Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. For decades, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) were seen as the playground of Wall Street bankers and Fortune 500 CEOs — deals worth billions, conducted in glass towers, with teams of lawyers and investment bankers running the show. If you were a founder, a small business owner or an entrepreneur bootstrapping your way to growth, M&A felt like something far out of reach.That’s no longer the case. The landscape has shifted dramatically in the past decade. Technology, private capital and changing business models have opened the doors for entrepreneurs of all sizes to…
Author: Staff Writer
If you think the franchise industry consists only of franchisors and franchisees, you’re missing an important third group of contributors — the suppliers. Also known as vendors or service providers, whatever you call them, these companies are just as vital to the industry’s success. They help franchisors and franchisees with everything from the legal services, financing, and real estate services they need to get started to the technology, marketing, and consulting services they need to operate day to day and keep growing into the future.To help franchisors and franchisees discover some of the best companies to work with, we’ve put…
Want to buy a franchise outside the United States? You’re in luck, because franchising is increasingly a global affair. Consider this statistic: Every year, we rank the top 500 franchises in our Franchise 500 list — and this year, nearly 45% of those brands’ locations were outside the U.S.!That’s not to say global expansion is easy. It comes with plenty of challenges — from adapting products, services, and marketing to various locales and cultures, to dealing with different laws and regulations, to overcoming language barriers. But more and more franchisors see value in it, which is why we recognize the…
The insanity first hit Jake Shivery this year, after he ordered a supply of camera film from China. He’s the owner of Blue Moon Camera and Machine, a shop for classic photography equipment in Portland, Oregon, so it started with a pretty standard order. “The film arrived, and we started selling it,” says Shivery. “And then, two weeks later, we got hit with a tariff bill that put us underwater.”As trade policy keeps shifting, he finds himself wondering: Do I buy this product now and load up? Or, with the tariff uncertainty, should I wait? The volatility ties up his…
QUESTION: You haven’t commented on Jimmy Kimmel, and now Disney is putting him back on the air. Anything? Bob ANSWER: I would never even shake hands with Kimmel. He is part of the bitter hatred that is dividing this country. As for Disney, if my kids were young, I would not ever take them to Disneyland with their pro-transgender approval, teaching little kids about this when less than 1% are transgender, and the suicide rate among those is very high. Disney was one about family values – no more. The Disney board has used the company for the personal interests of…
Women’s healthcare is under unprecedented attack. Women across the U.S. are being denied access to basic reproductive healthcare and funding for research into diseases that affect women is being cut. There’s an urgent need for healthcare providers and, arguably, any brand that plays a role in women’s daily lives, to step up and transform women’s health services and spaces through feminist design. Feminist design taps into women’s and under-represented group’s needs in order to create tools, services, and environments that combat systemic oppression. Propelled by the inequalities that surfaced over the COVID-19 pandemic, the current feminist movement is more intersectional and…
A 2024 study of S&P 500 firms found that companies often mandated a return to the office after stock prices fell—hoping in-person work would spark productivity and improve financial performance. But is that really working? Experts offer their insights, opinions, and advice here. Invest in Systems, Not Just Office Space Return to office mandates are making the rounds again. The reasons most often given are collaboration, innovation, and productivity. The truth is, if those outcomes are the real goal, they will not happen just by getting people back in the same building. Where people sit matters far less than how…
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, from summer 2020 to spring 2022, the number of active homes for sale in most housing markets plummeted as homebuyer demand quickly absorbed almost everything that came up for sale and home sellers had ultimate power. Fast-forward to the current housing market, and the places where active inventory has rebounded to 2019 levels (due to strained affordability suppressing buyer demand) are now the very places where homebuyers have gained the most power. At the end of June, national active housing inventory for sale…
Tony Stubblebine moved Medium from losing $2.6 million monthly to achieving its first profitable month in August 2024, after 13 years of losses. The CEO, who previously founded habit-tracking company Coach.me and helped develop early Twitter, has refocused Medium on serving writers more interested in sharing their expertise than profiting from their words. For Stubblebine it’s about the expert economy, not just the creator economy. Known for viral productivity techniques like Interstitial Journaling and his 75-minute guide to iPhone optimization, Stubblebine has grown Medium to over one million paid subscribers while maintaining its ad-free, quality-focused approach. Now the company is…
The secret of TikTok’s success since its launch has been its algorithm, which presents videos to its 170 million users in the United States. The ability to synthesize users’ interests and keep them scrolling has been the reason the app has grown stratospherically—and is part of the reason why the average user spends more time on the app than watching the average feature film. But TikTok’s fate is in jeopardy, with its owner ByteDance reportedly approaching a unique deal involving the Trump administration. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told Fox News over the weekend that “the algorithm will…