It’s great that you and your cofounder are both investing more money in your company. That’s a sign of true commitment. Let me ask you a question? Why is your money worth more than your cofounder’s money? The answer is obvious. Your money and your cofounder’s money is worth the same amount because…
Do you want goals that are easy to hit? Or do you want goals that you and your team are going to have to really stretch to hit? The reality is you need both types of goals for you company to succeed. I’l explain how you can, not only make these different types of goals…
It was around 5PM on a Thursday. I was in my office, and I looked down at my to do list. Every item was checked off. I literally had nothing to do. “This just can’t be right,” I said to myself. “There has to be something for me to do.” So I walked over to…
I’ve worked with a lot of startup CEO’s, and I see the same two killer fundraising mistakes made over and over again. One of them will kill you before you get started, and the mistake will kill you when you’re raising money. What are these killer mistakes, and, more importantly, how can you avoid them?…
“Tell me about the whole market first,” Jack Gifford, Maxim’s CEO, said to me. We were meeting at the Peppermill in Cupertino like we always did for our Tuesday morning breakfast meetings. For this meeting it was me, Ziya who was my boss, Dave Fullagar who was the VP Engineering, and I believe Len Sherman…
I used to meet with my cofounders a few times a week. We were each working on parts of our business plan. “John” was working on the engineering model, “Jim” was working on the marketing model, and I was working on the overall financial plan. After about two months of staring at each other across…
It’s inevitable. You’re going to have an employee that did a great job for you early on in your company, but now that same employee is having trouble as the company grows bigger. What you do when you face this inevitable challenge will determine more about the fate of your company than you might realize.…
“Don’t try and be something that you’re not,” that was the advice I gave to myself when I started my company. Even though I have a BSEE and a few patents, I’d been on the “dark side”, as my wife calls the business side of a technology company, for years. I wasn’t going to be…
You’re in a meeting with an investor, and the investor asks you to provide sensitive information like your customer list before you sign a term sheet. Or you’re in a technical diligence meeting and things don’t feel right. What should you do? The good news is that most investors are not out to steal your…
Have you ever wondered what’s the right amount of equity to give your investors? Well, you’re not alone. Figuring out how much equity your investors should get is next to impossible to figure out. I have a simple methodology that I share in this short video that you can use to figure out the equity…