What Do You Do When Your Cofounder Is Lying?
The one thing I’ve seen too much of coaching CEOs is problems with cofounders. The most likely problem you are going to face is what do you do when your cofounder is lying to you? I’ll explain the only thing you can do when your cofounder lies to you. More importantly, I walk you through…
How You Can Win A Deal In Seven Seconds Or Less
“You didn’t have me at hello,” the investor said to us. “But I like what you’re doing. Let me think about this and get back to you.” We had just finished presenting to a well known VC in our space. The VC was telegraphing that he was going to pass on investing in our company.…
How You Should Tell Potential Investors About Your Problems?
Your natural tendency when you’re raising money is hoping your potential investors will not find the weak points and problems in your company. The reality is that experienced investors are likely going to find your weaknesses. So what should you do? Should you hope that investors don’t find you weaknesses, or should you wait for…
How Do You Know You’ve Got A Great Startup Idea?
“You want to do what?” The investor said to me. “It seems like financial engineering. Why don’t you just skip that phase and get right to the unique products?” The investor didn’t get it. We had a two part strategy that had proven to be successful previously. I didn’t need to wait for the rejection…
Why Your Need To Keep Your Plans Secret Isn’t Important
“Why did you connect to Franz on LinkedIn?” I emailed my cofounder, “Ken”. Franz was a Senior VP at one of the largest distributors in North America for Semiconductors. We had just signed an agreement with Franz’s company, and I didn’t want it to leak to our largest competitor, Maxim. Ken and I had tons…
What’s The Best Way To Motivate Your Sales Organization?
Getting your sales organization motivated to sell can be one of the most challenging problems you will face building your company. It’s a true chicken and egg problem. To scale your company’s sales, you need a great sales organization. However, to build a great sales organization, you need to show you have a product or…
Why You Shouldn’t Take A Payout From Your Series A Funding?
Imagine this scene. It’s your first board meeting after closing your $10M Series A round. You update the board comprised of you, your cofounder, your attorney, and your two investors on your progress. Then you excuse your cofounder for the closed session of the board meeting where you review your financials. You go through your…
What Is The Most Difficult Part About Building Your Startup?
“The hardest part of building our company will be raising the initial funding,” I naively said to my fellow cofounders. Every one of them nodded their heads in agreement. I continued on with my pep talk. “We’ll be home free once the funding closes. We’ve built businesses like this before. We know what we’re doing,…
What Do You Need To Do Before Meeting With Investors?
You’re about to start raising money for the first time, but you’re unsure about exactly what you need to do in advance. And with the odds being about 300:1 against you receiving money from any given investor, you need to get it right the first time. I’ll clear up the confusion for you, and I’ll…
How Your Startup Can Survive A Price War
Years ago, I ran a business where we had developed a groundbreaking product called the MAX232. The product was so successful that fourteen competitors eventually built what they believed were exact replicas of our MAX232. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Many of our competitors, including Texas Instruments…