Why Can’t You Turn Your Integrity On And Off?
My wife and I went for a run together last week, and, on our walk home, we started talking about Elizabeth Holmes. The new docudrama about her and Theranos, “Dropout”, just dropped on Showtime, so it was on the top of our minds. “I think we should watch it (Dropout),” Blossom said to me. “What…
The Top Ten Mistakes First Time Entrepreneurs Make
“You’re a first time CEO. You’re going to make mistakes.” That’s what investors say about first time CEOs. And, you know what, investors are right, you’re going to make mistakes. However, why make business mistakes when you can avoid them. In today’s video, I’ll walk you through the top ten mistakes entrepreneurs make. Plus, I’ll…
How Can You Renegotiate Founder Equity?
“I want to cut the equity of my co-founder from 45 percent to twenty percent,” “Oren” said to me. “He’s not performing very well. What do you think?” “I don’t think that’s going to go over very well,” I said. “You certainly can try, but I don’t think it’s going to work.” “Why don’t you…
Why Investors Say No To Entrepreneurs?
100 to one. Burn that ratio into your brain. That’s the number of face to face meetings a typical venture capital firm will have for every one startup they invest in. How do I know this? I was an Entrepreneur in Residence with a major VC fund in San Francisco. Raising your startup funding isn’t…
How Can A New Business Process Save Your Company?
“‘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…
What Are The Rules For Selling Your Startup?
“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),”…
How Do You Determine Your Total Available Market?
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…
How Do You Buy Out Your Co-Founder?
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.…
How Often Should You Call A Big Potential Customer?
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,…
How Do You Value Your Startup?
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…