“‘Bob’ wants to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic,” I said to Steve, my right hand man. “What did Bob do?” Steve asked. “Well, you know we missed our number for the quarter,” I said, referring to the company missing its financial goals for the quarter. Steve nodded for me to continue. “And he…
“There’s a company in our portfolio, I can’t say who, where the founders decided to sell to Microsoft,” one of my investors, Gill, said to me. “Congratulations,” I said. “Well, they decided to sell a little earlier then I would have preferred, but they are the founders, so they get to decide (when to sell),”…
Understanding how big your total available market is a critical step in building your startup, and understanding your TAM is a critical slide when you’re fundraising. Yet most entrepreneurs get their total available market slide wrong. Part of the problem is should you present your TAM or your SAM? Or, maybe you should you present…
I had four co-founders. I had to fire one of my co-founders within six months of us being operational. This was six months before we had any revenue. The negotiation of “Randy’s” exit was simple. It took less than one hour to complete. Here’s what you’ll need to make your co-founder buy out simple too.…
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received was from a mentor I had named Lew. Lew was an old school sales guy, trained by the legendary Don Valentine at Fairchild Semiconductor back in the day. After working at Fairchild, Lew ran several large sales organizations. Then he ended up in private equity,…
There’s a lot of advice for entrepreneurs on how do you value your startup. Unfortunately, most of the startup advice is wrong. The goal of today’s video is to give you a simple methodology for valuing your startup; especially if your company is an early stage startup. We’ll look at how you answer investors questions…
I remember the moment clearly. We had finally gotten to $100K per month in revenue. This should have been a moment of celebration because $100K per month is when you’ve hit escape velocity. If you just keep at it, you’ll be at $1 million per month in no time flat. However, all I could think…
Years ago, I was in a meeting with Jack Gifford, the founding CEO of Maxim Integrated Products. Maxim’s revenue was around $1 billion per year at the time. Also in the meeting was “Peter”, one of the best engineering managers in the company. Peter was complaining to Gifford how hard it was to recruit great…
Square’s pitch deck is one of the more interesting investor pitch decks available online. So, the question is what lessons can you apply to your pitch deck based on the Square’s pitch deck? In today’s video, I’ll break down Square’s pitch deck presentation, slide by slide, so you can improve your investment pitch deck structure. …
There’s a right way and a wrong way to show your pitch deck financials when you pitch investors. The problem is that just about every entrepreneur presents their financial slide incorrectly. If you present your pitch deck financial slide incorrectly, the result is a lost opportunity for you, the CEO, to improve your chances of…