How Much Over Market Should You Pay Employees?
The days of expecting employees to work only for equity are long, long gone. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Early stage employees have a gotten a lot smarter and a lot savvier than twenty years ago. Your employees have options including working for large established companies. That means your…
How To Successfully Pitch Your Business In One Slide
Imagine this scenario. You’re in a meeting with a major potential customer. And this one customer can make or break your business. You have to win this deal or your business is going to fail. Or imagine this scenario. You’re raising money. Do you want to nail your investor pitch? Then download the free, Startup…
How To Handle Co-Founder Issues During Fundraising
Every time I raised money, there was drama with one of my co-founders. It’s a nightmare because you’re worried the drama could cost you your funding. Since at least 50% of all co-founder relationships end up in failure, you have a pretty good chance of having co-founder issues happen when you’re raising money..That’s what today’s…
What’s The Worst Leadership Advice You’ll Ever Get?
“I don’t care who it is, but you need to fire one of the people reporting to you.” Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. This was the advice I received from a CEO, “Ed”, I knew when I became General Manager of a division of a company. I…
How Should You Divide Equity As Your Company Grows?
-“Here’s what I think is fair for your role,” I said to “Ken,” one of my co-founders. Ken smiled, and said, “I was thinking the same number.” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] We shook hands, and that was that. I had agreed to the equity for my…
How Can Transparency Help Get You Funding?
How transparency can help get your startup funding Every startup has problems. And somehow or other, these problems, such as you missing your numbers, or a co-founder, always happen at the worst possible time which is when you’re raising money. Now, what do you do? Do you hide the problem from your potential investors or…
How Much Equity Do Your Employees Deserve?
I was advising the two founders of a technology company. They had no funding, and they were looking to hire a VP of Engineering. They found a good candidate for the position, and they only wanted to give him 1% equity vesting over four years. I told them the candidate wasn’t going to take the…
How Should You Respond To An Investor’s Rejection Email?
I’ve got a lot of experience with investor rejection emails since we had 63 investors pass on investing when we raised our Series A funding and a whole bunch more when we raised our Series B funding. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. Many investors just never responded…
Why You Want Investors to Say No
When you’re raising money, having investors tell you no, we will not invest in your startup is a good thing. Yes, you heard me right, hearing an investor say no is a good thing. In today’s video I’ll explain: What you don’t want to hear an investor say to you? How do you know if…
How Do You Know What Startup Advice Is Good?
When you’re raising money, you’re going to get lots of advice on your pitch and pitch deck. Some of the advice will sound really, really good. However, the problem is it’s really tough to tell what advice will help and what advice will hurt you. In today’s video, I’ll explain how you can tell the…