Leadership
"Phew, we sure have a lot of challenges right now," the frustrated CEO mused after completing a day at the annual planning offsite. "While my executive team is pretty solid day to day, they're too in-the-box. They're not creative. They never
Leadership
I'm always looking for better ways to distill strategy. My favorite strategy author is Richard Rumelt, who wrote Good Strategy, Bad Strategy and the more recent but less acclaimed follow-on, The Crux. I love Rumelt's work for two reasons: * He takes a wrecking ball to
Leadership
I spoke a while back on go-to-market scaling at the 10X CEO Accelerate conference in Deer Valley to about eighty startup CEOs. I dropped a few references to popular business books into the material (e.g., Blue Ocean Strategy, Inside the Tornado, The Crux), as I often do,
Finance
It's been a tough year. We're currently in peak planning season for 2024. With capital scarce and expensive, with companies increasingly trapped in Schrödinger's startup paradox, and with more startups than ever focused on positive cashflow and The Rule of 40, it's
Communications
After a negative customer experience on a recent fishing trip an old friend of mine said, "I judge people by the quality of their apologies." Interesting idea, I thought. This led to a discussion about the apology given to us by the proprietor of the ranch at which
Leadership
"Is a dream a lie if don't come true?" -- Bruce Springsteen The River was one of my favorite songs in college and whenever I listen to the above line near the end, I start thinking about Silicon Valley. Consider three entrepreneurs. Founder 1: Elizabeth Holmes. Was
Leadership
To adapt Julius Caesar's famous opening line of the Gallic Wars: marketing as a whole is divided in three parts. * Product marketing (prodmkt), responsible in a word, for the message and how well it resonates with customers in the market [1]. * Demand generation (demandgen), responsible in a word,
Boards
I'll be speaking next month in Barcelona on the first day of SaaStr Europa, held at the International Convention Center on June 7th and 8th. My presentation is scheduled at 11:25AM on June 7th and entitled The Top 5 Scale-Up Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.
Enterprise
About twenty years ago, before I ran two startups as CEO and served as product-line general manager, I went through an intrapreneurship phase, where I was convinced that big companies should try to act like startups. It was a fairly popular concept at the time. * I got all excited
Leadership
I remember one time having an argument that went like this: Joe: I think there's enough detail in there. Dave: No, there's not. There's no underpinnings, there's no rigor in the thought process. Remember, David Ogilvy always said "good writing is
Leadership
One of the hardest things about running a startup is you're never sure who to listen to. Your board members own big stakes in the company, but that doesn't automatically align them with you. Your late-stage investors want low multiples on big numbers. Your early-
Customer Success
The CEO. Thanks for reading. # # # I was tempted to stop there because I've been writing a lot of long posts lately and because I do believe the answer is that simple. First let me explain the controversy and then I'll explain my view on it. In