How Do You Convince People To Work For You?
There are some things you never forget, no matter how long you live. And the meeting “Peter” and I had years ago with Jack Gifford, the founding CEO of Maxim Integrated Products, was one of them. Peter had just been named Managing Director of the Engineering organization for a business unit that built amplifiers. It…
How Ambitious Do You Need To Be To Attract Investors?
“Give us $11 million, and we’ll build you a billion dollar company,” I said to every investor we met when I was raising our initial funding. At the time we were raising our initial funding, the Venture Capital community in the Silicon Valley had been burned over and over again by semiconductor companies where they…
How Not To Create A Pitch Deck
There are some things that you just shouldn’t do when you’re developing a pitch deck for investors. And, there’s one thing in particular that you shouldn’t do that can kill your chances of raising money. Making matters worse, this one thing sounds like a great idea. In fact, you’ll be tempted to pay a…
Should You Focus On Product Quantity Or Quality?
“That sounds like death by one thousand cuts,” Rob, the VC I was pitching to said to me. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. I had just told Rob that the average customer would buy $10,000 per year of our products and that the average product would sell…
How Do You Convince Great Talent To Join Your Startup?
There are some things you never forget, no matter how long you live. And the meeting “Peter” and I had years ago with Jack Gifford, the founding CEO of Maxim Integrated Products, was one of them. Peter had just been named Managing Director of the Engineering organization for a business unit that built amplifiers. It…
How Smart Do You Need To Be A Great CEO?
There was a fellow that I worked with years ago and his name is Harry, or at least we’re going to call him Harry for the sake of the story. Harry was a genius. No question about it. He had a PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MBA. Harry had over twenty patents and counting.…
How You Can Easily Identify Your Company’s Weaknesses
Years ago, I worked for a company called Micrel. Micrel’s CEO, “Bob”, sold me on joining the company by saying, “Bring us up to your level.” Bob’s pitch sounded to me like he would welcome my help and honesty. I’ll get back to this later. I was the general manager of one of the three…
How Staying Calm Can Save Your Startup
Imagine being told that your investors want to shut down your startup tomorrow. That was the exact situation I found myself in. When my investors told me I wasn’t nervous. I didn’t go to pieces. In fact I was calm as could be. And, because I was calm, in that same meeting, I was able…
How Do You Stay Motivated When Everything Goes Wrong?
When I was fighting for my company’s life, battling with, one of our investors, the notorious “Donald Ventures”, to keep our company alive, I thought about my wife and daughter a lot. They had supported me emotionally, and I didn’t want to let them down. The stress I was under, during that one year time…
How Do You Know That Your Product Is Going To Sell?
I was talking with an entrepreneur the other day about his company. He said to me, “I’ve asked customers if the would buy my product and they said they would. That counts as validation, doesn’t it?” I was talking with an entrepreneur the other day about his company. Ezra said to me, “I’ve asked customers…