The Real Reason Your Team Need You To Be Transparent
“You’re a mushroom manager,” Peter, one of my peers, said to me years ago. “What’s a mushroom manager?” “You feed people shit and you expect something to grow,” Peter said. Then he stormed out of my office. I had to hold in my laughter. But Peter was right. Back in my younger days I was…
Why You Shouldn’t Tell Investors You’re The Next Uber
I know. It’s oh so tempting to tell potential investors that your company is the next Uber because, after all, who wouldn’t want to be an investor in Uber. It feels good rolling of your tongue, doesn’t it? The only problem is telling an investor your company is the next Uber or the next Facebook…
How Do You Prepare For VC Technical Diligence?
“Let’s look this guy up,” I said to Jeroen, my cofounder and VP Engineering, about the expert the VC firm was using to do technical diligence on us. I then did a search on LinkedIn and found “Peter’s” resume. “Well, there’s good news and bad news,” I said to Jeroen. “What’s the good news?” Jeroen…
What Are The Four Reasons You Shouldn’t Hire Someone?
You likely have some sort of criteria for the people you hire. So you should have a criteria for not hiring people too. The surprising thing I’ve learned is that a lot of CEOs don’t have a criteria for not hiring people. You don’t want to be one of those people. In this short video,…
When’s The Best Time For You To Raise Money?
Nothing is more painful for me to watch then a CEO that has waited too long to raise funded. It’s a self inflicted wound that you can easily avoid. Yet I see this happen over and over again. I’ve raised over $100M, so I do have a little bit of experience in this area. I’ll…
How Do You Recruit Senior People To Your Tiny Startup?
Recruiting top talent to your startup is tough, especially if you’re trying to recruit people from large companies like Facebook. You’re not going to be able to overpay to get them. After all, they’re already likely making a lot of money. So what can you do to give yourself a fighting chance? I’ll go over…
Why Isn’t Your Great Product Selling?
You just released what you thought was a killer product to market. Then what happens after you launch the product is nothing. Your killer product isn’t selling, and you can’t figure out why that is. I’ve been where you’ve been, and help you analyze what’s likely wrong and what you should do about it in…
What Do You Do When Your Product Launch Isn’t Going Well?
I’ve been involved in hundreds of product launches in my career. Unfortunately, not everything is going to go right when you launch your product or service. The question is should you sit back and do nothing or should you take action? I’ll walk you through the steps we took on recent product launch that I…
Why Your Technical Cofounder Can’t Be Fired
“Why is Bob with the company?” I asked myself. “He just seems to sit in the corner doing nothing.” Bob was the founder of the startup I had just joined as VP Marketing. Bob was no longer the CEO, but, for some strange reason, he was still with the company, doing what looked to be…
What’s The Right Way You Should Look For Office Space?
“This place sucks,” I said to Randy, my cofounder. “All the cubicles are scrunched up against each other. The lighting is dismal. I would just be miserable here.” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Randy nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. Then he laughed…