founders, VC's, mentors and startup experts.
Last Tech Tuesday I wrote that the companies which do well on hiring engineers are the ones that "prioritize both hiring *and* having a great work environment." The post went on to talk about some of the best practices in hiring. Today's follow-up is about creating a great work environment for engineers. ...
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Via: Continuations
VC at http://usv.com |
Gabriel Weinberg is a serial entrepreneur (latest startup: DuckDuckGo), an insightful blogger, and quality contributor to Hacker News. He is writing a book on how startups get traction due out this summer that includes interviews with folks like Patrick McKenzie, Jimmy Wales, and Paul English to collect lessons learned from a variety of perspectives.I was delighted when he approached me to take pa ...
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Via: Sean Murphy
New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome |
Remember your first business loan? Or, if you're like many entrepreneurs, you may have initially bootstrapped your startup by buying some stuff on your credit card. You were excited and apprehensive: Excited because now you had the cash to invest in your business, apprehensive because you had just taken on a debt you would have to repay. ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
If you've ever wondered what a "Co-Founder" really is, you're not alone. We've challenged ourselves to answer this question and to explore a process to discover and develop what might become a co-founder or co-founding team. ...
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Via: StartupWeekend
Co-founder of @StartupWeekend with @marcnager and a great t |
This new manager had to fire someone for the first time—and while she knew it would be hard, she couldn't have anticipated some of the challenges she'd face. Read on for three important lessons every manager should know. ...
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Via: Daily Muse
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A startup's first two hires. Once you raise money, the default action is usually to hire more programmers to build fast and experiment more. Unfortunately things won't move in the pace you expected it to. A lot of things fall into your plate. This leaves very little time to think about product ...
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Co-founder @hackerrank & @interviewstreet |
Earlier today I got into a conversation with a colleague about the relative importance of a startup idea vs a startup team. Naturally, both the concept and the people are critically important, but if you had to pick one, which would be most important? ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
AngelList "corporate policy" is that team members should ask forgiveness, not permission. We would rather have someone do something wrong than ask permission to do it. Or better, we would rather have someone do something right and not need permission to do it. This is the most common outcome. ...
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Via: Venture Hacks
I started @angellist and @venturehacks. |
I am fond of quoting that about 70% of my investment decision of an early-stage company is the team. My rationale is simple: everything goes wrong and only great teams can respond to competitors, markets, funding environments, staff departures, PR disasters and the like. ...
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2x entrepreneur. Sold both companies (last to http://salesfo |
Our Partner Reid Hoffman posted a very thoughtful, relevant post today that all of the entrepreneurs that work with Greylock should read and think about. Since it covers the the delicate topic of Founder-CEO, it could ruffle a few feathers. Still, it's a discussion that should be had. ...
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Via: Greylock VC
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how to hire a tech guy if you're not techie yourself? Here are some of my additional thoughts from a techie point of view. ...
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Via: pragmatic startup
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Creating a positive company culture is much like creating a positive classroom culture. As former teachers and camp counselors, this is something we enjoy actively considering. When intentionally attempting to improve company culture, I recommend following these three tips: ...
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Via: Silicon Prairie News
Reshaping grading to be about learning instead of points wit |
Q: Where can I get some good starting salary information for a SaaS startup? I need the information for CEO, CFO, CIO, CINO, Director of Sales. How much should the starting salaries vary for a startup? ...
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Via: Ask The VC
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
Ask 10 founders about company culture and what it means and you'll get 10 different answers. It's about office design, it's about screening out the wrong kinds of employees, it's about values, it's about fun, it's about alignment, it's about finding like-minded employees, it's about being cult-like. So what is culture? ...
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Via: Bhorowitz
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"If you plan to be doing the coding in a year or two, you're doing it wrong," one of the advisers told me when I was starting my first startup a few years ago. ...
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Via: Fruit Business
A geek with a hat |
Have you ever been on a project team with great people? I'm not talking about super-smart people, although they might have been some of those great people. I mean a project team where the team meshed. Where the team jelled, where the team knew how to work together. Now, I bet that team didn't magically jell on day one. But I bet that team had a lot in common from day one. That's called cultural fi ...
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Via: Johanna Rothman
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"Become indispenable to your employer." That's the advice I see from job training and professional coaches all the time. And I can empathize with why it exists. Many employers are not supporters of their teams, and treat human resources as, well, resources that just happen to be human. Hence, employees fight back by being the only person in the company who knows how to accomplish a critical task. ...
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Via: Rand's Blog
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It's now 2 years since I launched Buffer, and the company has grown from just myself (working from my bedroom) to a team of 7. It seems rather obvious in hindsight, but only after growing a team over 2 years have I realised just how gradual and progressive building a startup culture is. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
If you're trying to attract awesome developers, you need to create an awesome candidate experience (CX). Something that makes them go "WOW!". It's like UX -- but for the people interviewing to join your team. ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
In the early days (less then 10 customers) of a startup, the founder typically is expected to do most all of the selling to get the early adopters. This helps solve the problem of understanding the customer's buying process which aids in hiring the right sales person for your startup. ...
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Via: Be a Force of Good
CEO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator @msftaccelerator |
A bit of bullshit is no bad thing when you're a scrappy company, punching above its weight. But must we really bestow the term "chief executive officer" on every self-promoting booby with a website? ...
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Via: THE KERNEL
Journalist. Founder & Editor-in-Chief, @KernelMag. Advisor t |
I've had several conversations with potential entrepreneurs who have an idea and are looking for a technical co-founder to help with the implementation. Often they are surprised that every coder they talk to doesn't immediately quit their job to sign on. After all, this is an awesome idea, so why can't I find a coder ...
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Via: The Agile League
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Call them hackers, 'ninjas', or 'rock stars' if you'd like. Other than being very talented developers, they all share one thing in common -- it's unbelievably hard to bring them on-board your company. And as if competing with other companies for the same talent was not enough, being a startup just adds more challenges to the equation. ...
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Via: On Startups
2X entrepreneur and co-founder at Takipi http://t.co/mCt1Lat |
'm asked "How do I find a mentor?" all the time. I've never had a good answer. The sad fact is this: people you want as mentors don't want to view themselves as pro-bono life coaches. So what to do? ...
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Author of #1 NY Times bestsellers, The 4-Hour Body and The 4 |
Spoiler: You can't hire out sales because in the early days it's about learning, not selling, and hired guns can't bring back bad news. ...
