stylish paper in the hyper-competitive British quality pack, the wittiest and best-designed, the strongest for features, the one most likely to reflect modern life.”

At it’s peak it sold half a million papers per day. In June 2016, at peak Brexit-vote tension, The Guardian online claimed to have over 165m unique monthly browsers.

Yet, despite this history, reputation, and traffic, there are serious warnings that the money will run dry in as little as six or seven years.

If they can’t make it work, how can anyone? What future is there for journalism and traditional media?

In this article, we’ll explore a number of business models in use today on both a large and small scale, and begin to analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

We’ll break that down into 10 key recommendations for anyone looking to hop onboard the media startup bandwagon.

Then, for a bit of fun, we’ll delve into what could lie ahead for the future of print media.

Extra, extra! Read all about it!

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What is Crowdfunding? The Complete Guide to Getting Started

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Are you a wannabe investor, or an aspiring entrepreneur?

There are now more ways than ever to get those valuable connections to make you and others money. The online crowdfunding world is a network of forward thinking companies and people who want to help them succeed.

In the second installment of our Future Finance series, focused on modern investment and millennial-friendly financing, we’re looking at the particular niche of equity crowdfunding.

In 2012, the total global crowdfunding industry estimated fundraising volume was $2.7 billion. In 2015, this had grown to $34 billion. The industry is booming and growing each year, so it’s about time we picked it apart for you.

In this article, we’re going to look at two key areas:

  1. How you can become an investor through crowdfunding opportunities including platforms available to help you along your journey.
  2. How you can raise investment for your startup through crowdfunding platforms, with expert advice from FlashFunders’s Evan Markiles.

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Micro Investing: Become an Investor With a $2 Budget

Micro_Investing-_Become_an_Investor_With_a_$2_Budget-03For a long time, the world of investing was limited to those with access to significant amounts of capital.

If you wanted to invest, you needed large sums of money. If you wanted investment, you needed someone with large sums of money.

The internet is changing this.

$30 million has been put into one micro investing app, $35 million in another, and a whopping $66 million in a further one. Investors see real promise in these micro investing opportunities, and it’s easy to see why.

These apps aim to open up investing to everyone, no matter your budget.

In the first of our Process Street Future Finance series, where we look at modern tech-driven investment options and how the millennial market is shaping the scene, we’re giving the ultimate introduction to micro investing.

We’ll tell you:

  • What it is.
  • Why it’s hyped.
  • Where it’s going.
  • How you can get started.

Hold on to your 401(k)s, we’re going in!

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Why Are Monopolies Bad? An Analysis of 6 Rise-and-Fall Companies

Why are monopolies bad?When I think of monopoly I think of a mustachioed man with a nice hat and a highland terrier.

I also think of family arguments and Christmas flashbacks; Monopole mon amour, directed by Resnais…

Yet, those aren’t the only monopoly connotations you should be worried about. The New York Times recently reported that a whopping 77% of mobile social traffic is owned by Facebook, 74% of the ebook market is Amazon, and Google owns 88% percent of the search advertising market.

They aren’t the only monopolies around and they’re only in specific sectors. A report from eMarketer showed that in 2016 Facebook and Google collectively accounted for 57% of all mobile advertising – and that figure is rising. Maybe it’s not a monopoly at all, but a duopoly?

Market position isn’t static, it’s dynamic. Monopolies form and fade, doing so in response to specific factors and environments.

In this article, we’ll look at the rise and fall of some monopolistic scenarios and try to learn a little about how this current dominance may look moving forward.

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Process Improvement: Stop Bad Processes Killing Your Business

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Last week we failed to meet a big deadline for the second time in a month. Vinay (Process Street‘s CEO) wasn’t impressed.

How can you forget something so simple? What’s going wrong?

Then came the kicker.

What was your process?

From missed deadlines to widespread cyber attacks, things go wrong in businesses all the time. The vast majority of problems, however, are caused by following bad processes. Processes might be vital to your business’ success, but unchecked they can just as easily cause you to fail.

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The only way to change these weak links in your own business is to have a system of process improvement – a way of constantly improving the processes that power your business.
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The Only 14 Startup Tools You Need to Build a Unicorn

Imagine if you had to send marketing emails manually, or keep your records in a tattered binder on your desk.

Every company, even startups, needs to make a minimum investment in SaaS tools for work like email marketing, project management, and tracking sales.

But the catch is that some of these startup tools can cost huge amounts of money, and when you’re a young startup you don’t want to be forking out in excess of $2,000/user/month for just one piece of software.

The point of this post is to explain the minimum viable SaaS stack your startup should invest in, based on what we’ve found out at Process Street in our many (many, many, many) tool-testing escapades. I’ll even do the math for you, and collate the estimated annual cost at the end.

Ready to start building up your toolbox with the best SaaS out there?

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An Introduction to Process Street for Consultants

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Today is the first post in a new series – a guide to help consultants and their clients work with Process Street to boost efficiency and be more productive.

Whether you’re documenting your clients’ business processes, updating their toolkit, or generally improving company tools and practices, Process Street is the easiest way to document and manage both your personal and clients’ workflows.

Over the next seven weeks we’ll go through:

  • An introduction to Process Street for consultants – why you should care, and the core features
  • Advanced features such as process automation and custom share links
  • Common use cases and how best to use Process Street in different forms of consulting
  • The benefits of Process Street as part of your (and your clients’) toolkit
  • How to easily set up and hand off processes to your clients
  • How our partner program works
  • Extra resources to become a true master of efficiency

I’ll even be writing this guide to let you give it to your clients to teach them how to use Process Street. After all, efficiency is the name of the game.

process street consultants - efficiency

So, join me today as we kick off this mega guide for consultants by explaining what Process Street is, what the core features are, and why the hell you should care about it.
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How to Hire a Virtual Assistant and Ditch the Work You Hate

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Your current team can’t handle any extra work. You’ve exhausted your process automation opportunities. You’ve got no choice but to bring in a fresh face.

You could hire a specialist, but they can be expensive and limited in the work you can hand off. You need to hire a virtual assistant.

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How to Use Visual Process Innovation to Make Your Startup More Efficient

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Efficiency is vital for startups to scale and survive. To be efficient you have to document your processes to make everything repeatable and scalable.

All of which means nothing if your processes are bad.

“Process innovation” is a fancy term for improving your business’ processes. Instead of haphazardly solving external issues, you focus on improving your core processes and standard operating procedures to make your business efficient and able to grow.
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What Startups Can Learn From The World of Video Game Development

Ben Mulholland February 20, 2017

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“How did they make this?”

I find myself asking this while playing games, and after doing some digging ingenious stories of building communities and managing resources came to light.

In other words, startups (and SaaS companies as a whole) are closer to agile game development than you would think. The core business processes may differ, but valuable lessons can be applied in terms of managing resources and organizing your priorities.

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