Please note that the thoughts expressed in this article are my own personal opinions and do not reflect the opinions of any group, organization or company that I am involved with. The next few months will be one of the busiest seasons for the entrepreneurial community in Sioux Falls in the last several years. A […]
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Each month, I meet with five to ten business owners that want to raise money for their startups. Since I’m the chair of a community angel investment fund, there are a lot of people that are told “go talk to Matt” when they ask around about raising capital to grow their business. I take as […]
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Every successful community has central hub for the sharing of ideas the facilitation of random social interactions. Churches have Sunday worship. Service clubs like Rotary and Kiwanis have weekly meetings. Geeks have game nights at local comic shops. These regular places of meeting provide members of a community a forum to engage other people with […]
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“What’s the first step to starting a business?” Common answers to this question include coming up with a name, figuring out who your target market is, identifying the products and services you want to sell, identifying a location for your business or setting up an LLC. These tasks are all important, but I would argue […]
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Entrepreneurship has been a passion for me since my formative years. I sold candy to friends in grade school to make a bit of cash. I made a website about SimCity 2000 in middle school that somehow earned $25.00 per month from ads. In college, I started a personal finance blog that quickly became an […]
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If you’re an entrepreneur in the Sioux Falls area and you haven’t been to the Zeal Center for Entrepreneurship, you are missing out on a hub of support and resources for growing businesses. The Zeal building, which is on the northwest side of Sioux Falls near Southeast Tech, houses a mix of idea-stage entrepreneurs, scaling […]
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Imagine an organization funded by the SBA, the DoD, the Department of Commerce, and the SDGOED, chartered by USD, and operating under the names SBDC, PTAC, MTS, and SBIR. If you think that getting help from this organization must be like visiting the DMV, you would be mistaken. It turns out that the South Dakota […]
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For every dollar that I have available to invest in start-up businesses, there are at least twenty people that would happily take that dollar and promise me big returns in the future. Since the vast majority of start-up businesses fail, I have the overwhelming task of determining which entrepreneurs that want my money will be […]
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A few weeks back, I wrote an important article focusing on the four things that the city of Sioux Falls will need if it is going to be a community that fosters new startup businesses that attract outside capital and create high-paying jobs. Since then, I have discussed capital availability, building community, and storytelling as […]
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Where can an entrepreneur go for guidance when their product is selling like hotcakes but they can’t keep up with demand? Or when they can’t make necessary hires because of cashflow issues? Or when the only way to bring their product to market is to build a multi-million dollar processing facility, and they don’t yet […]
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