Sales tax management made easy with Avalara

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in business advice, Finance, Getting Started

Collecting and reporting of sales tax is a complicated task for any company, but a fast growing startup based on Bainbridge Island, Washington is changing all that. Avalara provides realtime automation of sales tax processing for online as well as brick and mortar retailers. The company automates the process of collecting sales tax, preparing returns for state and local jurisdictions, and also manages resale permits for your customers who purchase goods for resale.

Marshal Kushniruk, Avalara’s Executive Vice President of Business Development, is the company’s first hire and is a serial entrepreneur with an amazing track record of success. In his interview on The Free COO podcast on July 19, 2012, Marshal talks about his distinguished career and tells us how Avalara is helping companies eliminate a tedious but necessary task by offering a cloud based automated sales tax system.

Prior to Avalara, Marshal founded The Byte Stuff and Abacus Accounting Software, both highly successful startups. This was a fantastic interview, full of incredible insights and advice for any entrepreneur.

For more information on Avalara go to www.avalara.com

Escrow Services – Insurance for Intellectual Property Transactions

Posted on Leave a commentPosted in COO

Software, Web Services, Data Services and Fabless Semiconductor ventures are all examples of attractive opportunities for entrepreneurs. They all have low capital requirements for launching because the primary asset is IP or Intellectual Property. True, there is often someone’s personal savings, angel funds or perhaps even VC money needed to launch a company, but for startup companies producing IP it’s largely the human capital of dedicated and smart entrepreneurs that is the largest input factor.

Once your product is ready for market, the challenge of selling even the best IP can often be more difficult than creating it in the first place, particularly if your target customer is a medium to large enterprise. The sales cycle for enterprise B2B software or to get a fabless semiconductor design embedded in a larger SOC or System On a Chip, can be at least six months and often more than one year. Even after your product passes all the technical due diligence, it turns out that one of the main reasons a sale falls through is that it’s difficult for a startup company to convince the decision maker of a large enterprise that your company is viable enough to warrant a strategic relationship. Read more…