Or is your company the product? This may be a novel way to hit on strategy, but it is important. When launching quickly we often focus on getting the core aspects correct and tweaking the details later, but do we ever circle back? This may be especially true when launching an app or a service. Stop and think for a minute, has your product overshadowed your company?

These are some signs your product or service has taken center stage away from the core of your company:

• There is a lack of long term strategy from a business perspective (you may have a product strategy in place)
• Employees are unsure what the key objectives the company is striving to reach
• Ideas that do not support the product are dismissed instead of leveraged for another product/service opportunity
• Individual development has taken a back seat to pushing out updates or enhancements to the existing product

If you are successfully growing your business, your employees and company you are probably already on the right track. If any of the above…

No, this isn't a pitch for a wireless carrier. When starting a business you must carefully choose partners and employees. When trying to launch a venture with a spouse, a family member or close friend you must consider the future before taking any action. Is going into business with someone familiar less risky than a stranger? You may think so, but doing your homework is the only way to ensure you are indeed on the same page.

Starting a business with someone close to you does have unique challenges. Below are some of the challenges with ideas on how to overcome them.

Challenges:

• History - This is an obvious challenge that is not necessarily shared by many business partners. Your history with your spouse, family and friends is probably quite lengthy. Challenges can emerge based on past events and conversations. A great way to overcome this challenge is to leverage your history and make it work for you. You hopefully trust your spouse, family and friends (at least if you are planning on going into business…

Your startup should consider how to integrate giving back from the beginning. There are several impacts that will make this approach a hit for your venture. Giving back is key to letting the community know you are actively helping make the community a better place. Exposing your venture to the community by giving back will also help your company gain trust and some word-of-mouth buzz.

There are many noble causes that your venture could help, but I would recommend choosing local non-profits and events as much as possible. This will enable you to directly see the outcomes of your participation.

I believe there are 3 categories of giving back. They are time, talent and money (TTM). I strongly recommend giving back in the order I have listed those categories.

• Time - Before really making a great impact you should get to know your community and non-profits within your community. It is important that you are sure you understand the cause and that it potentially in some way aligns with your venture. Offering tim…

You've successfully launched your startup, congratulations! Now you are probably arriving at the growth phase where you may have realized you can no longer take on all the tasks yourself (or even split them between the co-founders). You will need to begin hiring talent into your venture.

This is a key decision that will not only affect your company's production, it can also impact the company culture. As a successful entrepreneur and/or startup you obviously were smart enough to form a great idea and launch it. You may have even left the daily grind because your ideas were not taken very seriously within the previous company. Keep these things in mind as you look to hire on talent. As founder, co-founder or CEO you may feel inclined to hold onto every aspect of the business. This may be a lasting mistake.

As a leader, it is your job to make your venture an ongoing success! This is done by hiring the best talent for your venture. Most ventures look for smart people to fill open positions. This is a first st…

You may just be starting your adventure into the starup world, but have you considered where you are truly going? Are you on a clear journey from A to B? Or is your journey more of A to Not Sure? Inc magazine online has a great article to get you thinking about this very topic, "What's Your End Game?" StartupNation also has an article along the same idea, "Business Exit Strategy: Got One?"

Overall I think these articles are well written but don't quite cover all the options. Keep these options in mind as you starting out and growing your company. I've provided a short list below from the article and added options the article does not include.

Exit Strategies included in the articles (Please read both articles Inc's and StartupNation's):

• Keep the company private - This option provides the most control and flexibility for founders. Usually keeping it private means that the founders are very passionate about being with the venture long term.
• Selling to a larger firm - This option is usually seen as a faster…