How Do You Get Your Customers To Buy Again and Again?
“Brett, Tony Hsieh died,” Blossom said to me. “What?” I was just waking up, and this news wasn’t registering with me. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “Tony Hsieh died. I know you really liked him,” my wife said to me. “How?” “The house he was staying at…
How Do You Fix Your Bad Workplace Culture?
You know the saying, “It starts at the top.” Well, guess who’s at the top? You, the CEO, are at the top when it comes to your organization and its culture. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. Yes, you certainly have hired some people that are gossiping. And,…
How Do You Evaluate A Potential Technical Co-Founder?
I considered a lot VP Engineering/CTO candidates before Jeroen agreed to join me as co-founder. The candidates were the good, the bad, and the ugly. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] There were a lot of near misses where the fit just wasn’t there or something wasn’t quite…
How Do You Develop Leadership Skills?
A couple lifetimes ago, I was working for a company where the CEO, “Bob”, liked to have a weekly operations meeting. A weekly operations meeting with the CEO and operations leader is pretty normal in a technology company. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. This CEO’s operations meeting…
How Do You Deal With A Broken Co-Founder?
“Tell me about your background,” I said to “Jim.” “John,” my co-founder who recommended Jim to me as our VP Engineering, and I were having lunch with Jim at Bucks. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Bucks, for those of you not living in the Silicon Valley, is…
How Do You Build Credibility When You’re Raising Money?
“What you did was incredible,” the associate at the venture capital firm, “Donald Ventures,” said to me. “I’ve never seen anyone handle ‘Raul’ like that.” We were walking out of a diligence meeting at DV’s office on Sand Hill Road. This meeting was the last meeting we would have with Raul’s fund before they gave…
How Do You Build A Differentiated Product?
Have you ever heard the story of Toughskins Jeans, made by Sears? If you go back in time to the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the jeans market was dominated by Levi’s 501 jeans. Sears wasn’t doing too well in the jeans market competing against Levi’s, so they talked to its customers and discovered that…
How Do You Build A $1B Startup?
“With this next round of funding, we’re going to valued at $1.5 billion,” “Ray,” a CEO I’m working with, said to me the other day. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “That’s awesome!” I said. “Congratulations. I remember how hard it was at the beginning. You’ve come a…
How Do You Become A Business Success?
“I want to be successful so badly I can taste it. What do I do?!” I said to the wall in my office. It was my first day after we launched our startup and I needed answers. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] “Yes, my son,” a booming…
How Do You Raise Money And Not Lose Control Of Your Business?
There is this false belief that the way to keep control of your company as an entrepreneur is by owning a majority of the stock or creating special classes of stock so you control the voting rights. The concept is pretty is simple: You control the votes, so you can’t be voted out of being…