Up and Running Blog

customer spotlight

Ben Lamson and Sulaiman Sanni, WeDidIt cofounders

It’s never easy to leave a stable job to launch a startup. But sometimes circumstances align and a budding entrepreneur just knows that the time is right to make the leap. Sulaiman Sanni and his partner Ben Lamson were both working  for Meltwater Group, a large, well known Software as a Service company, Su as [...]

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chairs3

Every business needs to differentiate itself, to find a way to show the world how it’s unique and different. If you were to ask the owners of 10 hair salons which products or service they sell or provide, most would probably start with “hair styling and coloring” or something along those lines. And you wouldn’t [...]

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dogwcake

How many times have you thought “somebody should make…” or “why doesn’t anybody sell…”? Palo Alto Software customer Kelly Chaney had a moment like that, but instead of just wondering why nobody was making cake mix for dogs, she decided to solve the problem by becoming the somebody who does. And so Puppy Cake, innovative [...]

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Exam

With colleges receiving record numbers of applications each year, any edge students can get helps increase the chances of getting in to their chosen schools. And that’s where The Edge in College Prep comes in. Started in late 2005 by Palo Alto Software customer Jessica Brondo, The Edge in College Prep provides in-person and online admissions counseling and tutoring [...]

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Caroline-Cummings

A few years ago, LivePlan customer Caroline Cummings considered herself an “entrepreneur in recovery.” After her first tech startup dissolved in 2009 (costing her a significant amount of money), she knew she needed some time to figure out what her next venture would be. “I’m an entrepreneur at heart, so I knew I’d eventually jump [...]

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BagSpilling

Two years ago we introduced our readers to Business Plan Pro user Sarah Lanphier of Nuts About Granola. She was a young entrepreneur who turned a one-time fundraiser into a successful business. Today, the small business Sarah started with her mother, Gayle, is growing beyond what anyone, except maybe Sarah, might have imagined. In the [...]

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darshaun

Darshaun McAway is a young man with big ideas. He was in his early 20s when he made a choice that takes many people decades more to make, and he’s been building a successful business based on that choice for the last six years. “I was extremely tired of working for other people, and having [...]

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criticalbiz_bpp3

Like a lot of entrepreneurs, Michael Turner started his own company after growing disillusioned with working for somebody else. As he remembers: “There were meetings galore, lots of PowerPoint slide shows, big buzzwords that meant nothing—all resulting in very little productivity, but costing millions of dollars.” After 10 years, Turner decided to head out on [...]

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Get a Gofer -littleangels

Camille Rose believes in the power of positive thinking. After starting and running several successful businesses, she says she’s learned how to reframe the thinking that dooms many would-be entrepreneurs. “When you start down the path of striking out on your own, [you need to] realize that you’re your own worst enemy. Your fear will [...]

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Charlotte Rinderknecht

What is a full service animation studio doing in a quiet Northern Virginia neighborhood? Producing animation for “the big screen, the small screen, and all the screens in between,” says its founder, Charlotte Rinderknecht. Studio Kinate is a “concept to completion” studio whose artists use traditional hand-drawn animation to create its projects. But it’s not [...]

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