Q&ATwo meta-thoughts: First, you have to decide if you are going to “hold the line on burn” after a fundraising. If you plan to — tell everyone. They will get…
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Q&AProbably deals where the founders made > $1b each. The data here isn’t my strength, but let’s make a partial list for U.S. start-ups pre-IPO: WhatsApp Founders, $5.5b (+-) each…
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Q&ARequired is a strong word … but the answer is Yes. Everyone can benefit from leadership training. Especially, the folks so senior that traditional training doesn’t cover them. Who trains…
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Q&AProbably not for a little while. We tried this in the beginning, but there just was too much “sales” friction for an individual vs. a team. We want to get…
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Because you save a lot. You save a lot on dilution, and a bit (but not THAT much) on fees. When you IPO, you generally sell 15%-20%+ of the company,…
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Q&ATraining. Training the single most important factor you can do to increase sales team performance: Onboarding properly. Initial co-calling and co-selling. Building collateral the team can use. Creating scripts for…
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Q&ARoughly, when Demand Gen is no longer the core function of marketing. This also often is the time when you are ready to expand beyond a core small, effective, efficient…
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Q&AThey aren’t as dependable. This doesn’t mean they are “worse”. It does mean be careful how you use them. This is issue #1. A few like Salesforce Ventures and GV…
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Blog Posts, Exit Strategy, Q&AWhy do founders leave after their companies are acquired? There are many nuanced answers, but in the short and medium term, it’s incentives. Acquirers use 3 incentives to get founders…
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Blog Posts, Customer Success, Early, Q&A, Sales StrategyAs you scale your salesteam, unless you are very careful whom you hire and how you train them, incentives being what they are in variable compensation, some negative behavior will…
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Q&AI struggled with this myself a bit in the early days. In the end, there is a simple answer: the CEO is the one responsible for the entire plan. Everything….
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SAFEs are actually surprisingly investor-friendly in several ways. They are very founder-friendly in that they transfer no ownership, votes, or other “say” in the business initially. Investors have almost no…
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The math likely doesn’t pencil out — way, way too many cars to sell. But he did sort of do this with their first car — the Tesla Roadster. Tesla…
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Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Early, Q&AThe best advice I ever got from one of my angel investors: Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I went to meet with one of my angels and mentors when things…
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Q&AWell, sort of. Certainly, this is one benefit you get from using Salesforce or Pipedrive — data doesn’t walk out on their laptop as much as the old days. A…
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