Hiring and Firing
When Should You Fire Your VP Sales?
You just hired your new VP Sales six months ago, and now you’re beginning to wonder if you made a mistake. Your previous VP Sales only lasted three months, and now you’re worried that your board is going to lose confidence in you too. What should you do? In today’s video, we go through this…
Read MoreWhat Do You Do When Your Co-Founder Stops Working?
Imagine this scenario. Your co-founder of five years, who owns the same 40% of the company you do, decides he is unhappy with his role, and he stops working, daring you to fire him. Firing him is the easy decision. The tougher decisions are should you buy him out and what should you do with…
Read MoreHow Do You Scale Your Startup?
“Tell me about the other executives?” I asked “Jason,” the CEO of a life sciences startup. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] “There aren’t any other executives. It’s just me. That’s why I wanted your help,” he said. “I’ve never scaled a business before.” That was almost four…
Read MoreWhat Are The Six Rules For Building A Great Team?
“Tell me, who are you going to bring with you?” I asked “Tommy,” the VP Sales candidate recommended by a couple members of our board of directors. “It’s going to be hard for me to bring anyone,” Tommy said to me. “The team is well compensated, so I don’t think they’ll leave.” Do you want…
Read MoreWhy You Need To Build Your Team Before Raising Money
Imagine this scenario. You have a great idea for a new startup. You’ve done the research, and maybe you’ve even talked to a few potential customers. There’s no doubt in your mind that this venture is poised to be a huge hit. So, you start reaching out to investors, and you get a couple of…
Read MoreWhy You Should Give Your Team Lots Of Equity
“Would you mind telling me your stock option plan at Maxim?” Carlos, the VP HR at Micrel asked me. “I want to do some benchmarking.” I had just joined the company as General Manager of one of three divisions the company had, so I was glad to help. [Do you want to grow your business?…
Read MoreWhy Cutting The Bottom 10% Of Your Team Is A Bad Idea
“Brett, I know you love Netflix’s culture document,” Jeroen, my cofounder and VP Engineering, said to me. “But I’m not sure I like the idea of firing our worst team members.” “I’m not sure I’m on board with that either,” I responded. “There must be a better way to do that (manage the quality of…
Read MoreWhat Are The Positions You Shouldn’t Hire Early On?
“Great IC design engineers are the toughest thing to find,” I said to Dave. “And to hire great design engineers, we need a world class VP Engineering because great designers will only work for a great VP Engineering.” [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Dave nodded his head…
Read MoreHow Do You Get Top Talent To Join Your Unfunded Startup?
It’s an age old problem. You just started your company and you don’t have any money to pay the top talent you want to hire. I don’t have any magic tricks to sell you in this short video, but I do have reality. I’ll share with you the approach we took to bring on top…
Read MoreHow Do You Get Great Talent To Join Your Unfunded Startup?
“Let’s meet for coffee,” I said to person I was recruiting. I’d done this a million times before. If I drank any more coffee, I might overdose on caffeine. [Do you want to grow your business? Maybe I can help. Click here.] Let’s meet for coffee. Let’s meet for lunch. Let’s meet for tea. Let’s…
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