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What’s The Best Pitch Deck You’ve Ever Seen?
The best pitch deck I’ve seen that’s been publicly released is LinkedIn’s. What I love about it is maybe not so much the content, but Reid Hoffman’s commentary about what he was trying to do and what he would do different. But, you really don’t have to go beyond the first slide. The first slide…
Read MoreHow Do You Estimate How Much Money You’re Going To Spend?
I like using the simple formula of $200K/Head/Year to figure out how far your funding will take you. Let’s say you raise $10M, and you want the money to last two years. That means you can have around 25 employees: 25 employees x $200,000/Yr = $5,000,000/Yr. And you’ll find this formula to be reasonably accurate…
Read MoreHow Important Is Your Location When You’re Raising Money?
I think this Marc Andreessen quote says it all about the importance of a startup’s location regarding fundraising: Location risk — where is the startup located? Can it hire the right talent in that location? And will I as the VC need to drive more than 20 minutes in my Mercedes SLR McLaren to get…
Read MoreHow Do You Manage Your Costs Early On?
“Are you personally signing every check?” Bill asked me at dinner. I had worked for Bill years ago. Bill was seriously old school in his approach. “Yes, I am,” I replied. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s an important tool for you to keep control of the spending.” Bill was right. Signing every check was important.…
Read MoreDoes A Startup CEO Have To Work At The Head Office?
I remember as CEO of my own startup presenting a review of our progress to one of our investors. The whole team was located in one office in the Silicon Valley. I told the partners of this VC firm that we were ahead of schedule on our project development. The partners were very pleased with…
Read MoreHow Hard Is It To Be An Entrepreneur?
Being an entrepreneur is easy. Every day people decide to start up businesses. And voilà, you are an entrepreneur. And voilà, most of these new entrepreneurs will fail. So why do so many entrepreneurs fail? Let me click off the reasons, stream of consciousness style: A. You haven’t validated your business idea. I’ve talked to…
Read MoreWhat Do You When You’re Stuck As A CEO?
I’ve been stuck more times than I can count. Sometimes, I get thrown for a loop like the time an investor pulled his support for our company at the worst time imaginable. Ugh! Then, there was the time we lost a $1M deal. The customer had committed to using us, we had already started building…
Read MoreHow Do You Generate Innovative Ideas For Your Business?
One of the first things I did once we received funding was have a regularly scheduled “Crazy Idea” meeting every Friday afternoon. All the designer engineers, myself, and the VP of Marketing (who had a strong technical background) would get together. The rules were simple: Anyone could bring up any idea they had on anything,…
Read MoreShould You Patent Your Idea?
Getting a patent has nothing to do with your ability to execute. Nothing. Maybe you can get a patent for your idea, and maybe you can’t. Here are a few things to know about what patents can and can’t do for you: A. A patent may not block someone from implementing your idea. I’m not…
Read MoreWhen Should I Delegate My Email To An Admin?
You’re thinking way too corporate here. You have a choice when you are starting a company: Are you going to be company that spends lots of money and burns through its runway, or… Are you going to be appropriately frugal? My vote is for being appropriately frugal. The thought process of being appropriately frugal means…
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