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Via: The Startup Toolkit
Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk & |
The idea of a partner wanting to renegotiate their terms can be a major pitfall that sinks a startup, according to Noam Wasserman (The Founder's Dilemmas). This dilemma is common because we don't know well enough the contributions of each partner early in the project, and roles often change throughout the process. When a partner believes they are contributing more and their worth has increased, th ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
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Most job posts suck. Not because the founders didn't try. Not because the company and compensation are bad. They're just so damn uninspiring. When you're trying to hire, I think it's important to stop thinking like yourself. Most people don't. This is why the order in most 'job posts' is generally: 1. Description of the company 2. Requirements 3. Perks. ...
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Via: Jason Shah
product manager @yammer; creator @heatdata; learned some thi |
As entrepreneurs, we easily whip out our credit cards to pay for online courses to "fix" ourselves or our businesses, or we splurge on the latest software to stay current but. Suddenly, when it comes to actually hiring someone to help us, we get skeptical. The fact of the matter is that your company's biggest leaps are probably only going to happen when you free yourself--physically and emotionall ...
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I'm a Suitcase Entrepreneur addicted to travel, Frisbee & us |
What's your equity split of this business and why? Are we comfortable with the thinking behind that? What is the scope of our business? What is outside the scope of what we want it to do? And More... ...
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I'm an ordinary guy with nothing to lose. VC at Brooklyn Bri |
I often get asked about finding cofounders and I usually give the standard list of characteristics of what I look for in a founder. And I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets - i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps. But Jessica Alter, Cofounder ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
Company culture can have a real impact on your bottom line. Two stories from Mikey Trafton's Business of Software 2012 presentation. ...
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Founder and CEO of Fire Ant Software. We help doctors get pa |
One of the hardest lessons for an entrepreneur to grasp is to hire slow and fire fast. Every new entrepreneur thinks it won't be a problem. It sounds easy until they are faced with the situation. I have no idea how many people I've hired over my career, but I know how many peopl e I've fired - twenty-three. It's stressful on everyone. It never gets easier, but with more experience, the faster you ...
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Via: Under30CEO
I share info about start-ups, business, and entrepreneurshi |
The team were "killer smart", witty and - looking back - a little insecure, just enough to give a feeling of "we can't screw this up; we can't let each other down." ...
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Via: Venture Beat
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When you are part of a small team at a fast-growing company like Filepicker.io, there is a constant push to focus only on the immediate task at hand, to Get Things Done. This focus is incredibly important, and many fledgling companies fail because they try to do too many things before they're ready. On a personal level, however, it's important to actively devote time to growing your personal ...
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Via: Filepicker.io
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About a year ago I was approached by a stranger and was asked to join a Seattle startup. This stranger, my soon-to-be-cofounder, asked me to take the CEO role in the startup. It has now been more than a year since this fateful day and I feel it's as good of time as any to review some lessons I have gathered through my first year as CEO of a fledging startup. ...
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Via: So Entrepreneurial
CEO of Seconds, Entrepreneur and Blogger |
Klaas Kerstin of Flare Games gives a fantastic talk about company culture and the merits of an asshole-free company. "You are spending a great deal of your life at work, and choosing energy in where and who you work with is always a good investment." Klaas spoke at one of the HackFwd build events where all of our companies are invited to meet and build the future of their companies ...
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Via: HackFwd Blog
We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and |
I've done a lot of interviewing, hiring, and firing in my career. It's inevitable as you start to build your own companies, become a team leader, or move into management. I fully subscribe to the notion that you should hire slowly and fire quickly. ...
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Via: stu.mp
Co-founder of @sprintly, @attachmentsme, and @simplegeo. Cyc |
I'm TIRED of answering this question so I'd rather write it out and just point people to this post. After running AppSumo for over 2 years I've finally understood that Facebook made the right decision to let me go. ...
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hi* |
Today one of our portfolio companies is holding their internal management training in our offices. They have asked me to talk a little bit about my own experience with the challenge of going from being an individual contributor to being a manager. I remember this being a very rough transition for me and it took me quite a long time to get comfortable as a manager. ...
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Via: Continuations
VC at http://usv.com |
One of the top questions entrepreneurs ask is about how to find right co-founder. Business people are looking for technical partners, and programmers are looking for business people. So how do you go about this process, and how do you know who to pick? The following guide will walk you through why finding the right co-founder makes a big difference and what you need to do to find the right one(s). ...
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Via: David Hauser
Young Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of @grasshopper, @chargify, @ |
One question I really like to ask idea stage entrepreneurs is how they've split up their equity. Now, for a startup with traction, investors, etc that question can be like asking how much money someone makes, so take it lightly. For two entrepreneurs that are just getting started on their idea, it's usually no big deal. Almost always the answer to that question is that the equity has been split ev ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
It take significantly longer for most companies to hire their first employee than it does to hire subsequent ones. Reasons ...
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Via: Eladgil
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This post is targeted at tech startups that are looking for an execution focused, front-line sales person. Filepicker.io is a good example of this kind of a company. This post is not about bringing on a business co-founder or hiring your first senior business person. ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
Tech sales & biz. dev. enthusiast with an intimate knowledge |
"Everybody should have a voice, but not everybody should have a vote." That's what Tom Fishburne told me when I asked him about ways that organizations could harness the creative potential of their teams without getting bogged down or distracted by the wealth of ideas that groups come up with. ...
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Via: Marketing Profs
Writer, ironist, doctor of philosophy. Also, editor at Marke |
Equity incentives are a major form of compensation for most emerging growth and technology companies. Without them, most start-ups cannot afford critical labor, let alone a board of directors or advisors. ...
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Via: The Startup Garage
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As a founder of five startups, I've seen thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of applicants in search of talented employees. It's caused me to realize that it's not always easy for businesses to find the employees they're looking to hire or for job seekers to stand out in the application process. ...
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Via: David Hauser
Young Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of @grasshopper, @chargify, @ |
Can a services company like an app development house become a product company, and, as Silicon Valley VCs typically demand, command high multiples? ...
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Via: Venture Beat
I tweet about the web, social media, tech, and startups. Wr |
Culture at a startup is like capital - once you've started running out, it becomes harder to raise more; and once you're out, you're done. I've twice worked at startups that doubled in size within a year. The first time, it was bad - for morale, for productivity, for overall quality. ...
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Via: Cindy Alvarez
Making people more awesome through building better software. |
... We weren't getting work done very fast. We were putting in long hours, but it always seemed like there was more motion than their was progress. We didn't realize it at the time, but we had run afoul of one of the most important rules of startup productivity: If two people work on a task, it takes twice as long. ...
