Startups are a pressure cooker filled with compressed timelines, unclear roadmaps, and relentless expectations. Founders are asked to be product experts, team builders, fundraisers, negotiators, and culture carriers, often all at once. That mix of responsibilities doesn’t just strain schedules; it erodes attention, clarity, and emotional bandwidth. The result is predictable: costly mistakes, frayed teams, […]

Startups live or die by their ability to see opportunities others miss. Often, the sharpest insights don’t come from data or pitch decks, but from perspective.Immigrant founders, by the nature of their journeys, carry multiple perspectives into every decision they make. They’ve lived within different systems, navigated diverse bureaucracies, mastered new languages, and learned to […]

Negotiation is inseparable from founding a startup. Many founders think negotiation means dramatic boardroom showdowns or raising term sheets, but in reality, negotiation is woven into every interaction, with co-founders, key hires, vendors, customers, and, of course, investors. For immigrant, underrepresented, or first-generation founders (as in your Janus Innovation Hub community), negotiation can feel especially […]

Networks aren’t a luxury, they’re survival gear. As an immigrant entrepreneur, you might assume your biggest challenges will be product–market fit, fundraising, or hiring. And yes, those matter. But beneath all of those hurdles lies a quieter, more personal one: you’re building a company in a place where your contacts, credibility, and cultural context are […]

It’s a sobering statistic, but a critical one: most startups don’t fail because they have a bad product. In fact, many have a brilliant, world-changing idea. They fail because their business model is fundamentally incapable of growing beyond its initial success. You might have early traction, a handful of passionate customers, and even revenue coming […]