How to Start a Company with Only $1,000

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When you think about starting a company, the first two questions that come to mind are: “How much is this going to cost, and how am I going to get that kind of capital?”

The dynamics of funding a business have dramatically changed over time. Where once you were resigned to bank loans and savings, there are now many options to choose from to help get your business off the ground.

However, let’s take a step back. You should ask: “What is the minimum amount of capital I need to get this off the ground?” For those first few steps, $1,000 can get you moving quickly and far along. It is all about what I call “resource capital,” a mixture of your time, money and effort.

Related: How to Start a Business Online

The price does not always equal the value

As a disclaimer: I am guilty of falling victim to thinking that I had to have the best of the best when starting our company. We always went for the most expensive external partners for operational needs. A hefty price tag could at least give us confidence that we’d be getting exactly what we paid for, right? We found that just because a company spends a lot of time and money on its reputation, it does not mean that it will deliver. We had to learn that going the less expensive route was not always bad.

Related: 10 Ways to Fund

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3 Legal Mistakes Avoid When Starting an Online Business

If you’re thinking about starting a business, attorney Berkley Sweetapple wants to help you avoid making expensive legal mistakes. She sat down with Jessica Abo to discuss how she helps clients through her practice and legal template shop.

Jessica Abo: Berkley, you are the founder of a legal template shop and of Berkley Sweetapple Law. Tell us a little bit about your business and your practice.

Berkley Sweetapple:

I have a legal template shop where I offer affordable, downloadable, fill-in-the-blank legal documents, like contracts and website policies, to creative entrepreneurs. I also have a law firm where I work one on one with online business owners. I mostly handle trademarks, contracts, copyright and website policies.

All very important things. Did you always want to be a lawyer?

When I was five, my dad, who was an attorney, told me that the only way I would be able to get the pot-belly pig that I wanted as a pet was to become a lawyer and fight the city that I lived in to change the local zoning ordinances.

Did you get the pig?

I did not get the pig, but I knew that I wanted to be a lawyer just like him so that one day I could grow up and fight for things like having pet pigs. I went to law school after college but never felt like the traditional law firm path was right for me. After I graduated from law school, I created a lifestyle blog as a

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Generative AI Startups Attract Business Customers, Investor Funding

Startups developing business applications from artificial-intelligence software that generates original text and images are capturing the attention of corporate technology leaders—along with big investors.

Known as generative AI, the applications use data-intensive AI capabilities like deep learning and neural networks to recognize underlying patterns in different types of books, articles, photos, drawings and paintings gathered from a massive collection of digital sources. Based on keyword prompts, generative AI platforms can then mimic these sources to produce fanciful stories and pictures of their own.

At first glance, generative AI might seem like more of a curiosity than an enterprise-technology tool, said Peter van der Putten, director of the AI ​​Lab at software firm Pegasystems Inc.

“Creating cute pictures of a corgi in a house made of sushi isn’t exactly a profitable business case, at least not for large enterprises,” Mr. van der Putten said. And yet, he said, “generative AI startups are popping up left and right, in areas such as marketing, support, service and other content creation.”

Jasper, an Austin, Texas-based startup launched last year, has developed a generative AI platform designed to auto-generate promotional blog posts and other marketing materials.

Amid a sharp decline in venture-capital investing deals, Jasper last week announced a $125 million Series A fundraising round, which sets its private-market valuation above $1 billion, the company said. Its investors include Insight Partners, Coatue and

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