What Are The 11 Steps You Can Take When A Cofounder Quits?
I started my company with two co-founders: “Jim” and “John”. I was the CEO, Jim was the marketing guy, and John was the engineering guy. My two co-founders and I had worked together previously. We understood the plan and direction we were going in. We started pitching VCs after working on the plan for about…
How Visible To Your Team Should You Be?
One of the smartest things I ever did as CEO was practice, “Management by walking around.” The idea is really simple. You, the CEO, walk around your office, facility, or manufacturing site and talk to anyone you come in contact with. I didn’t invent Management by walking around. Far from it. The technique was popularized…
What You Shouldn’t Say During A Pitch Meeting?
“You need to sign an NDA,” my co-founder “John”, said to David, the investor we were presenting to. It was our second meeting with David, and John’s comment took me totally by surprise, but David’s response didn’t take me by surprise. David looked at our VP Engineering and said, “We can stop right there. I’m…
What Are The 17 Biggest Surprises When You Founded Your Company?
I remember talking with Jeroen, my fellow co-founder and VP of Engineering. Jeroen smiled at me and said, “I’m in line at the market and I just want everyone to start moving faster! “That used to never happen to me.” Then we both laughed. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can…
9 Hard Lessons You Need To Learn For Startup Success
“It’s the suckiest thing about being a startup CEO,” I said to “Bill”. I could see the sadness written all over his face. “I can totally relate because I went through the same thing,” I said. “The people you start (your company) with are not necessarily the people you finish with. “I know,” I said.…
How Much Responsibility Should You Take?
“You screwed up,” “Bob”, the CEO, said to his executive team during our weekly operations meeting. “How am I going to explain this to ‘the street’?” Bob was upset because the company had missed its promised numbers to Wall Street, again. And now Bob would have to explain the miss to market analysts. Or would…
What Do You Do When A VP Quits During Fundraising?
“You can’t tell the new investors that ‘Tommy’ quit!” “Raul”, one of my investors, said to me when I told him our new VP Sales, had resigned that morning. “Your job now is to get him (Tommy) to change his mind,” Raul said. I called Gill, our other investor, to let him know about Tommy.…
When Should You Start Planning Your Exit Strategy?
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s when I meet an early stage startup CEO who’s focused on selling their company. Inevitably, I’ll ask the CEO, “Why are you focused on a sale now?” Inevitably, the answer, more times than not, comes back as, “I’m thinking we’ll be selling the company in the next couple…
The Behavior Investors Can’t Stand In A CEO
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” “Serge”, the CEO of a struggling startup, said to me. “I think I’m going to give up.” “What?” I responded. Serge’s capitulation said didn’t register on me. It was foreign to my way of thinking. Worse yet, Serge’s company wasn’t doomed to fail. There was a…
What Do You Do When Your New Hire Gets A Counter Offer?
“How do you think Maxim (Integrated Products) will react when you resign?” I asked Jeroen. We had just signed a $12 million term sheet for our initial funding, and Jeroen and I had agreed that now was the time for him to resign and become our full time Vice President of Engineering. “I don’t know,”…