The Five Traits You Want In Angel Investors
The one thing that you can almost never recover from is choosing the wrong investor or investors to work with. I’ve seen the wrong investors kill or almost kill too many startups to count. I want you to know what are the five traits of good angel investors. In today’s video, I’m going to explain…
Why You Should Tell Investors About All Your Competitors
I learned a really great lesson years ago about the power of controlling the flow of information. Let me set the scene for you. I was watching a company pitch to the VC fund I was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at. The CEO went out of his way to talk about the competition, the…
Why You Shouldn’t Have Too Many C-Level Executives
I was in the lobby of “Donald Ventures” office on Sand Hill Road after I completed my 1:1 with “Raul,” the partner leading DV’s investment in our company. One of the associates at the fund walked by me, and said hello. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. I…
What’s The Right Way To Manage Your Startup’s Spending?
A surefire way to scare your investors and board members to death is to spend the cash you have too quickly on crazy things. In fact, understanding your finances and incorrectly communicating your finances is a great way to get fired. Yet, too many startup CEOs don’t know their numbers and then make matters worse…
How Should You Keep Employees From Quitting
I was recently asked the question, “What should I do to keep an employee that has quit from leaving.” I was happy to answer the question because I have a perfect batting average as CEO of keeping employees from quitting. That’s right. 0.00%. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click…
What Should Your Startup Vesting Be?
You and your co-founder start your company, and you divide up the equity between you. It sounds simple enough, right. Then you raise money and your new investors demand you have a vesting schedule for your equity. So the question is are your investors right? Do you really need a vesting schedule for your equity?…
Can You Get Investors To Respond To Cold Emails?
When I was feeling really desperate (a common occurrence when I was raising our initial funding), I would build up a list of potential investors I had no way of getting a warm introduction to. You can learn how to develop a cold email that works too. Just follow these three steps: Step 1:…
When Should Your Startup Raise Funding?
Most CEOs wait too long before they raise their seed funding or venture funding, which almost always results in their startups failing. I don’t want that to happen to you. In today’s video, I’m going to explain to you: Should you raise funding? What you’ll need to raise funding? Who you should raise money from?…
How The Blue Ocean Strategy Can Save Your Startup
With almost comic regularity startup CEOs make the wrong strategic mistake again and again. That mistake is they choose the wrong strategy to enter the market, and, most of the time, their startup fails and they never recover. That’s where the Blue Ocean strategy comes in. In today’s video, I’ll explain the tragic mistake too…
Why You Should Interview Your First 50 Employees
There’s an old truism about that you, the CEO, should be spending at least fifty percent of your time recruiting. The reason recruiting is so important is your startup can’t grow unless you have great talent around you. That’s why I interviewed everyone we hired when we were just starting out. It didn’t matter whether…