Raising money for a small business or startup is perhaps easier now than it ever has been. There’s still a significant learning curve when it comes to identifying potential angel investors, getting a meeting with them and pitching your startup. Nick Horob from Harvest Profit and I recently did a webinar for Startup Sioux Falls […]
View PostThe Future of Seed-Stage Startup Capital in the Dakota’s

During our last Falls Angel Fund meeting, we heard investment pitches from three high-growth startup companies that are based in the Dakota’s. One company was a software and services business that we had invested in an earlier round. One was a new software company seeking capital for the first time. The third was an early-stage […]
View PostHow to Spot a Fake Business Growth Guru

Every now and then I receive a text, an email or a Facebook message asking me, “Hey, what do you think of [Person], that marketing and business guru that’s all over Facebook/YouTube/Instagram?” It can be difficult to determine if any given business expert or marketing guru is the real deal merely by looking at their […]
View PostSioux Falls to Celebrate Entrepreneurship Day on March 3, 2021

Beginning this year, Sioux Falls will celebrate Entrepreneurship Day on the first Wednesday of March. For the 2021 celebration taking place on March 3, the general public is invited to join the festivities by participating in a host of events organized by the teams at the Zeal Center for Entrepreneurship (Zeal) and Startup Sioux Falls. […]
View PostThe Biggest Mistake You Can Make with Your Email Sign-Up Forms

You are a savvy business owner. Maybe you listen to marketing podcasts and have read some popular business books. You understand that one of your business’s most valuable assets is its customer and prospect lists. You put an email sign-up form on your website to build your audience, perhaps incentivized by a discount coupon, a […]
View PostSeven Lessons I Learned Helping Animal Shelters Raise $18.5 Million Over Seven Years

One of my goals for 2020 was to wrap up some entrepreneurial side projects so that MarketBeat is the only company that I have an operating role in. There were a couple of little websites that I got rid of and a real-estate investment club that I was part of that disbanded, but GoGo Photo […]
View PostAnnouncing the Paulson Center at Dakota State University

When I was a student at Dakota State University, I paid close attention to the emails that were sent to all students. A lot of the emails were noise from student activities I was not interested in, but every now and then great opportunities were presented that any ambitious student could take advantage of. It […]
View PostThe Two Million Dollar Ideas that Propelled MarketBeat’s Growth and Success.

The setting is Thanksgiving of 2010. Karine and I were engaged at the time and were planning a wedding the following summer. We spent the long weekend at her parents’ farm outside of Emery, South Dakota. The weekend was marked by energetic nieces and nephews, board games, walks on country roads and German chocolate pie. […]
View PostHow MarketBeat Maintains 21% Open Rates While Sending 1 Billion Emails Per Year

A couple of weeks back, I was doing some routine monitoring of MarketBeat’s email engagement metrics and saw an interesting number appear on our dashboard: It turns out that MarketBeat has sent more than one billion emails in 2020 to our 1.75 million email subscribers with an average open rate of 21%. Any spammer can […]
View PostFive Growth Strategies that MarketBeat Leveraged to Increase Revenue by 75% in 2020.

2020 has been a year of growth for MarketBeat. Our email list has grown by more than 500,000 subscribers since the first of the year. We brought on two additional employees. We just crossed $10 million in revenue for the year and expect to see 75% year-over-year growth for the year. While we did see […]
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