Are you an aspiring tech entrepreneur looking to create new technology-oriented markets and strike business success? Well, the good thing is you don’t need technical expertise to succeed if you have a great idea for a tech company or a product idea that will positively impact the tech market. But you do need to know a few things if you want to succeed.

In this article, we’ll share some must-have tips for succeeding as an entrepreneur in tech.

5 Things Every Tech Entrepreneur Should Know

What are the keys to success as an entrepreneur in tech? Here are 5 pieces of advice you need to know before you embark on this new and exciting career path.

1. Research the Tech Landscape You Want to Invest In

The reality of entrepreneurship is that there are very few new ideas. Chances are you’re going to go up against a variety of competitors with very similar products or solutions.

So before you invest your time, money, and resources, you should look at the tech landscape and see what competitors are offering, and think about how you meet a different niche. You need to know how your tech product or service is unique, and how you can emphasize these differentiators to potential customers.

2. Take Advantage of Industry Experts

If you know people in the tech industry, you should ask them questions about your potential product or service and take any advice they give you to heart. Pick the brains of industry experts, learn from their mistakes, and know that they don’t need to be offering the same product as you to have meaningful advice.

Studies have shown that sharing knowledge and chatting with other professionals is essential for business growth, but only 25% of executives are really doing this. By taking advantage of these networks, you can carve a spot for yourself as a tech entrepreneur.

3. Surround Yourself with the Right People

One of the most important things you can do as a tech entrepreneur is to surround yourself with people who are as passionate and ambitious as you are. Your employees will be the backbone of your business, so make sure you look for people with insight into your industry, as well as a passion for your product and what you stand for as an entrepreneur.

4. Validate Your Offering

Curious why the majority of tech startups fail? It’s because they weren’t providing a product or service that consumers actually needed! As an entrepreneur, you need to verify that your product or service is something consumers will want to pay for and use.

To increase your odds of success, you need to validate your product offering, determine your target demographic, and figure out how you can target them most effectively.

5. Be Smart & Plan for the Future

At the beginning stages of your business, you need to be smart about how you invest your time and money. You’ll need to sharpen your time management skills, cut corners when it comes to finances, and figure out the lowest cost way to get your product or service out to customers.

Once you do this, you need to come up with a detailed business plan that will help you prepare for any market changes and changes in company growth and profit margins. By doing this, you can help your business survive and later thrive.

Final Thoughts

Succeeding in the tech space isn’t easy, but it’s possible if you’re smart enough and have the right amount of talent and passion! By following these 5 tips, you can have a fighting chance at building a business consumer will love.

Are you an entrepreneur looking to invest in the next big tech? Have any tips or questions we missed? Let us know in the comments!

Did you know that highly engaged employees are more than twice as productive, yet 70% of American workers are not engaged at work? Several polls confirm this testament to the importance of great hr processes.

You can greatly improve employee engagement by developing and maintaining the right company culture.

Company culture drives employee motivation and behavior. Maintaining the right company culture leads to higher performance and more loyal employees, bad company culture does the opposite.

Let’s take a look at how you can adapt your hr processes to create a workplace where employees thrive, care and take pride in their work.

Refine Company Culture

You can’t develop a good company culture without a well-thought-out structure and end goal.

Start with alignment. Gather management to define company culture. When you have a clear idea of your ideal company culture, assess out how it fits your business strategies, and how well employees think it matches their experience in the workplace.

Adjust and make plans to fix any misalignments. Make sure the leadership’s picture of company culture mirrors how the employees really see it. Otherwise, your management is leading in blindness and unable to make optimal decisions, and your workers feel mistreated and ignored.

Learn from your employees and adapt your hr processes, because the company will only go as far as the workers take it.

Hiring and Training

Handle prospects and new recruits as people, not just labor. Imagine them with the group, and their relation to your company culture. Are they a good fit? Make company culture part of the hiring process and bring new employees smoothly into the community.

