Starting & Growing Ventures

Anyone Can Start a Company: The Real Question is SHOULD YOU?

Jim Boudreau — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 23:40:18 GMT

From the outside looking in, the idea of starting your own company often seems like a glamourous, self-enriching lottery ticket. There are certainly plenty of examples to perpetuate that belief. Even in the case of the most meticulous dramatizations of the greatest success stories in business (e.g. the movies), the reality is never what is portrayed. Th…

Creating a Compelling Pitch Deck

Jim Boudreau — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 21:07:38 GMT

One of the most common mistakes that founders make is trying to get to talking about their “widget” as fast as possible. It is, after all, their “baby” and they want to show it off to the world. The problem is, investors look at countless other “babies” every single day and frankly, little sets one apart from another when they look at so many. Hopefu…

The 10-100-1000 Sales Plan for Startups

Jim Boudreau — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 01:33:39 GMT

One of the most persistent challenges startup teams face is figuring out how to build meaningful traction while securing the funding required to get off the ground and scale. This chicken-and-egg dilemma isn’t new - to generate revenue, you need money to find and support customers...but to get money, you need revenue.

The good news is that it can be don…

Do you have a Sales Team or a Sales System?

Jim Boudreau — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 12:55:00 GMT

Ask any CEO or business owner what keeps them up at night and I have yet to find one that won't include REVENUE in their "top 3" (for most it's number one). Diving deeper into that concern I generally ask the following questions:

Do you have a sales team or a sales system?
Which do you rely upon more?

The answers are generally some combination of "one or t…

What Happens When Your Revenue Plateaus?

Jim Boudreau — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 12:00:00 GMT

Business, like many things in life, have natural “water levels”, or plateaus, revenue tiers that they seem to achieve consistently as they reach levels of maturity. I’ve found these strata to be fairly natural - $1m, $2.5m, $5m, $10m, $25m, etc. Every company will eventually find their “water level”, often after a period of solid growth that suddenly pl…

Are you a CEO or an Owner/Operator?

Jim Boudreau — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 10:15:00 GMT

One of the first things I will ask a new or potential client relates to the primary financial goal they have for their company. For a startup or a growth company the two options are typically:

To create an “ATM Machine” that generates a certain amount of cash annually

To create inherent value in the company in order to achieve a certain exit at a certa…