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Via: Dan Shapiro
Google acquired @sparkbuy, so I now work on www.google.com/a |
There is nothing investors like more than data. We love it. It gives us something to grab onto. It gives us something to compare. It gives us the sense that we are bringing a scientific approach to an otherwise amorphous evaluation process. We look at data when assessing investments. And we look at data to benchmark the progress of those companies in which we've invested. We love data. But there's ...
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Via: Venture Blog
David Hornik is an investor at August Capital, the author of |
Confidence and programming ability are not correlated. If your job post requires a developer to evaluate their own skill, you're doing it wrong. We've written before about What developers think when you say "Rock Star", and we'd like to expand on the broader problem: companies often feel they need to state they only want the best. ...
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Via: Hirelite Blog
Developer & founder at http://ohours.org & http://hirelite.c |
A handy guide for aspiring start-up advisors. You do not need be wise, or old, to set up shop in the wise old man business. There is a shortcut to gaining your own following of initiates listening to your every word. It is simple: become a technology start-up mentor. No cave, flowing beard, or robes are required; all you need to do is follow a simple recipe. ...
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Via: THE KERNEL
Technology, media and politics for enquiring minds. Contact |
The New York Times reported that recent research supported the hunch that open floor plan offices reduce roductivity. The research showed that ambient conversations at work and a noisy office space contributed to "a decline of 5 percent to 10 percent on the performance of cognitive tasks requiring efficient use of short-term memory, like reading, writing and other forms of creative work." ...
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Via: iDoneThis blog
The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms. - Kur |
0.5-2% seems to be normal, trending toward the high end if you're pre-funding and the low end if you've already raised a decent round. Those numbers get completely thrown out when the adviser is your distribution channel. ...
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Via: The Startup Toolkit
Founder at http://dex.io (get more speaking gigs). I talk & |
A founder's skill is knowing how to recognize new patterns and to pivot on a dime. At times the pattern is noise, and the vision turns out to be a hallucination. Knowing how to sort between vision and hallucination can avoid chaos inside your startup. ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
Being acquired is one if the positive outcomes of starting a company, it means that some other - presumably larger - company agrees with the vision and the product created by the smaller entity and has decided to express this agreement with an offer that was substantial enough that the owners of the smaller company thought that it was good enough. ...
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Via: jacquesmattheij.com
techie, coder, troubleshooter (maker ;) ), outspoken, always |
If you are good enough to be that first employee, you are a very small step away from being a co-founder. You're an essential part of the mix, and that will substantially alter the chances of this start-up succeeding or failing, you are sharing in the risk and you should be compensated accordingly. ...
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Via: jacquesmattheij.com
techie, coder, troubleshooter (maker ;) ), outspoken, always |
Hiring technical talent is often cited as one of the most difficult parts of scaling a startup. Great companies are built by great teams so naturally, when it comes to technical talent, companies are competing harder than ever to entice the best of the best. The rationale you'll typically hear is along the lines of "a great developer is 10x as productive as a mediocre one." That might be true, but ...
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Via: On Startups
@flatironschool, founded @designerpages, Rubyist, Skillshare |
To find out how startup leaders think about building companies that they themselves enjoy working in, we surveyed the founders of some of the most innovative startups out there to ask them one simple question: What do you value most about your company's work culture, and what's one important way that you contribute to it? ...
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Via: iDoneThis blog
The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms. - Kur |
Almost all of the seed stage founders I work with pay themselves a very meager salary post seed round. It's rarely a discussion - there are limited resources, a lot of pressure to hit meaningful milestones, and the founders usually just elect to pay themselves a mid-5-digit salary that is enough to survive. ...
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Via: Robgo.org
Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Founding advisor at Boundle |
Last month I wrote about my discovery that helping others makes me happier than spending the time seeing a movie or doing some other "pleasure activity". I briefly mentioned that I've been regularly helping startup founders, and since then I've had a few people get in touch to ask how I do it and, more importantly, why I started helping others in the first place. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
This post makes use of my personal experience and wisdom that I have collected over time working in large enterprises, and I will try to present a detailed analysis of key points which will be decisive towards the making of a User Experience team, that delivers. ...
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Via: 1stWebDesigner
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"Isn't it better to hire a person that has great potential to fill the job rather than bemoan the lack of candidates?" On my previous post, commenter David Bley asked that rhetorical question. More and more, employers are sharing this perspective. ...
A major criteria or a deciding factor for employee happiness is the people he/she is working with. High pay, bonuses, equity, benefits, etc are all just fuel to the car. The people in it should be great to actually enjoy the ride. Your employee will stay if she enjoys working with the people around. ...
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Co-founder @hackerrank & @interviewstreet |
A popular question I get on a regular basis is "what positions are you guys hiring for now?" Previously, I'd enumerate a small number of outstanding positions that were top of mind. Now, I say that we're opportunistically hiring for all major positions all the time. ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
A board seat in and of itself has no particular value, and is often something to be *avoided*, rather than sought out. It doesn't give you more cash compensation, more equity ownership or more direct control over the operating business. So the question you need to ask yourself is "why do I want to be on the board"? ...
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Via: Gust Blog
Venture capitalist, entrepreneur, angel investor |
We had hired a new senior executive. He reported to me, and at first he pointing out that he thought someone had spent more money than was warranted on a particular project. Then, he remarked on a couple of people who weren't arriving at work on time. Over time, he let me know he felt people were taking advantage of me. They didn't appreciate how good they had it. I needed to be tougher. ...
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President and CEO, The Energy Project. Author, Be Excellent |
I saw an email from a CEO the other day. In it, he said "I" over and over again. There were numerous places where he referred to "my company", "my team", "my product", and "my plan." It bummed me out. I know the people on "his team" and they are working their asses off. But there was a huge amount of "we" in the effort and when I read the note, all I could think about was how demotivated I would b ...
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Via: Feld Thoughts
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
"The difference between an A team and an A team is the difference between a million in revenue and a billion in revenue." - Paul English, Kayak According to Steve Jobs, "hiring the best is your most important task". ...
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CEO/co-founder of @skillshare, investor/advisor for @collabf |
But Luke's tweet and Flowtown co-founder Dan Martell's recent article have hit on something -- that when it comes to entrepreneursim, there will be blood. ...
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Via: ZURB Blog
Editor @ZURB, Writer, Educator, and occasional Starship Com |
This is the final post I am writing in this MBA Mondays post on People. Next week we will start with the guest posts and I've lined up about a half a dozen of them. I am going to finish... ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
The founder who stuck it out and eventually grew a company to be large and successful is more wise, more battle tested and way more respected in the community than an overnight success who usually had no idea why he was successful. That person will fail to repeat it when he tries again because as an overnight viral success you don't understand what worked and what didn't. It just happens. ...
