One of the most challenging hurdles for early entrepreneurs is raising money. To get funded, you need to do a lot of prep work: you need a great vision, savvy initial product development, thorough market understanding, thoughtful execution, a kick-ass team, and luck.
A critical part of fundraising is connecting with people; both the people who will help you along the road, and the people who will actually write a check.
Posted in Founders
One of the best ways I’ve found to create high-functioning teams is to interview well. (The other is to create a company & culture that great people voraciously want to join, so that when you find someone terrific, they say “yes.”)
There are four things I want to know about a candidate before I make them an offer: Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
We’re seeing a new type of entrepreneur starting companies lately; they are approaching their company culture with almost as much passion as the business idea itself, with the goal of creating the type of organization that they will be most happy being a part of.
Over the past several months, I’ve been working with my colleague and fellow business coach Dale Larson to try to describe this phenomenon. We’ve tested it out with a variety of entrepreneurs, VCs and journalists in meetings and at parties, and heard lots of yes. Here is our first formal presentation of these ideas.
Posted in Company Culture, Startup Happiness, Uncategorized
This week at the Web 2.0 Summit, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook talked about four values that he’s made a key part of his company’s DNA: move fast, be bold, take risks, and don’t worry about getting everything right.
Posted in Company Culture, People
Struggling with a 5-page To Do list? Wondering where to start? How to prioritize? The list often turns into a blur of competing priorities, and it’s overwhelming to look at it all at once. Here’s a trick: pick a theme for the week.
In my last post about To Do lists, I talked about how people get stuck looking at the same To Do items week after week, and how to fix that. This post focuses on how to make sense of the sheer volume of possible things to do as an entrepreneur.
Posted in Uncategorized
Failcon Investor Panel
Liveblogging a panel led by Adriana Gardella (NYT), with Esther Dyson (EdVenture Holdings), Cindy Padnos (Illuminate Ventures), Manu Kumar (K9 Ventures), and Guy Hirsch (SayHired) at Failcon:
When you found that one of your entrepreneurs was failing, what did you do? Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
“One day, a sign appeared on a soda fridge saying: Drinks cost Microsoft millions of dollar a year. Sodas are your perk at work. Don’t bring them home.”
It turns out the “soda incident” was the most commented-on part of Philip Su’s goodbye letter to Microsoft. Why?
Posted in Company Culture, Startup Happiness
