“Okay,” I said to the group assembled in our large conference room, “We are the launch team for our first product.” The team consisted of Adolfo, my co-founder and VP Marketing, Shoba, our Test Engineering Director, Dave, our Manufacturing Director, and Mary, our Public Relations consultant. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I…
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” “Serge”, the CEO of a struggling startup, said to me. “I think I’m going to give up.” Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “What?” I responded. Serge’s capitulation said didn’t register on me. It was foreign to my way…
“I was expecting an offer of three percent,” Joe said to me. I’d been recruiting Joe since before we got our funding, and, now, two years after we closed our funding, we had offered Joe 0.75% stock options to become a Senior Scientist. Joe had a PhD from Stanford, and the engineering team thought he’d…
“I just bought a unit in new The Millennium building, up in the City,” my co-founder, “Ken”, said to me. “You should check it out!” Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. “Really,” I said. “I thought you were going to buy a house on the peninsula, closer to…
“The engine that makes an Analog IC company go is a great VP Engineering or CTO,” I said to Dave, the VC partner I was working with when I was incubating my startup as an EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) at a VC fund in San Francisco. Then I continued, “Without a great VP Engineering we…
“Here’s a slide I think might be good,” the CEO said to us. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. The CEO had just blown it. I mean completely blown it. I was working at a Venture Capital firm at the time, and we were sincerely interested in investing…
There were these four founders that got together to start their business. Peter, John, Roger and Keith were their names. The products they produced were some of the best in their industry. The customers they had loved their products. And they were well respected by their competitors. By their own admission, they got along horribly.…
“You didn’t have me at hello,” the investor said to us. “But I like what you’re doing. Let me think about this and get back to you.” Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. We had just finished presenting to a well known VC in our space. The VC…
When times were really rough, I would get Avery’s magic eight ball. I would ask it, “Do you think we’re going to make it?” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] I would shake the eight ball and wait for the answer to appear in the triangle. The answer…
“The hardest part of building our company will be raising the initial funding,” I naively said to my fellow cofounders. Every one of them nodded their heads in agreement. Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here. I continued on with my pep talk. “We’ll be home free once the…