Activity doesn’t equal results. The position you’re offering is more than an activity. Focus on results, what this person will achieve for the company. Both in their immediate tasks and as a part of your team with a mission.

Using perks for motivation is inefficient if you haven’t established perks that are tailored to your workforce’s needs and wants. Hear them out, adjust as needed, and save money by cutting out unwanted perks.

Keep employees happy to keep them motivated and efficient. Satisfied employees will spread a good reputation for your business. Fewer employees quit, more people seek employment with your business. Thus you’ve made future hr processes more efficient.

Ensure an environment of happiness and you maintain motivation, independence, trust and belief in the company.

Eliminating Clashes

Carefully assign leaders with a clear sense of direction for the team, project, and company culture. Choose ones that care and take pride in their work.

Think of what state of mind you want your workers to maintain, and pick leaders that brilliantly represent it.

Remember that high-performers easily lose motivation. Don’t keep them thinking they’re doing more work with more accountability and less help without due compensation.

Ensure that great work is recognized and rewarded to prevent animosity between workers, and inspire more workers to strive for higher performance.

More Tips on HR Processes and Much More

Rafferty Pendery is a tech entrepreneur, VC and International speaker whose companies have worked with major brands like Hilton, HP and Time Warner.

On this blog, you’ll find lots of great information for entrepreneurs and business executives.

If you have any questions about this information, send a message here.

According to the Harvard Business Review, the ability to inspire and motivate others is the most important skill for leaders and managers at every level.

In order to do that, you’ll need to be able to captivate your audience and inject energy into it. In this article, we’ll tell you exactly how to do that.

Read on to find out how to improve your inspirational speaking skills.

How to Improve Your Inspirational Speaking

1. Know Your Message

In order for your public speaking to have an impact, it needs to have a clear message. If you’re not sure what that is yet, it’s time to get brainstorming.

If there’s one thing that you want people to take away from your speech, what is it? Once you define what that message is, you can work on delivering it in the most effective way possible.

2. Practice Improvising

When you’re trying to give a compelling speech, reading off a script or reeling off memorized lines just won’t do.

There will inevitably be moments when your mind goes blank or a wrench is thrown into the works, sending you off your usual course. When that happens, you’ll need to come up with something on the spot.

This requires improvisational skills.

Hone your improv skills, and you won’t have to worry about being caught off-guard. One great way to do this is by trying out some stand-up comedy.

It can even make you a better leader!

If you can handle hecklers, you can handle anything. Besides, it helps to get all the extra stage practice you can, no matter what you’re doing while you’re up there.

3. Be Passionate

Your audience won’t believe your words unless you do. That’s why passion is important for public speaking.

Emotion is what will make your speech captivating, drawing people in so that they hang on your every word. It could come through in body language, tone or just quality of storytelling.

However you do it, make sure it’s authentic.

4. Adapt to Your Audience

Your inspirational speaking approach should differ depending on the type of audience receiving it. You can’t talk to every group of people in the same way.

Try your best to get to know as much as you can about your audience before an event. The more you know, the more you’ll be able to gear your speech towards their tastes, wants and needs.

That way, they’ll be able to relate to what you’re saying, and your words will have a bigger impact.

Be Better at Business

With these tips, you can become a great public speaker. As well as improving your business and making you a better leader, it could also turn into a lucrative side gig. If you’re really good, you could even become a professional inspirational speaker.

Work hard enough, and you’ll find that people will come to you, offering to pay you to speak at their events.

To find out more, read our post on 5 tips on becoming a paid international speaker.

A study by Search Engine Watch proves that being the top search result will lead to more clickthroughs by 53%.

SEO (search engine optimization) is your ticket to boosting traffic to your website. People often choose the first result they see, which means learning how to increase your Google ranking is imperative to creating a successful website.

There are some techniques a small business owner can do to increase traffic numbers. However, hiring an SEO specialist can eliminate the stress associated with building a ranking on your own.

