You likely have some sort of criteria for the people you hire. So you should have a criteria for not hiring people too. The surprising thing I’ve learned is that a lot of CEOs don’t have a criteria for not hiring people. You don’t want to be one of those people. In this short video,…
“Brett, I wanted to let you know I am going to retire,” Dave said to me. “What? Why!” I said getting my bearings. “You can’t retire! You’re too young to retire.” “I don’t want to retire,” Dave said. “But I’m being pushed out by ‘Ted’.” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can…
Nothing is more painful for me to watch then a CEO that has waited too long to raise funded. It’s a self inflicted wound that you can easily avoid. Yet I see this happen over and over again. I’ve raised over $100M, so I do have a little bit of experience in this area. I’ll…
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.” “’Terry’s’ a really talented engineer,” Jeroen responded. “I think you should meet with him.” [Do you want to grow…
Recruiting top talent to your startup is tough, especially if you’re trying to recruit people from large companies like Facebook. You’re not going to be able to overpay to get them. After all, they’re already likely making a lot of money. So what can you do to give yourself a fighting chance? I’ll go over…
You just released what you thought was a killer product to market. Then what happens after you launch the product is nothing. Your killer product isn’t selling, and you can’t figure out why that is. I’ve been where you’ve been, and help you analyze what’s likely wrong and what you should do about it in…
I’ve been involved in hundreds of product launches in my career. Unfortunately, not everything is going to go right when you launch your product or service. The question is should you sit back and do nothing or should you take action? I’ll walk you through the steps we took on recent product launch that I…
“Why is Bob with the company?” I asked myself. “He just seems to sit in the corner doing nothing.” Bob was the founder of the startup I had just joined as VP Marketing. Bob was no longer the CEO, but, for some strange reason, he was still with the company, doing what looked to be…
“This place sucks,” I said to Randy, my cofounder. “All the cubicles are scrunched up against each other. The lighting is dismal. I would just be miserable here.” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Randy nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. Then he laughed…
You will quickly find that raising money is a numbers game. You have to knock on a lot of doors if you’re going to raise your funding. You’re going to hear lots of things from the investors you meet. But there’s one thing you may hear that’s probably the worst thing you can ever…