We’ve all been there before. Nobody likes going to meetings and wasting their time. It’s like this: You go to the meeting. There’s small talk, people are joking around, and people are wasting your precious time. This happens when you have a lot of people in the room together. You can count up the dollars…
Years ago, I was interviewing VP Sales candidates. One of the first candidates I interviewed was someone that I quickly realized was completely wrong for the job. I finished the interview, and I thanked him for his time. Then, as I usually did when there was no hope of the person progressing to the next…
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…
“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…
“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…
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…
“‘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.…