I was driving back from lunch with “Ken”, my co-founder and VP Sales. We had just had our third heart to heart about Ken’s poor performance. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Ken and I had known each other for over twenty years. We were friends. Our wives were…
“WHERE DID I GO WRONG?” Micrel’s CEO, “Bob”, asked the question to the assembled team of minions, but he was really asking the question to himself. I was one of those minions. In fact, Bob was asking the question in response to a presentation I gave about how to fix the division I was running.…
No matter how good you think they might be, don’t do it! “Why are we interviewing this guy?” I asked Jeroen, our VP Engineering. “Look at his resume, he’s bounced from one company to the next.” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] “‘Terry’s’ a really talented engineer,” Jeroen…
“I think we should shut down the company,” “Raul”, one of our two investors, said to me during our board meeting. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] We were in the middle of raising our Series B funding, and we already had one term sheet in hand. Raul…
My wife was working at a start-up about ten years ago, and the company was doing really, really well. Revenue and customers were growing exponentially. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. The CEO was a brilliant and charismatic leader. The management team was strong. It looked like everyone…
“If you give a startup $1 million, they’ll find a way to spend it,” my friend and VC, Dave said to me early on in my company’s life. Then he delivered the punch line. “If you give a startup $10 million, they’ll find a way to spend that too!” [Do you want to grow your…
Let me ask you a question. If you had a machine where you could put money into the machine, and for every dollar you put in you got three dollars back, wouldn’t you be stuffing money into that machine as fast as you could? Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help.…
One of the greatest lines in movie history was said in the classic, All The President’s Men. The line is, “Follow the money.” Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. The idea was that if you traced the trail of money, you would find out who was behind the Watergate break-in.…
“Are you having fun?” Bob Dobkin, our only angel investor, asked me when I was giving him an update on our progress about two months after we closed our Series A funding. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe can I help. Click here.] Bob was the co-founder and CTO/VP Engineering of Linear Technology.…
To: Past Self From: Future Self Subject: If I knew then what I know now Hey, it’s your older and wiser self. Somehow or other, despite all your screw ups, you made it! You’re done. You’ve achieved your dream of starting, building, and leading a company from scratch. Do you want to grow your business?…