Why Your Sales VP Is Going To Fail
About five years ago, I was interviewing a potential VP Sales that had been highly recommended to me. “Tom” had great success as VP Sales of a company that two of my board members were involved in. They thought Tom could walk on water. But I found Tom lacking when I interviewed him. He didn’t…
How You Know Your Product Is Going To Fail
How You Know Your Product Is Going To Fail By Brett Fox I’ve announced over one thousand new products in my career. Many have been big sellers, and some have been flops. I’ll give you a simple way to tell whether you have a hit or flop in this short video. Do You Want…
How Can You Save Your Struggling Startup?
I spend a large percentage of my time working with struggling startups these days. Interestingly enough, the idea the company was started with is usually not the problem. Most of the time, the problems are fixable if the CEO takes action quickly. Sadly, many times the CEO waits too long and the company gets caught…
How Can You Be A Successful CEO And An Introvert?
How Can You Be A Successful CEO And An Introvert? By Brett Fox It is not a death sentence for you if you are an introverted CEO. In fact, being an introvert can be advantage for you if you take the proper steps. I’l explain how you can be a successful CEO and an introvert…
Why You Shouldn’t Hire A Designer To Do Your Pitch Deck
There’s a company called Slidebean that sells pitch deck formats. As part of their sales material, Slidebean has redone the original pitch decks of companies like Uber and Airbnb in their “improved” format. The only problem I have is that I actually liked the original format that the companies had better. For example, let’s take…
How Do You Know It’s The Right Time To Start Your Company?
“Take your stuff,” Carlos the HR VP said to me after he asked me to leave the boardroom where the company’s operations meeting was taking place. I picked up my stuff, and I started walking out of the conference room. There were twenty sets of eyes trained on me including the CEO’s eyes. I instantly…
Why You Can’t Rely On Your Cofounder To Raise Money
Last year I was helping a VC friend of mine judge pitches for a pitch deck competition. There was a screening process before a prospective company was allowed to pitch. There was this one company that everyone seemed to like. During one of the prep sessions, the company’s CTO pitched to us. I asked a…
What’s The One Thing Your Employees Will Know Before You Do?
“What took you so long?” That was one of the questions I got after I let one of my cofounders go. I’d been thinking about letting “Randy” go for a couple of months before I finally pulled the trigger. Then, of course, after I fired Randy, a lot of people in the company said, “We’d…
What Is The Coolest Thing About Starting Your Company?
What Is The Coolest Thing About Starting Your Company? By Brett Fox There are many cool things about starting a company. But there’s one thing that tops them all by a huge amount. What is this one thing and why is this one thing so much better than anything else? Watch this short video to…
How Do You Choose Your Board Members?
“Let’s look at the term sheet,” Marcia, our lawyer, said to me. “It looks pretty good,” she said. “There’s nothing out of the ordinary. The terms are normal. In fact, they are quite generous. “The board composition looks normal too. The investors are proposing a five man board. Each investor will get a seat, you…