The Advisory Board with Megan Flamer & Alan Jones

How do we reduce our startup's environmental impact?

Nick Gonios is leading a venture, Circulist to build a tomorrow where products are made to be used rather than thrown away. For this episode, he joins Alan and Megan on how to reduce your business's carbon footprint. He is a seasoned technology executive and entrepreneur with 30 years’ experience across software technology ventures & early-stage tech investments. See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

How to find your 'people'

How do you find a community either online or in real life when you are starting something new or have moved to a new city? Sabrina Zeng is the Head of Ecosystems Fishburners, Australia's largest technology startup co-working space and she gives you some excellent tips on how to find like minded people. See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

How you can deal with big companies

Why are they so slow? Who is best to contact? Is it worth the time?  The pitfalls and benefits of dealing with large companies with Richard Savoie of low carbon delivery compnay, Adiona. I’m the founder of a marketing startup – we help organisations make sense of their data. We have some B2C customers, but our business model only really makes sense if we get into bigger companies and work with their data sets. We’ve had a lot of initial interest, but 6 months on, the sales cycle and procurement is KILLING us, and we’ve just had to let go of a few staff – and from a team of 9, we’re really feeling it. How the hell do startups manage to work with bigger companies? And what do I need to do to speed up this process? From: Show Me The Data See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

How to sell to customers

The big question how do you get customers to pay for your service? Phil Hayes St Clair is serial entrepreneur who focuses on the science and art of selling. Dear Advisory Board, We’re a team of 3 with an education platform and we’ve been pretty good with our growth in our first year. I now think that maybe we just got lucky with our early sales, because while we are all making twice as many calls and doing loads of demos, we are just not converting sales. Add to that we are struggling to service the customers we have because we are so desperately chasing new business.How do we build and maintain a sales pipeline, and probably most importantly, how the eff do we convert people to paying customers? We’ve abolished our free offerings but even if all our current customers re-sign with us, we’re going to be in trouble by the end of the year unless we start signing deals. Help?! FROM: Always Be Closing  See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

How to break up & am I too old to run a start-up?

How do you part ways with a business partner and how old is too old to begin a start-up? 'My co-founder and I have built several companies together, but in the past year, it has become apparent we aren’t working well together on our latest venture. We’re short with each other, we’re frustrated and not seeing eye to eye. The worst part is we’re fighting often in front of the staff, and tensions in the office are high. We’ve floated the idea of working separately, but I think it’s better for us to go our own ways, at least for this project. How do I have this conversation with my co-founder? Right now he just feels like a massive asshole, but I know deep down he’s a good guy. How can we break up well? FROM: Breaking up is hard to do See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.