Management
This post in part III in a series. Part I covers the basics of employee communications. Part II provides information on how several leading companies are handling the situation and offers specific thoughts on financial planning. This part, a set of curated links that I have found useful, was formerly
Entrepreneurship
I earned my spending money in high school and partially paid for college by working as a lifeguard and water safety instructor. Working at a lovely suburban country club you don't make a lot of saves. One day, working from the deep-end chair, I noticed two little
Leadership
I just reached out to the CEOs I work with with on this topic and figured I should also do a quick post to speak to the CEOs who follow Kellblog as well. The primary purpose of this post is to remind busy startup CEOs that an important part of
Career
In work life from time to time you may be accused of not listening. It may not be fair. You may not like it. But you'd be shocked how many people completely flub their reaction when the boss, a coworker, or a customer says, "you're
Career
When I lived in France for five years I was often asked to compare it to Silicon Valley in an attempt to explain why -- in the land of Descartes, Fourier, and Laplace, in a country where the nation's top university is a military engineering school that wraps together
Boards
Over the years I've noticed how different CEOs take different degrees of ownership and accountability when it comes to the board of directors. For example, once, after a long debate where the board unanimously approved a budget contingent on reducing proposed R&D spending from $12M to
Entrepreneurship
Who else but my old friend Jim Milbery, a founding partner at ParkerGale, could come up with a podcast called the Private Equity Funcast, complete with its own jingle and with a Thunderbirds-inspired opening? Jim and I worked together at Ingres back in the -- well “pre-Chernobyl” as Jim
Career
This is a sister post to my recent one, Career Decisions: What to Look For in a Software Startup. That piece is all about what to look for when considering taking a job at a software startup. This piece is kind of the opposite: what to look out for when
Communications
The other day I saw this tweet from my friend Nick Mehta, CEO of GainSight, and it got me thinking. It turns out that in addition to making fun music videos for company events, that Nick and I have another thing in common: we both wrestle with finding the right
Leadership
When it comes to evaluating a startup’s performance, I think there are two key, orthogonal questions that need to be examined: 1. Is the company delivering growth? 2. Is management in control of your business? Growth is the primary driver of value creation in a software startup. I’m
Communications
One day back at MarkLogic, we invited our local congresswoman, Jackie Speier, to visit our offices. Regardless of what you may think of her politics, she's an impressive person with an fascinating background including, for those with long memories, that she was the congressional aide shot five times
CEO
A few days ago, Jason Lemkin from SaaStr sent me a link to the video of my SaaStr Annual 2019 conference presentation, The Five Questions Startup CEOs Worry About. Those questions, by the way, are: 1. When do I next raise money? 2. Do I have the right team? 3.