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 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…
How You Can Be A Great CEO Without Being A Genius
Do you really have to be a super genius to be a successful startup CEO? The answer is obviously no. Not only can being a genius work against you as a startup CEO, but most of the qualities required to be a successful startup CEO have nothing to do with being a genius. I’ll give…
How Do You Define Product Market Fit?
There’s a great quote that US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about obscenity. He said, “I know it when I see it.” The same can said about Product Market Fit from my experience. You know it when you see it. When we started selling, I had visions of our products instantly flying off the…
How Do You Divide Equity When You & Your Cofounders Are Investing?
It’s great that you and your cofounder are both investing more money in your company. That’s a sign of true commitment. Let me ask you a question? Why is your money worth more than your cofounder’s money? The answer is obvious. Your money and your cofounder’s money is worth the same amount because…
How Do You Determine What Goals Are Important To Your Business?
Do you want goals that are easy to hit? Or do you want goals that you and your team are going to have to really stretch to hit? The reality is you need both types of goals for you company to succeed. I’l explain how you can, not only make these different types of goals…
What Are The Two Killer Fundraising Mistakes You Have To Avoid?
I’ve worked with a lot of startup CEO’s, and I see the same two killer fundraising mistakes made over and over again. One of them will kill you before you get started, and the mistake will kill you when you’re raising money. What are these killer mistakes, and, more importantly, how can you avoid them?…
Why You Need To Know What Your TAM & SAM Are
“Tell me about the whole market first,” Jack Gifford, Maxim’s CEO, said to me. We were meeting at the Peppermill in Cupertino like we always did for our Tuesday morning breakfast meetings. For this meeting it was me, Ziya who was my boss, Dave Fullagar who was the VP Engineering, and I believe Len Sherman…