Before joining Palo Alto Software, Noah Parsons was an early Internet marketing and product expert in the Silicon Valley. He joined Yahoo! in 1996 as one of its first 101 employees and become Producer of the Yahoo! Employment property as part of the Yahoo! Classifieds team before leaving to serve as Director of Production at Epinions.com. He is a graduate of Princeton University. Noah devotes most of his free time to his three young sons. In the winter you'll find him giving them lessons on the ski slopes, and in summer they're usually involved in a variety of outdoor pursuits. Noah is currently the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of Outpost and the online business plan app LivePlan, and content curator and creator of the Emergent Newsletter. You can follow Noah on Twitter.
If your business is building a subscription service, creating a reliable sales forecast is a critical step to understanding how your business will grow. Read more »
So, your new business doesn't have any competition? Think again. All businesses have competition—but it might not be what you'd expect. Here's why every business has competition, and why that's actually a good thing. Read more »
A solid elevator pitch is an essential tool for achieving your goals—and it needs to cover these 7 things. If you're pitching investors or building a pitch deck, here's how to make sure you've covered the essentials. Read more »
Not paying attention to your cash flow? Even profitable companies can fail if they don't have a clear understanding of the cash flowing into and out of their businesses. Here are the cash flow basics, and what to watch out for. Read more »
Are you starting a business? One of the first things you'll need to do is market research. Here are a few top market research resources to get you going. Read more »
A buyer or user persona is a fictional character that represents a business’s customers or potential customers, based on what you know about their demographics, behaviors, and what motivates them. Here's why you need a buyer or user persona, and how to create one. Read more »
There are a number of great tools for tracking web metrics (both free and paid) that can help you get a better understanding of what your users are doing on your site—and even how your competitors are faring in their own online efforts. Here are the top 10 tools to check out. Read more »
Do you really need a business plan? What does the scientific research say about business planning—does it actually lead to success? The answer to both questions is yes—and here's how it works. Read more »
Market research sounds like a complex process—but it’s actually very simple, and incredibly important for your business. We'll show you how to do it. Read more »
Business planning isn’t just a one-time or annual event. Instead, it’s an ongoing process, where you review your processes and adjust course as needed, while ensuring that you’re staying on track toward your larger goals. Here's how to do this easily with a monthly plan review meeting. Read more »
Writing a business plan? Do this first. Here's why you should create a one-page pitch to develop your business strategy before you write a detailed business plan. Read more »
Writing a business plan? You'll need to analyze your market and industry. But, what's the difference between industry analysis and market analysis? Read more »
No matter what kind of business you are starting, you need a website. Here's how we built the website for our new product, Outpost—we'll walk you through the process. Read more »
Sales forecasting is a great way to kick off your business planning, and it gives you a solid starting point for the rest of your financial forecast. Here's how to forecast your sales, and how we did it for our new project, Outpost. Read more »
You don't need to have a graphic designer on your team to create a logo for your new business. Here's how we designed the logo for our new product, Outpost. Read more »
It's hard to force creativity—so we created a process. Here's how we named our new product, Outpost, and the method we used to choose the right name. Read more »
Ever wondered what actually goes into launching a new product? We’ve decided to give you a peek behind the curtain and share with you how we’re doing things. Read more »
Finding a problem that needs solving is often the first step of starting a business—but how will you make money? Here's where your business model comes in. Read more »
A great elevator speech can spark interest in your business and hopefully lead to a deeper conversation—and maybe even a partnership or funding opportunity. Read more »
The traditional business plan simply didn't fit the needs of modern, fast-moving companies. It was time to bring a scientific approach to business planning—and so Lean Planning was born. Read more »
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