Why Should You Use A Right Hand Person To Fire People? By Brett Fox Any executive that uses a “right hand man” to fire a direct report should themselves be fired. Firing someone is supposed to be a painful experience. You are changing someone’s life, and you should feel horrible. I couldn’t sleep the night…
What Can You Learn From Marissa Mayer’s Struggles At Yahoo? By Brett Fox I think the lessons are more for first-time public company CEOs that worked at one company for a long stretch of their career prior to becoming CEO. Marissa Mayer spent her whole career at Google prior to accepting the Yahoo CEO position. …
How Do You Know The Value Of Your Sales People? By Brett Fox One of the best things that ever happened to me in my career was when I was given responsibility to manage an external sales organization. Previously, I was general manager of a business unit inside the company, and we had a matrixed…
What Tasks Do You Need To Do Every Day As An Entrepreneur? By Brett Fox I was talking Friday with a CEO I am advising named “Paul”. Paul’s in fund-raising mode right now. Nothing else matters when you’re in fund-raising mode except raising your money. I told Paul, “You need to have a laser-like focus…
Is It Worth Starting A Company When You’ve Just Graduated College? By Brett Fox My Dad gave me some great advice when I was graduating college. He told me to take my chances when I was young. And, as I fast-forward ahead ten years to when my daughter will be graduating college, I wonder what…
What Is The Best Way To Keep Your Equity As You Raise Funding? By Brett Fox I’ll never forget one of our investors saying to me, “There’s a certain percentage ownership you’re going to end up with, and there’s a certain percentage ownership we’re going to end up with. “The rest of it doesn’t matter.”…
How Do You Build A Great Founding Team? By Brett Fox The average age of the engineering team at my company was 44 years old. The engineering averaged 20 years of experience per engineer, and the engineers on average had 10 patents. The team, by industry standards, was considered elite. Now, I assume you want…
There is a one-word answer for why so many former engineers are now CEOs of technology companies. And that one-word answer is: Respect. Simply put, being an engineer running a technology company gives you some tremendous advantages: A. You engineering team will be more likely to respect you. Engineers like working with people that understand…
You work really hard for years building your company. And you’re burning through your savings as you build your company. Finally, finally you get your company to cash flow positive. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] “Thank goodness,” you say to yourself. “We’re finally free of needing more…
What Skills Should You Learn As An Entrepreneur? By Brett Fox Someone just messaged me this: “Hey Brett, I’m just about to start a company. What do I need to know to be successful?” Here’s my answer: I don’t know whether these are learned skills or traits you are born with, but these are the…