Blog Posts, Early, Q&A, Sales
Q: What are the most common mistakes founders make hiring their first real sales teams? A few key mistakes I see start-ups making > 50% of the time: Hiring Early…
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Blog Posts, Early, Hiring, Leadership
Ok, I know this post and its title seems like the most obvious thing in the world. But empirically, I can tell you it isn’t. Over the past years writing…
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Blog Posts, Early, Growth, Sales
No matter how well you are doing post-Initial Traction in SaaS … you can almost always do at least 10-15% better. Pretty much almost always. Because there’s almost always more…
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Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Early, Leadership
While age ultimately doesn’t matter — results do — in SaaS, starting off as younger-than-average can create some challenges in a sales- and customer-driven environment. Aaron Levie started Box at…
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Blog Posts, Early, Fundraising
If you are doing your job as CEO, you already have 1 or 2 investors that want to invest in the next round No matter when that round is —…
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Blog Posts, Early, Fundraising, Leadership, Metrics
The hardest investment rounds to price are seed rounds. They’re incredibly situationally dependent: A founder that sold her last company for $400m or IPO’d might be able to raise a…
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Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Early, Human Resources
Every one of us that are hyper-driven wants to grow our careers faster. We’re impatient. We want to learn, grow, manage more, earlier. Let me share my best hack. My…
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Blog Posts, Early, Leadership
Did you hire a good enough VP? 4 part test: – who great did they hire in the first 60 days?– did their #1 key metric improve?– did they take…
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Blog Posts, Early, Fundraising, Leadership
Worried about a bunch of VCs replacing you? You should be a little worried, probably. A ways back, a CEO that I know fairly well was fired by a VC….
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Blog Posts, Early, Fundraising, Q&A
Q: I’m a startup founder weighing multiple VC term sheets at similar valuations. How should I choose? My force-ranked list of criteria: #1. Who do I truly trust the most?…
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Blog Posts, Customer Success, Early, Q&A, Sales
Q: What did you give to your first customer of your business? Everything I could. I did 24×7 support myself. I slept with a laptop next to my bed so…
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Blog Posts, Early, SaaS Product Pricing, Sales, Sales
A curious thing happened on the way to SaaS in 2021+. Everyone seemingly became an expert in churn. Your churn rate should be 0.123909% per month. It should be net…
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Blog Posts, Early, Fundraising
Q: Is venture capital really necessary to do a start-up? Maybe it isn’t. Squarespace’s solo CEO managed to go years without taking any investment at all. It will soon be…
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Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Early, Leadership
It’s always your job to inspire the team. But, even more so once the team grows just large enough (20+?) that you don’t actually have to do everything yourself anymore….
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Blog Posts, Early, Metrics, Product, Q&A
Q: What core SaaS metrics should we obsess about? Beyond MRR growth + managing the burn rate — which really are all that matters … you should obsess over improving…
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