How Should You Manage Employees In Your Startup?
How Should You Manage Employees In Your Startup? By Brett Fox There are two extremes when it comes managing people. There’s the old-school command and control model where you don’t give your employees any flexibility. On the other side there’s the Zappos style of management (or even coaching) where you push the decision making down…
How Much Should You Delegate To Your Team As CEO?
I love the idea of obsoleting myself. In fact, the idea of obsoleting myself has been my goal ever since I started managing people years ago. Because only when you obsolete yourself can you effectively delegate. Huh? Now why would you want to make yourself not needed anymore? And what does this have to do…
What Should I Do When An Employee Challenges My Strategy?
One of the best people I ever worked with was Greg. Greg is a brilliant engineer, and Greg is probably one of the five best analog IC design engineers on the planet. Greg, like many brilliant engineers, isn’t shy about sharing his opinions. And Greg certainly wasn’t shy about telling me when he disagreed with…
What Should You Do If Your Competitor Gets To Market Ahead Of You?
What Should You Do If Your Competitor Gets To Market Ahead Of You? By Brett Fox One of the great things about spending the bulk of my career in the analog IC business is you are always introducing products. I’ve launched hundreds of products over the years, and we were introducing over 30 new products…
How Do You Develop Leadership Skills?
A couple lifetimes ago, I was working for a company where the CEO liked to have a weekly operations meeting. A weekly operations meeting with the CEO and operations leader is pretty normal in a technology company. This CEO’s operations meeting were a little different than most. Rather than taking a detailed, hard-nosed, look into…
Should You Build Your Core Team Or Your MVP First?
Should Your Build Your Core Team Or Your MVP First? By Brett Fox Why do you have to choose between building your core team first or building your first product? You’re likely going to need a team of some sort to build your first product, or where is the barrier to entry? Now, I’m not…
What Are The Three Reasons Your Startup Will Succeed?
What Are The Three Reasons Your Startup Will Succeed? By Brett Fox Marc Andreessen wrote an excellent blog post about why startups succeed. His view is, when you look at the three key components to success (team, product, and market), that the market is the most important reason that a startup succeed. Andreessen quotes what…
What Are Some Signs You Should Give Up On Your Startup?
What Are Some Signs You Should Give Up On Your Startup? By Brett Fox I drove home from Sand Hill Road. We had just been turned down. Again. This was the 63rd VC that decided not to invest in our company. And this rejection was particularly vicious. We had gone through weeks of diligence, and…
What’s The Hardest Thing About Starting A Business After You’re 40?
What’s The Hardest Thing About Starting A Business After You’re 40? By Brett Fox I was in my 40’s when I started my company, so I am somewhat of an expert on this topic. I can tell you what weren’t the hardest things for me: A. It wasn’t experience. When you’re in your 40’s you…
What Shouldn’t Be In Your Investor Pitch?
You’ve worked really hard creating a really solid investor pitch about your company. You’ve rehearsed your investor pitch, and you feel ready to go. Then you start pitching investors, but something isn’t right. The investor pitch is still not working. Investors are not biting. And the problem is you don’t get a second chance when…