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Via: So Entrepreneurial
CEO of Seconds, Entrepreneur and Blogger |
To keep commitment high and reinforce a culture based on your objectives you need to install a systematic approach to meetings that allows people to be heard, get help, pose ideas, participate, learn, grow, move projects forward, and stay connected. ...
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Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
If the investor thinks it is, then it is. If not, no.While that may sound simplistic, it's actually accurate. It is important to look at questions like this holistically. Investors are putting their money behind an entrepreneur and his/her particular vision, team, and operating skills. If the entrepreneur believes that having office jellyfish is a Good Thing for company morale and a work environme ...
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Via: Gust Blog
Venture capitalist, entrepreneur, angel investor |
Hiring Employee #1. When is it time to hire your first employee? Who to look for? and How to go about it? ...
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Via: The Naive Optimist
I'm a Father, entrepreneur and lover of movies. Founder and |
I don't like using terms like "fire" or "terminate." To me they have too much emotion attached to them to be appropriate when splitting with an employee. I like to say that "fred was asked to leave the company" or "fred, we need you to leave the company." That works better for me and, I think, it also works better for the person who is being asked to leave the company. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
Feedback from groups of mentors can often leave founders feeling dizzy. One mentor says turn right, the other says left. Some say don't turn at all. Some say turn around and go back. While I'm sure the founders got lots of conflicting feedback, one message that kept coming out again and again was the need to focus. Many founders wanted to know what we thought about new product ideas, new potential ...
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Via: Mark MacLeod
Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup |
The interesting step to figure out, is how you setup the co-founding group both in terms of number of co-founders, titles and equity allocations. It's all too common for startups to blow up before they've left the launchpad due to disagreements and poor arrangements among the initial team. Here are some "best practices" if they can be called such in my opinion related to the founding team: ...
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Via: Nat Turner
Co-founder of Flatiron Health. Previously Co-Founder/CEO of |
I created an online persona named Pete London - a self-described JavaScript ninja - to help attract and hire the best JavaScript recruiters. While I never hired a recruiter from the experiment, I learned a ton about how to compete in today's Silicon Valley talent war. Based upon two years of non-scientific research, here's what you should know ...
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Via: Elaine Wherry
co-founder of meebo |
Many companies I meet are confused about roles and responsibilities. They're not sure the difference between product managers and project managers, or between product managers and product marketing, or between product managers and interaction designers, as just a few common examples. I have strong opinions about what roles are critical to success ...
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I'm a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, specializing |
Are you on the same team as your developers? Your business stakeholders? I hope you at least have similar goals, but how do you know if you're on the same team? ...
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Via: Johnny Holland
CTO of Site9, makers of ProtoShare. |
I hate to see employees leave our portfolio companies for many reasons, among them the loss of continuity and camaraderie and the knowledge of how hard everyone will have to work to replace them. There isn't one secret method to retain employees but there are a few things that make a big difference. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
For over two decades, I've tried to understand what drives teams. Conventional theories never work; I find that the secret sauce for a successful team has three ingredients: ...
When hiring strangers, you first have to attract people. Figure out your strengths, internal and external. Do you use cool technologies in your startup? Highlight that. Does the job offer perks, even if it's a cool location or flexible schedule? Mention that. If you run ads, make the interesting and talk to people like you would face to face. Avoid jargon. ...
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Via: HackFwd Blog
We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and |
The first step is building a hiring roadmap which should lay out the hiring plan over time by job type. This should be built into your operating plan and budget. You want to be very strategic about how you invest your scarce resources into hiring and think carefully about when you need to add resources. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
Tactical roles move and shift as the company grows. In my opinion, a founder's first tactical role is to find a complimentary co-founder. There are certainly different schools of thought on this topic, but many of the best companies in the world started with two or three people, not one. Starting a company requires an incredible amount of effort and dedication. ...
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Via: Silicon Prairie News
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I've been fascinated by different company cultures for as long as I can remember and I love asking entrepreneurs to describe the culture of their companies. Over time I've come to realize that when you break down culture descriptions you'll often find a mix of two components: values and vibe. ...
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Via: Feld Thoughts
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
Make sure you have agreement on the facts of the situation and a range of hypotheses where you don't have strong data. Don't agree to a course of action without understanding the larger goal, key risks and outcomes to be avoided, and doing at least one round of pre-mortem review where you agree on the most likely causes of failure Whenever an advisor suggests a particular course of action get an e ...
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Via: Sean Murphy
New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome |
This is the third post in the MBA Mondays series on People. The number of people you have in your company at any time is a very important part of getting the company building process right. Too many and you will slow things down, burn through too much cash, and increase management overhead for no real benefit. Too few and you will be resource constrained and unable to grow as fast as you'd like. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
One of the most vexing problems entrepreneurs face is where to find strong talent for their companies. The kind of people you want to hire for your company are in short supply and they are rarely out looking for a job. You have to go find them and recruit them to join your team. But where to look? ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
At this point, it's probably not difficult to understand why MBAs carry little credibility in startup world. So why am I even asking the question? I think we have thrown the babies out with the bathwater. More specifically, we've thrown the outstanding talent out with the bad behavior of an old, irrelevant sub group. ...
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Via: Bhorowitz
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Companies are not people. But they are comprised of people. And the people side of the business is harder and way more complicated than building a product is. You have to start with culture, values, and a committment to creating a fantastic workplace. You can't fake these things. They have to come from the top. They are not bullshit. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
It's great to dream big, but your startup needs a laser focus in the beginning to get market and investor attention. Google did it with search engines, Apple did it with a personal computer, and even Wal-Mart did it through low prices. A business plan I saw a while back to combine all the good features of several popular social networks on one site does not do it. ...
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Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro |
To get started, be clear what culture to learn about. In a large institution, there may be big differences across departments. Cultures also can be moving targets. Large institutions may change with their environment. In start-ups, expect everything to be different a year later. ...
Starting a new technology company is exciting. Since the founders have their energies fully focused on new technologies and innovations that promise to change the world, there is little time left for them to think about creating the right culture for the company. Hence, more often than not, the company's culture takes after the styles and personalities of the founders. ...
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Via: Venture Beat
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It's one thing to read posts from founders and investors dispensing advice on the particulars of building a team and setting company culture. It's another to have them look you in the eyes and share their experiences in their own words. This video provides the latter in a direct and concise way that you can feel. Not required, but definitely worth your time to look into their eyes ...
