Heart and Soul

I read lots of business plans and I meet with many different companies each week. Not all impress me. I meet lots of talented engineers who struggle with marketing and I meet plenty of brilliant marketing people who push lousy products. Sometimes I get bored because I want it all....

The inner game of a successful entrepreneur

Being a successful entrepreneur is an inner game. It's all about how you manage your mind and your internal beliefs. In Timothy Gallwey's famous book The Inner Game of Tennis, he pointed out that tennis players are often totally obsessed with external things (the new tennis racket, the tennis shoes,...

Let the old trees die

While the global finance crisis might be showing some signs of improvement, the outlook for the entrepreneur is still bleak. Without easy access to capital, entrepreneurs cannot grow. A forest without new growth will age quickly just like an economy without new growth will fall. While governments around the world...

Smashing Speed Barriers

When working with a startup business there are times to go slow, to create strategies, to contemplate and to carefully evaluate things... Then there are other times when you need blazing speed and decisive action in order to make huge progress and to smash barriers in your way. (more…)

Winner of prestigious European Venture Award

Background Info: RPR Technologies has been an Xelerator client for the past 3 years. In 2006 Rick Salmon took over as CEO for RPR in order to help the founders get their patented prototype on the market. The first thing Xelerator did was to assemble a professional Board of Directors...

How to accelerate your startup, even during a recession

If you listen too much to the financial news these days, you can put yourself into a deep clinical depression within about 15 minutes. Most of the experts are predicting global slowdowns and catastrophe scenarios, but how do you adopt a strategy to keep your small startup business afloat? Is...

Why do startups struggle with sales?

One of the most important survival factors for any startup technology business is the ability to generate sales revenues as quickly as possible. Cash flow is king. The more that an entrepreneur is able to prove to investors that he is a good businessman (able to generate cash flow) then...