I learned a really great lesson years ago about the power of controlling the flow of information. Let me set the scene for you. I was watching a company pitch to the VC fund I was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at. The CEO went out of his way to talk about the competition, the…
I was in the lobby of “Donald Ventures” office on Sand Hill Road after I completed my 1:1 with “Raul,” the partner leading DV’s investment in our company. One of the associates at the fund walked by me, and said hello. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. I…
A surefire way to scare your investors and board members to death is to spend the cash you have too quickly on crazy things. In fact, understanding your finances and incorrectly communicating your finances is a great way to get fired. Yet, too many startup CEOs don’t know their numbers and then make matters worse…
I was recently asked the question, “What should I do to keep an employee that has quit from leaving.” I was happy to answer the question because I have a perfect batting average as CEO of keeping employees from quitting. That’s right. 0.00%. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click…
You and your co-founder start your company, and you divide up the equity between you. It sounds simple enough, right. Then you raise money and your new investors demand you have a vesting schedule for your equity. So the question is are your investors right? Do you really need a vesting schedule for your equity?…
When I was feeling really desperate (a common occurrence when I was raising our initial funding), I would build up a list of potential investors I had no way of getting a warm introduction to. You can learn how to develop a cold email that works too. Just follow these three steps: Step 1:…
Most CEOs wait too long before they raise their seed funding or venture funding, which almost always results in their startups failing. I don’t want that to happen to you. In today’s video, I’m going to explain to you: Should you raise funding? What you’ll need to raise funding? Who you should raise money from?…
With almost comic regularity startup CEOs make the wrong strategic mistake again and again. That mistake is they choose the wrong strategy to enter the market, and, most of the time, their startup fails and they never recover. That’s where the Blue Ocean strategy comes in. In today’s video, I’ll explain the tragic mistake too…
There’s an old truism about that you, the CEO, should be spending at least fifty percent of your time recruiting. The reason recruiting is so important is your startup can’t grow unless you have great talent around you. That’s why I interviewed everyone we hired when we were just starting out. It didn’t matter whether…
The way you increase the chances of your early stage startup succeeding isn’t what you think it is. For example, it isn’t the quality of your idea. You may have a great idea for your startup. However, ideas aren’t worth anything if you can’t execute on them. In today’s video, I’m going to explain what…