Author: Kevin Tao
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Rapid Prototyping in Manufacturing: A Founder’s Guide
You've got a sketch, a CAD file, or a rough idea that keeps nagging at you. You can see the product in your head. You can almost feel it in your hand. But you still don't know if the grip is awkward, if the lid seals, or if the thing will feel cheap when a…
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A Blog About Ecommerce: The Founder’s No-BS Guide
Most advice about a blog for your store is bad. It tells you to publish often, chase keywords, and “build brand authority.” That's how founders end up with a graveyard of polite articles nobody reads and nobody buys from. A blog about ecommerce shouldn't exist to fill a content calendar. It should pull weight like…
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City of Chicago Small Business Expo: Your 2026 Playbook
You're probably staring at the event page for the City of Chicago Small Business Expo and thinking the same thing most founders think. “Is this actually useful, or am I about to spend half a day collecting brochures I'll never read?” Fair question. Most expo advice is garbage because it treats every event like a…
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Tech Startups in Chicago: A Founder’s Inside Guide
The most common advice about tech startups in Chicago is lazy. It goes like this: build here if you want lower costs, then move to a coast when things get serious. I think that advice is backwards. If you're building a company that needs hype, constant social proof, and a room full of tourists calling…
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Your Service Business Manager Hiring Guide
You probably don't need “more help.” You need one person to stop your business from running through your inbox, your phone, and your memory. If you run a service business, you've likely become the default answer for everything. A client has a complaint, you jump in. A job needs scheduling, you do it. An invoice…
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Social Clubs Near Me for Adults: Build Your Circle 2026
You probably know this feeling. In school, friendship happened by accident. You sat near the same people, saw them every week, and had built-in reasons to talk. After college, that system disappears. Work takes over, your friends scatter, and making new ones starts to feel like applying for a job you never wanted. Then you…
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Your in Person Workshop Playbook for Founders
Most advice about an in person workshop is wrong. People tell you to build slides, pick a theme, and stuff the day with content. That's how you get polite nods, fake energy, and a room full of founders who leave with a tote bag and no one they'd trust with the truth. I run these…
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Early Stage Companies: Master Metrics & Traction in 2026
Most advice about early stage companies is built for a tiny slice of founders. It assumes you're raising VC, building software, and chasing the same milestones as everyone on startup Twitter. That's bad advice for many founders. If you're building a product brand, an ecommerce business, or a practical service company in Chicago or the…
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Acqui Hire Meaning: A Founder’s Guide to a Soft Landing
An acqui-hire is when a company buys another company mainly to recruit its employees, not to keep the business or use its products. In many deals, pricing gets discussed on a per-person basis, and practitioner guidance puts that range from a few hundred thousand dollars to about $2 million per retained person. If you're reading…
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Your First 3D Printing Hub Guide for Prototypes
You probably have a CAD file open right now and no clue what to do next. Maybe it's a product enclosure, a custom insert, a jewelry concept, a replacement part, or the first sketch of a hardware brand you want to build. On your screen, it looks done. In real life, it doesn't exist yet.…
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