When Should You Hire Interns To Develop Your MVP? By Brett Fox As the great business philosopher John McEnroe said, “You cannot be serious!” You want to hire interns instead of experts? Come on! You cannot be serious! Okay. Let’s go through with the pros and cons of hiring interns instead of experts. The…
What Is The Right Amount Of Equity For A Late Joining Cofounder? By Brett Fox I had four co-founders, the last of whom joined 1.5 years after we started the company. Do you know who got the most equity amongst the co-founders? That’s right, the one that joined 1.5 years after we started. You want…
How Do You Plan Your Startup Scaling Into Multiple Markets? By Brett Fox “Do you have a VP Sales lined up?” The investor asked me during a diligence meeting. “I do,” I answered (I’ll get back to this later). Not only should you start planning your go to market strategies for the various countries you…
How Can You Use Being First To Market As A True Advantage? By Brett Fox I’ve been fortunate enough during my career to be involved with hundreds of product launches during my career. I’ve been first to market, second to market, and very late to a market, so I’ve seen the power of being first…
How Do You Know When To Release Your Killer Product? By Brett Fox I was walking out of the Decathlon Club one Saturday morning. I had just finished my workout. A beautiful woman drove into the Decathlon Club parking lot, and I thought to myself, “Park your car next to mine.” And she did. Just…
Can You Start A Company With Someone You Barely Know? By Brett Fox I am a firm believer in the nine-month rule when it comes to startups. What’s the nine-month rule you ask? The nine-month rule is you need to work together for at least nine-months before you know whether your co-founder relationship has a…
Why Is It So Important For You To Be Number One In A Market Segment? By Brett Fox General Electric in the 1980’s, under the leadership of Jack Welch, had a very simple goal for all of its businesses: Become number one or number two in market share or we (General Electric) will exit the…
How Should You Manage Employees In Your Startup? By Brett Fox There are two extremes when it comes managing people. There’s the old-school command and control model where you don’t give your employees any flexibility. On the other side there’s the Zappos style of management (or even coaching) where you push the decision making down…
I love the idea of obsoleting myself. In fact, the idea of obsoleting myself has been my goal ever since I started managing people years ago. Because only when you obsolete yourself can you effectively delegate. Huh? Now why would you want to make yourself not needed anymore? And what does this have to do…
One of the best people I ever worked with was Greg. Greg is a brilliant engineer, and Greg is probably one of the five best analog IC design engineers on the planet. Greg, like many brilliant engineers, isn’t shy about sharing his opinions. And Greg certainly wasn’t shy about telling me when he disagreed with…