Read on to learn why an SEO specialist shapes the way traffic flows to your website.

1. Hiring an SEO Specialist is Better Than Doing It on Your Own

A website is only one aspect of your much larger business structure. Why not save yourself all the time it takes to craft your SEO ranking by hiring a professional?

The intelligent SEO specialist you hire will understand SEO inside and out. He or she is an expert in the field of online SEO and will know exactly how to factor in the right keywords to make sure your website is in the top search results.

As a business owner, you can hire an expert in SEO to help you out so you can focus your attention on other important operations to keep your business running smoothly. Generating sales leads will be a no-brainer once a trained expert collaborates with your business to increase your SEO rank.

2. See Better Traffic Results with Help From a Professional

Do you think your current website is not reaching out to the right audience?

By hiring a specialist, he or she can determine who your target audience is and how to attract them to click on your website search link. If your page is now ranked on the first few pages of a Google search, an expert can make adjustments to improving the ranking.

SEO tactics, such as choosing the right keywords to implement into your content, have resulted in high success rates. Convert leads into loyal customers by learning from a well-informed SEO specialist.

3. Avoid Black Hat Methods to Cheat Your Way to the Top

One final way that hiring extra help to boost your SEO rank with a specialist is to avoid making costly mistakes.

Black hat techniques are when illegal methods are used to boost the ranking of your site. Avoiding this path is something an SEO expert can ensure happens.

Keyword stuffing and spam-commenting are two black hat techniques that will make Google quickly push your website down the list.

Talk to your SEO consultant to discuss what techniques he or she will use to promote your website so these harmful tactics are not involved.

I’m Rafferty Pendery, a Tech Entrepreneur who has already helped thousands of businesses flourish through successful expansion strategies and social media campaigns.

Leaving me a message is a great way to easily reach out and learn more about the services I can provide your business today.

There are many ways to grow your business. Most of them involve doing what you can to sell more and earn more money in the process.

However, some business growth methods involve not gathering more, but giving things away. Things like your time, energy, and money can greatly benefit the people around you when shared.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but giving back can actually help to grow your business. There are many ways to give back to your community as a business, and not all of them involve donating money.

There is a lot you can do to get involved, and doing so will prove to be a very wise business decision for several reasons. If you’re wondering how giving back to the community can actually be fruitful for your business, read on.

Improve Your Reputation in the Community

Getting involved with the local community is one of the best things you can do for your business. When people in the area associate your company name with altruism and volunteer work, they will have positive feelings toward your brand.

When the day comes that your customer needs your services and they must decide between you and the competition, you want to make sure you’ve left a good taste in their mouth.

In addition, there may be a large demographic in your community that needs help, whether it’s the school system or animal shelters. If your company is the one that comes to the rescue, you will be highly regarded by everyone affected.

If you become known as the company that’s always there in times of trouble, you will come to earn the respect and admiration of many potential customers.

Build A Loyal Customer Base by Giving Back to the Community

There are many ways that giving back to the community is a powerful business tool, and the loyalty you’ll win in the process is no exception.

Some people may come to you — and you alone — for business after you have helped them out. For example, sponsoring a children’s baseball league may earn you the unyielding loyalty of all the parents on the team.

Other ways of giving back to the community also nurture loyalty and appreciation. Mentoring budding entrepreneurs for a few hours a week can make a big impact. Donating items to an organization in need will also inspire those who see your good deed to express their gratitude by becoming a customer.

Improve Company Culture

Having your company volunteer as a team is a great way to motivate and inspire your employees. Working together on a collaborative effort for the greater good will boost company morale overall, and that’s always good for the bottom line.

When getting a group of employees to help out, you may want to offer the opportunity to volunteer during work hours. Or, you could offer it as a more fulfilling alternative to meeting for happy hour drinks.

Either way, when your employees feel good about your vision and mission, they’ll feel good about working for you. You will receive the best work possible when you have earned the trust and respect of those you employ.