When all else fails, ask yourself how you can help people more.

you can join the $100 Startup community in our campaign for clean water in Ethiopia by visiting charitywater.org/​aonc. You can also sign up with groups, such as Kiva.org and AcumenFund.org, that provide loans (usually very small ones) to help people start microbusinesses in their own communities.

And every time someone gave him a reason he couldn’t succeed in what he had set out to do, he made another note in his “non-planning” folder: merely one more obstacle to overcome.

As things get busy, evaluate your options according to the “hell yeah” test. When you’re presented with an opportunity, don’t just think about its merits or how busy you are. Instead, think about how it makes you feel. If you feel only so-so about it, turn it down and move on. But if the opportunity would be exciting and meaningful—so much so that

Fresh out of design school and disillusioned with their entry-level jobs, Jen Adrion and Omar Noory began selling custom-made maps out of an apartment in Columbus, Ohio.

The easiest way to understand convergence is to think of it as the overlapping space between what you care about and what other people are willing to spend money on.

Here’s the problem: Many businesses are modeled on the idea that customers should come back to the kitchen and make their own dinner.

You don’t want to go too crazy, but you can experiment with this model to add yet another tier in the form of a “really premium version” at the top or a “freemium” version at the bottom that lets customers try part of the service without paying anything.

“Seven Steps to Instant Market Testing.”