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Via: Bryce DOT VC
VC, Dad |
Anyone looking to get a job in a startup learn about how to be effective at interviewing for a job. Feel free to weigh in if you have other "Stop, Don't, Nevers" or "Pleases" ...
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Via: Feld Thoughts
President & COO Gnip. Organizer of Startup CEO Lunch. Snow |
It's not enough to focus on vision and mission. If things are taking off then your team might stick around while the times are good. But if things go bad (and let's face it, they always do), your team will only stick around if you have aligned their passions and values with yours. In so doing, the opportunity cost equation will have them sticking around and making things right as part of your team ...
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Via: Mark MacLeod
Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup |
The questioning (negative) press about startup accelerators and incubators isn't going to stop... Startup founders: If you want to maximize the value of mentors in an accelerator, then it's 100% up to you to do so. ...
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Via: Instigator Blog
VP Product @GoInstant. Partner @YearOneLabs. Ex-CEO/Founder |
I've just returned from mentoring start-ups at Springboard London. What a cohort this year, with powerful ideas and strong teams. Springboard is a unique beast that has pioneered accelerators across Europe. But for all the fanfare, most accelerator programmes are flawed. The main problem is their so-called mentoring system. ...
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Via: THE KERNEL
Alex is the founder of @42press (A matchmaking platform for |
I'm not sure when it happened. Maybe it comes with the territory. Or perhaps with the "tech bubble". It could have been the billion dollar valuations; or a secret dinner at Bin 38. I wish I knew. I wish that the exact moment that becoming an advisor to a company became hip. ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
CEO and founder of @graphicly. Startup advisor. Animal lover |
Instagram didn't rush to Android. They also didn't do video. They were truly excellent at what they did do. What do you want to excel at? How will today's "toe in the water" initiatives distract you or take your management's time or attention off of your core business? How likely is your, "won't take too much time" initiative to come back and bite you in the butt? ...
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Via: Cloudave
2x entrepreneur. Sold both companies (last to salesforce.com |
"Soft culture matters as much as hard numbers. And if your company's culture is to mean anything, you have to hang - publicly - those in your midst who would destroy it." ...
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Via: Usman Sheikh
Co-Founder of IDENTIFI. On a mission to get the right people |
Fred Destin wrote a fantastic blog post recently on how to be a good startup mentor. It made me think a great deal about how I mentor startups, where I'm effective, and where I could improve. As Fred notes, "good mentoring is hard." He's absolutely right. I'm currently mentoring a number of companies inside of FounderFuel (a Montreal-based startup accelerator.) I also ...
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Via: Instigator Blog
VP Product @GoInstant. Partner @YearOneLabs. Ex-CEO/Founder |
Last week I was in a meeting with 22 people. I calculated the average salary as $150k per annum, which then translated into an hourly rate of $75. The meeting went for 5 hours. The cost of this meeting was then $8250. I don't care how big or wealthy the companies involved are, this is a lot of money. ...
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Trying to create. www.stevesammartino.com |
Setting the early equity split in stone is one of the biggest mistakes founders can make. With their confidence in their startup and themselves, their passion for their work and their mission, and their desire not to harm the fragile dynamic within the nascent founding team, co-founders tend to plan for the best that can happen. ...
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Via: Startup Lessons
Trying to change how startups are built. |
I've been invited to join as startup as employee #1. They're giving me a salary and an OK stock grant, but I want more stock. I have $95,000 saved from a previous exit. I don't need the money in savings because I've been making $150/hour as a consultant so my "plan B" is fine. Should I invest my $95k at a $1m valuation to bring my total stock allocation into the double-digits? Or should I keep th ...
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Via: A Smart Bear
Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me! |
I've written a bunch of posts over the years about how I manage my Board at Return Path. And I think part of having awesome Board members is managing them well - giving transparent information, well organized, with enough lead time before a meeting; running great and engaging meetings; mixing social time with business time; and being a Board member yourself at some other organization so you see t ...
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Via: AVC
Founder and CEO of email deliverability company Return Path. |
Here's the thing about startups: from the outside looking in, they seem sexy and fun. But once, you work for a startup, it doesn't take long to realize they're also all-consuming. Working for a startup is not a 9 to 5, punch the clock job. It can be a 24/7 thing. This is one of the reasons why I think it makes sense to offer every startup employee the opportunity to have a stake in the action ...
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Via: Mark Evans Tech
Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad, |
Question: I am one of three founders of a company. Up until now we have been bootstrapping the company from our own funds and working part time on the company while having full time jobs. One of us will be transitioning to the first full time paid employee of the company. The question is, does being the first full-time paid employee affect that founder's equity in the company? ...
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Via: Ask The VC
I'm a managing director at Foundry Group. I live in Boulder, |
One of the first tough decisions that startup founders have to make is how to allocate or split the equity among co-founders. The easy answer of splitting it equally among all co-founders, since there is minimal value at that point, is usually the worst possible answer, and often results in a later startup failure due to an obvious inequity. ...
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Via: Gust Blog
Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro |
"Oh, that's not my job," is the sound of doom. Maybe not imminent doom, but doom indeed. It's the magic inflection point when a company becomes too big (even if only psychologically) for any single employee to give a rat's ass about job numero uno: Making shit work. No profession is immune. You can have designers who oh-thats-not-my-job to get the JavaScript they w ...
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Creator of Ruby on Rails, Partner at 37signals, Co-author of |
It wasn't long into the conversation when she mentioned she would soon have a lawyer draw up a Non-Disclosure Agreement regarding the project, at which point I had to interject. "Ah, let me stop you right there for a sec and let you know this up front: I will almost never sign an NDA." ...
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Via: Swombat on Startups
Cofounder of GrantTree and Woobius, Blogger @ http://swombat |
Today I'm going to address two concepts that surprise people every time, end up generating lots of head nods, then usually don't happen. These suggestions clearly fit into the art of the board more than the science. And it’s the unwillingness to depart from traditional norms by those around the table that stop them from happening. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
Over the past year, a disease thought dormant since 2001 has become active again in London's Tech City. Symptoms include the promiscuous abuse of words such as "senior", "executive" and "international" and feigned embarrassment at the intergalactic grandeur of the sufferer's job title. ...
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Via: THE KERNEL
Journalist. Founder & Editor-in-Chief, @KernelMag. Advisor t |
Your company culture is the foundation on which everything you do rests. Your culture acts as an unwritten set of rules that drives behavior and cohesion across the company. Cohesive, insular cultures are more resilient and can withstand shocks to it (e.g. pivoting multiple times) as well as can be extremely motivational / draw out the best in people ...
