“I just bought a unit in new The Millennium building, up in the City,” my co-founder, “Ken”, said to me. “You should check it out!” “Really,” I said. “I thought you were going to buy a house on the peninsula, closer to where our future office will be?” “Nope,” Ken said, laughing. “The Millennium was…
There’s a huge difference between the question of “How long did it take you build your pitch deck?” and the question of “How long did it take you to build a successful pitch deck?” Our original pitch deck took, I don’t know, maybe 16 hours to complete. I just took a look at it for…
There is a friend of mine, Mark, who started a company about four years ago. Mark raised angel funding to start his company. The company has grown at a nice clip, and the company has a real chance at long term success. At the same time, Mark and his partner have taken a salary of…
One of my biggest mistakes ever was adding “John” as my co-founder and VP Engineering/CTO. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that John wasn’t that great of an engineer, and he failed as our CTO because his engineering skills weren’t that good. John’s engineering skills were as good as I thought they’d be,…
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” “Serge”, the CEO of a struggling startup, said to me. “I think I’m going to give up.” “What?” I responded. Serge’s capitulation said didn’t register on me. It was foreign to my way of thinking. Worse yet, Serge’s company wasn’t doomed to fail. There was a…
I was pumped beyond belief when I got the opportunity to become an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at a San Francisco based venture capital firm. I thought their backing me eliminated the concerns I had about raising money. However, I was still really worried because I knew I still had the bigger hurdle of building…
Years ago,I decided I the way to achieve my career goals was working at a Venture Capital backed startup. The problem was I didn’t know any venture capitalists. I went on the internet and built a spreadsheet of all the VC firms I wanted to meet with and every partner at the VC firm. The…
“I’m focusing on learning, not the grades,” Avery said to me the other day. She’s just starting her journey in college, so I couldn’t be happier to hear my daughter say that. “You got it!” I exclaimed. “The knowledge will stay with you forever. Plus, it’s the only thing you can directly control.” “I love…
“What are we going to do about the DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) design?” I asked my co-founder and VP Engineering, Jeroen. “It’s floundering.” “I know,” Jeroen said. “I think we need to make a change.” If you can announce five different products or SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit) from one analog chip design, then you’re…
“Brett, I need to have control of the board.” Who do you think said that to me? Was it a startup CEO, or was it an investor? Or was it both parties? It seems logical, doesn’t it as a first time CEO. You want control of the board, right? Because, if you control the board,…