Leadership and Management
How Do You Turnaround And Rebuild Your Company?
“Bring us up to your level,” Ray, the CEO of Micrel, said to me in his office. Ray was pitching me on becoming general manager of one of the company’s three business units. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. I smiled, we shook hands, and I left his…
Read MoreHow Do You Run Your Company As Headcount Grows?
I remember there were six of us after we closed our funding. Myself, my four co-founders, and our operations manager Dave. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Two weeks later Sid joined as our design engineering director. Within two months we added three more design engineers bringing us…
Read MoreHow Do You Keep Yourself From Getting Stuck?
I’ve been doing a lot of research on Steve Jobs lately. Did you know that he used to practice his Macworld and product launch presentations around 200 times before the big event? [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Watch any Jobs presentation and you’ll notice how smooth and effortless…
Read MoreHow Do You Keep Your Startup From Being Undercapitalized?
“How long is the new funding going to last you?” I asked “Sam.” Sam said, “About one year.” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] “That’s not long enough,” I replied. You really want your funding to last eighteen months. Ideally, you’d like your funding to last two years. “Why…
Read MoreHow Do You Develop Leadership Skills?
A couple lifetimes ago, I was working for a company where the CEO, “Bob”, liked to have a weekly operations meeting. A weekly operations meeting with the CEO and operations leader is pretty normal in a technology company. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. This CEO’s operations meeting…
Read MoreHow Do You Deal With A Broken Co-Founder?
“Tell me about your background,” I said to “Jim.” “John,” my co-founder who recommended Jim to me as our VP Engineering, and I were having lunch with Jim at Bucks. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Bucks, for those of you not living in the Silicon Valley, is…
Read MoreHow Do You Build A Differentiated Product?
Have you ever heard the story of Toughskins Jeans, made by Sears? If you go back in time to the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the jeans market was dominated by Levi’s 501 jeans. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Sears wasn’t doing too well in the jeans market…
Read MoreHow Do You Build A $1B Startup?
“With this next round of funding, we’re going to valued at $1.5 billion,” “Ray,” a CEO I’m working with, said to me the other day. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “That’s awesome!” I said. “Congratulations. I remember how hard it was at the beginning. You’ve come a…
Read MoreHow Do You Become A Business Success?
“I want to be successful so badly I can taste it. What do I do?!” I said to the wall in my office. It was my first day after we launched our startup and I needed answers. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] “Yes, my son,” a booming…
Read MoreHow Do You Raise Money And Not Lose Control Of Your Business?
There is this false belief that the way to keep control of your company as an entrepreneur is by owning a majority of the stock or creating special classes of stock so you control the voting rights. The concept is pretty is simple: You control the votes, so you can’t be voted out of being…
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