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Via: Eladgil
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Companies change. Products evolve. Approaches get thrown out the window. The centrifugal force alone of that kind of rapid development is enough to throw anyone off center. Throughout my experience, one guiding rule on team building in fast-moving companies has emerged: hire people, not skills. ...
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Via: David Cancel
Entrepreneur. Chief Product Officer at @HubSpot. Previously |
There are a number of reasons why startups must carefully consider their leadership style: the right leadership style can help employees and stakeholders thrive on change; it can encourage an open and learning culture; and most of all, it can help you to retain your best people. ...
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Via: HackFwd Blog
We're experienced tech entrepreneurs looking to support and |
Vesting in general (and founder vesting in particular) is an oft-misunderstood tool that has a tendency to really screw up young companies. There are some deep misconceptions at work here that often cause founders all sorts of grief. Most of it comes from the simple fact that stock grants are, at their heart, a crude hack to avoid taxes. Vesting is a hack to the hack - and one almost every fo ...
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Via: Dan Shapiro
Google acquired @sparkbuy, so I now work on www.google.com/a |
As with most things, there are philosophical differences in the approach to founder equity. One camp believes that founder equity should never be evenly split because it can result in stalemates, which can kill a company fast. The other camp believes that fairness should prevail and if an even split seems fair, then it’s appropriate. ...
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Via: Daily Muse
Start-up and tech lawyer; aspiring craft distiller |
Most companies don't have a serious, repeatable interviewing process for hiring. Instead they wing it, bringing people in for interviews, asking a few questions, turning it into a fireside chat, and then hoping for the best. In my experience that's not good enough. At Standout Jobs (2007-2010) we hired some great people. I still consider them friends today, but more importantly they’ve all gon ...
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Via: Instigator Blog
VP Product @GoInstant. Partner @YearOneLabs. Ex-CEO/Founder |
Hiring your first employee is a huge step for your start-up—and a hugely important one. So how do you pick the right person to help take your company to the next level? ...
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Via: Daily Muse
Building @ReWorkJobs: Helping talented professionals find me |
One of the greatest assets an entrepreneur can have is an Advisory Board. And the best part is that it costs very little. The "right" Advisory Board members contribute invaluable guidance and advice and provide access to networks of industry, target audience and financing resources. ...
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Via: Bostinnovation
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When most organizations design new work processes, they assume that team members will make the best possible use of them to improve team performance. That is, they assume that team members will act rationally. In most cases, this assumption is wrong. ...
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Francesca Gino is an Associate Professor in the Negotiation, |
Behaviors travel across the organization through copying and imitation. And when business leaders change the way they work and communicate, it'll hopefully spread like an epidemic and everyone else will eventually follow. Then, we can have a more meaningful "humanize the brand" conversation. ...
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Via: Edelman Digital
SVP, Social Business Planning @edelmandigital. Hustler. Lake |
I have nothing against hiring for the right reason--when it is clear that doing so will advance critical path quicker and/or with higher probability. When that's clear I've extolled (and am practicing) inbound hiring; when it isn't clear I think the right answer is not hiring until it is clear. ...
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Via: Gabriel Weinberg
Founder, DuckDuckGo. Angel investor. Family guy. |
People who have not started a company often do not realize how hard and painful the very early, raw days, of a startup can be. This has lead to one of the fallacies I frequently hear - early employees "take on as much risk and work just as hard as a company's founders, but don't get the same rewards". ...
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Via: Eladgil
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Strong corporate culture starts from the top with the co-founders. If the co-founders don’t emphasize corporate culture it'll take on a life of its own, even more so than it already does. As the company grows, middle management will drive corporate culture if it isn't pushed from the top, and the outcome can be fine ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
I've been developing software since age 12. Building great product teams has become second nature to me. So when a friend of mine yesterday at Facebook and another friend last week at Salesforce asked me how I put teams together, I had to think hard about the answer. ...
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Via: vcdave
Investor, operator, and entrepreneur |
Sean Ellis had an interesting model as an outsourced VP, Marketing. He would join full time but be focused on the initial phases. Once a product was launched and an initial user base built, he would hire his replacement and move on. I like that for core areas like product and marketing. ...
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Via: Mark MacLeod
Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup |
I was recently thinking about what would a minimal, initial team for a software startup comprise of. Imagine you have a brilliant idea for a startup and you have some funds to hire an initial team. But like most smart entrepreneurs, you want to hire a minimal team first and only expand late Possibly related posts (automagically generated):Beautiful Design by JayAppointment Reminde ...
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Via: Paras Chopra
Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast |
I think hiring Engineers is harder. I personally had to go through the Gnomes problem while at Plaxo and logic problems while interviewing for an internship at Goldman (wth was I thinking), and I hated every minute of it. So, now I take a more practical approach. When I interview engineers, I get in front of a white board and ask the person to build me a link-shortening service with APIs. ...
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Via: TK's weblog
I make simple software that helps people communicate better. |
How many times have you heard this from a potential recruit or student looking for a job at a startup? It's scary that people think that will work or that that's an actual job. The other one I hear a lot is "I want to do strategic partnerships" or "I want to manage projects". ...
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Via: Nat Turner
Co-founder of Flatiron Health. Previously Co-Founder/CEO of |
Every company should have a Board Of Directors. At the start it can simply be a one person board consisting of the founder. But it should not stay that way for long. Because if you are your own board, you won't get any of the benefits that come with having a board. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
One of the things I'm seeing more and more of lately is startups raising entire rounds from either (a) a group of angel investors and/or (b) relatively uninvolved VC’s. The result of this is a fragmented investor group, often no board being created, and in general a bunch of people who are watching on the sidelines but no one investor greatly incentivized to be involved. ...
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Via: Nat Turner
Co-founder of Flatiron Health. Previously Co-Founder/CEO of |
There's no magic bullet for hiring programmers. But I can share advice on a few techniques that I've seen work, that I've written about here and personally tried out over the years. ...
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Via: Coding Horror
Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of http://stackoverflow.com an |
Recently I started reading the book Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky in attempt to find new ideas about how to run a great company... My favorite idea is the weekly project review instituted by Steve Jobs. Here's how the Apple executive team weekly project review works: ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
Being a great product leader is hard. Every organization and process is different, and in many cases your are responsible for the outcome without having the authority to enforce decisions. My recent blog post on Being a Great Product Leader was an attempt to capture the specifics of how to lead a great, cross-functional software team ...
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Via: Psychohistory
Inevitably optimistic |
Is there much disagreement in your company? I'm not talking about where to head for lunch – I mean real, passionate, fundamental disagreement on product, marketing, operations, etc. I hope so. Even more so the earlier you are in your business. Running it is a messy business. ...
