“Sounds a little rich to me,” one of my investors, “Raul”, said to me when he asked me what I was going to pay myself as CEO. We had just closed $12M in Series A funding, and the salary I suggested paying myself was the median for a Series A CEO with that level of…

Where Should You Raise Money For Your Startup? Video By Brett Fox Should you or shouldn’t you raise money for your startup? And where should you raise the money from? I’ll walk you through my simple thought process in this short video.   Do You Want To Grow Your Business?  Maybe I Can Help.  Click…

“It is sacrosanct,” one of our investors said to me. I told him that we would perform a layoff in preparation for the next round of funding. There really was no way around performing a layoff. We were only going to close $10M, and we needed the money to last at least 18 months.  …

“I’m sorry Brett, but we’re not going forward with the investment,” “Robbie” said to me. The week before Robbie and the other members of the investment syndicate had signed the term sheet. And now they were pulling out of the deal. I spent the next hour on the phone convincing Robbie to stay in the…

And the damage from Shark Tank goes on… A few years ago a CEO of a pre-revenue startup reached out to me for guidance. The company was preparing to raise money. The CEO said to me during the initial consultation, “We’ve had a 409A valuation done on the company, and the valuation indicates the company…

“The minute you tell your employees they’re going to minimum wage, they’re going to start looking,” my friend and mentor Dave said to me. Earlier that day in our board meeting, one of our investors suggested that we shut the company down because we were out of money. We already had one new investor committed…

I was an EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) at a VC firm in San Francisco when I started my company. I told the partners at the firm that the success or failure of my efforts would hinge on my finding a great VP Engineering. I had tons of contacts, and I had been in the industry…