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Via: Seth Levine
a little geeky. a little funny. a lot opinionated. saving |
If you are looking for a co-founder you should at least be able to talk in detail about the problem you want to tackle and your background and why it’s helpful for solving the problem if you want to energize people enough to contact you. ...
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Via: Sean Murphy
New Technology Product Introduction Focused on Early Custome |
I am surprised by how flippantly some people chose a co-founder. The two biggest reasons startups fail are running out of money and founder conflicts. This post suggests some criteria for choosing a co-founder. ...
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Via: Eladgil
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I have the benefit of seeing lots of startups pitch their teams and watching many seed-funded companies establish their early org structures. I've found that there are certain types of orgs and titles that I have a naturally visceral reaction towards. For example: - Having any more "C's" than the CEO and CTO. ...
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Via: Robgo.org
Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Founding advisor at Boundle |
Your startup finally has the financial resources to expand the team. That's both awesome, and dangerous. So here is one more filter for you to think about as you evaluate each candidate: Is your company "pre" product-market fit, or "post"? (I'm not talking about your pitch to VCs but your own honest assessment) ...
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Via: Giff Constable
MD at Neo in New York; maker, designer, entrepreneur, and ag |
What I've learned from talking with some very experienced and highly respected successful serial entrepreneurs is that there are only really two good times to raise funding. The first is when you have just an idea, and you’ve not even started to build. The second is when you have a product with good traction you can show to investors. ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
A mentor is someone with more entrepreneurial business experience than you who serves as a trusted confidante over an extended period of time, usually free of charge. Why do they do this? First and foremost as a way of giving back to their community and to society at large. ...
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Via: Bostinnovation
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I love working with people who have strong opinions and are willing to fight for them. I don't have to be right, but I do have to be convinced. I like working with people who have better ideas than mine, and can show me why. ...
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Via: Sachin
Please follow @agarwal. |
While in the midst of raising capital, you should also be recruiting top talent. That’s precisely the right time to start attracting people to the company. You’re building momentum for funding, in an effort to attract investors. You’re going after press attention, growing your network, bringing on advisors ...
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Via: Instigator Blog
VP Product @GoInstant. Partner @YearOneLabs. Ex-CEO/Founder |
As Start-Ups and Entrepreneurs are popping up with the help of great local systems such as Start Up Weekend and 5X5 Night the trends for office environments are changing also. A quick search online for some of the most creative office environments, such as Etsy.com and Facebook, show laid back, hipped out, collaborative spaces where your imagination is more important than your punch card. ...
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Via: Bostinnovation
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The Crucible of Leadership - Work is difficulty and drama, a high-stakes game in which our identity, our self-esteem, and our ability to provide are mixed inside us in volatile, sometimes explosive ways... Work is where we can make ourselves; work is where we can break ourselves. David Whyte, Crossing The Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. ...
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Via: AVC
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WooThemes has become a Mothership. A team of almost 20, more than 150 000 users and revenues / profits that most business owners would approve of. This is fantastic of course until the engine breaks, because I'm not necessarily able to fix the engine and neither are my co-founders. ...
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Via: Adii
Entrepreneur, co-founder of WooThemes and general creator of |
Angel investors can be a Godsend… and not just because they can help fund your business. When I founded Mosaic, I spent a lot of time meeting with Angel investors and telling then about how my company helps photographer’s better access and store their photos. I did too much telling and not enough listening. I was in full sales mode. I believed it was my job to convince them that Mosaic was a ...
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Via: Bostinnovation
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So you start your business, and you get it going, and growing. If you have employees, it's likely you’re going to have to deal with firing somebody. Here are my some of my thoughts (based on actual experience; not theoretical) on that subject. Having to fire somebody who's been trying hard and failing... ...
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Via: Tim Berry
Founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software; entrepreneur, bu |
Very few company founders start out with management experience, so they tend to make it up as they go along. Sometimes they try to reinvent management from first principles. More often than not, they manage their startups the way that they've seen management work on TV and in movies. I'll bet more entrepreneurs model their behavior on Captain Picard from Star Trek than any nonfiction human. ...
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Via: AVC
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Most exits today are MnAs instead of IPOs and most M ...
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Via: Forbes
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Best Friends, Buddies, and Co-Workers - Since there is no way I am going to be more insightful than Matt or JLM about management process, I am going to go through three early stages of company growth and describe some of the management challenges I’ve faced at each. ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
There are lots of different “secrets” for startups success There’s the lean approach, minimal viable products (MVP), bootstrapping, crowdsourcing, strategic seed capital, etc. But in working closely with startups, here’s a key ingredient few people talk about: lunch. Yup, lunch. Think about it. Lunch is not just about nutritional intake, it’s about community and colle ...
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Via: Mark Evans Tech
Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad, |
Recently a team member was lamenting about how long it was taking us to fill a position. We had interviewed a number of qualified candidates, some even getting to the final stage of the process. Internally, I had to keep reiterating that these candidates were very strong but not perfect for us. Frustrating? Yes. The [...] ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
Sprouter is an amazing community of some of the top startup folks in our industry that make themselves available. I’ve been answering questions for over a year and I just realized that I’m over 1200 questions. Crazy! Why do I … Continue reading → ...
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Via: Maple Butter
Canadian living in San Francisco. Founder of http://Clarity. |
Understanding the importance of core values is something that I have been fascinated with ever since I read Jim Collins book, Good to Great. Core values form the foundation for businesses that persevere through time and major changes. An apt analogy is that of the growth of a tree; some trees have a quick growth [...] ...
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Via: Usman Sheikh
Co-Founder of IDENTIFI. On a mission to get the right people |
Congratulations, you have built a prototype. Got it to work. Debugged it. Even sold a few copies. Have some real customers. Now you are ready to scale up and make some real money. You have crossed that Rubicon from having an idea to having a product and customers. Now you have to build an organization, a real company, to manage the entire process. Or your fledging little company has ...
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Via: AVC
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The following is a guest post from John Greathouse. John is an entrepreneur and investor. He currently blogs at Infochachkie where he provides practical startup advice. You may not realize it, but your adVenture's Core Team, the senior executives who make the key decisions which drive the company's strategic direction, is akin to a primitive tribe. Primitive tribes an ...
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Via: On Startups
Entrepreneur. Founder/CTO @HubSpot inbound marketing and st |
Having learned from past mistakes, the CEO of Otelic, Marcus Tallhamn, created a set of “Value Alignment Questions†before starting his current company and decided to share them in the hopes that it’ll eliminate a lot of “WTF?!†moments. ...
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Via: Gigaom
Scientific American Imported from Sweden via France |
One of the major challenges that we’ve gone through in the last year is figuring out how to stay highly productive as our team grew from 5 to 12 people. While we’re still early on in this process, I thought I’d share some of the lessons that we’ve learned so far.Communication between 12 people is very different from what it was between 6 people, which is really differe ...
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Via: Savage Thoughts
Co-founder and CEO of @wistia. My obsessions include: market |
A couple of weeks ago, David Crow had a post in StartupNorth about the importance and challenging that startups face when it comes to hiring. The post came to mind during a conversation with a startup entrepreneur looking to aggressively hire. A key point was how hiring has to be seen as a strategic rather [...] ...
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Via: Mark Evans Tech
Startup marketer, conference organizer, hockey player, dad, |
Have you heard this? It’s not mine, I think it's sort of common knowledge: If the decisions were made by consensus, every wall would be painted beige. As my business grew up from entrepreneurial to stable, we had to redo our decision process. Early on, we sat around, a few of us, discussed and decided. [...] ...
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Via: Tim Berry
Founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software; entrepreneur, bu |
Talent in Companies There used to be a long-term economic and psychological pact between employee and employer that guaranteed lifetime employment in exchange for lifelong loyalty; this pact has been replaced by a performance-based, short-term contract that’s perpetually up for … Continue reading → ...
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Via: Ben Casnocha
Entrepreneur & Author |
Culture Management is essential for growth stage companies Our company has been through many cycles and products throughout the years, but it’s the passion and bond between teammates that have always carried on with us. That will continue to carry on no matter what size we grow to. We are a team, and we are a [...] ...
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Via: Yu-Kai Chou
RewardMe Co-Founder. Gamification Expert and Lecturer/Speake |
Every startup with any traction quickly reaches a point where they need to hire employees to grow the business. Unfortunately, this always happens when pressures are the highest, and business processes are ill-defined. At this point you need superstars and versatile future executives, yet your in-house hiring processes and focus are at their weakest. The result is a host of hiring mistakes that s ...
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Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro |
Infusing Your Business With Platform ThinkingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Infusing Your Business With Platform ThinkingThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with Phil Simon (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen) I’ve been talking about this idea of a bu ...
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Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
In a prior post about what it’s like to be a VC  I made the claim that even if an investor has operating experience, that experience gets stale after a few years. This led to the following question in my comments: “You mention that operational skills begin to decline 2 years into the job. If this is [...] ...
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Via: Robgo.org
Cofounder of NextView Ventures. Founding advisor at Boundle |
This is the third and final post on the subject of the management team. The final phase of company development I am going to cover is "building the business." Building the business largely means building the management team. They are... ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
I was recently talking with a friend who's thinking about launching his startup. He told me he was looking for a co-founder, and asked me what I thought was the best way to find designers with an entrepreneurial fibre. I suggested maybe he shouldn't look for a co-founder, and focus on finding a freelancer instead. ...
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Via: SachaGreif.com
Designer from Paris, now living in Osaka. Creator of @YoFoly |
Today’s EO Accelerator quarterly education day was on people and more specifically accountability. As part of the material there was a lengthy discussion on results only work environments (www.goROWE.com). ROWE is the idea that results are what matter, not people being in the office from 8am – 5pm daily. Here are some tips when considering [...] ...
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Via: David Cummings
10-20 tweets per week. Tech entrepreneur who enjoys family, |
I recently received an email asking some advice about co-founders, specifically about whether a 50/50 ownership split makes sense for a startup. This is certainly a topic which has had heated discussion many times previously. So why would I choose to add even more noise to this debate? Well, in the past few years I’ve had experiences of failed co-founder partnerships and with my latest s ...
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Via: joel.is
Founder of @bufferapp, a smarter way to share. Focused on th |
What Is Shared CultureThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing What Is Shared CultureThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing I wish I could give you a crisp definition of what the word culture, with regard to business, really means. It’s a tricky word that finds its way into most discussions regarding the workplace these days. Like so many things, it’s hard to describe, but you [...] ...
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Via: Duct Tape Marketing
Small business marketing consultant, speaker and author of D |
In my experience, exceptionally bright, driven, visionary people commonly share a particular attribute: a high need for control. These characteristics are also hallmarks of the startup founder, who brings maniacal focus, evangelical passion and a penchant for multi-tasking to the table. As they bring on co-founders and early employees, you can often find the founder speaking with investors, workin ...
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Big Data VC at IA Ventures. Data junkie. Quant dude. Basebal |
So you've built and launched your product. It is well received. You've acheived "product market fit" and it is time to get more users or customers. You've graduated from the "building product" stage and have entered the "building usage" phase.... ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
Success is a beautiful thing. We all want it, because it’s the undisputed champion in measuring our professional selves. We know it’s hard to get, and that’s what makes it all the more satisfying. We cherish it, because we know what it’s like to fail (because we all do). So, when it happens, there’s the part of us that wants to strut around like a peacock. I did i ...
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Via: TerryStarbucker
Writer, Husband, Friend, Entrepreneur. I write about (and h |
What a great week I had last week. On Tuesday I attended the Splunk Worldwide User Conference. On Thursday I attended the SAY Media all hands meeting. (On Wednesday I had board meetings for StumbleUpon and Ebates -- they're building awesome companies as well, but that has nothing to do... ...
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David Hornik is an investor at August Capital, the author of |
The first stage of a startup, what I call the Building Product stage is management light. The team should be small. We have portfolio companies like del.icio.us and duck duck go where the Building Product stage was accomplished by one... ...
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Via: AVC
I am a VC |
Great entrepreneurs have long been the epitome of people with a great work ethic. But many complain to me that it is becoming harder and harder to find team members and employees who demonstrate and live the same culture. Somewhere along the way, work ethic seems to have been replaced by a pervasive sense of entitlement, especially in the younger generations. As the new year starts, now is the ti ...
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Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro |
“The days of leading countries or companies via a one-way conversation are over. The old system of ‘command and control’ — using carrots and sticks — to exert power over people is fast being replaced by ‘connect and collaborate’ — to generate power through people.†- Dov Seidman When I became an executive for the first time back in ...
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Via: TerryStarbucker
Writer, Husband, Friend, Entrepreneur. I write about (and h |
Individuals play the game, but teams beat the odds SEAL Team saying Over the last 40 years Technology investors have learned that the success of startups are not just about the technology but “it’s about the team.†We spent a year screwing it up in our Lean LaunchPad classes until we figured out it was [...] ...
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Via: Steve Blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford, |
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