Career
Many concepts in Silicon Valley are defined from the point of view of the venture capitalist (VC), not the employee or founder. For example, the term "exit" is a misnomer when seen from the employee point of view. An IPO is usually anything but an exit for executives
Marketing
"If a bird walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck." -- James Whitcomb Riley Many marketers are in such a hurry to talk about topical issues that they forget the duck test: if it walks like a
Entrepreneurship
I've realized that one of things I do for (or should I say, to) early-stage startups is detect whether they have a real or a faux focus (pronounced fo-focus) -- the latter being a focus that appears to be real at first, but is in fact fake.
Growth
Just a quick follow-up post to share the video from the recent Balderton event I did on opening new markets as the key to durable, efficient growth. I previously shared the slides here. Now, thanks to the marketing team at Balderton, I've been able to embed a
Growth
Just a quick post to share the slides from the webinar I did with Balderton Capital this morning entitled Opening New Markets, The Key to Efficient Growth in 2024 and Beyond. Thanks to everyone who attended and/or submitted questions at the event. And thanks to the Balderton team for
Growth
Just a quick post to highlight a Balderton Capital webinar I'm doing this week on Wednesday, March 20th at 8:00 AM Pacific, 3:00 PM UK, and 4:00 PM CET. The registration link is here. Since I've heard of a few problems with it,
Entrepreneurship
Just a quick post to highlight my third and most recent appearance on 20VC with the amazing Harry Stebbings (Spotify, YouTube). It is always, always a pleasure to speak with Harry. He's such an effective interviewer that you quickly get into detail and stories that others miss. So
Customer Success
Thanks to Frank Slootman, blowing up customer success (CS) teams is quite in vogue. "We don’t believe companies should have a separate customer success function. The first thing we did when Frank joined Snowflake was we blew up the customer success function. You are either going to do
AI
Well, it’s that time of year again, time for my annual predictions post, now in its tenth incarnation. As per my custom, let’s review my 2023 predictions before presenting those for 2024. Please remember that I do these for fun and fun alone. See my FAQ for my
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,
Boards
I love writing and speaking about board meetings. Why? Because: * They're critically important. Board meetings can make or break careers. * You get little to no instruction on how to do them. Most training for CEOs and execs is of the "throw them in the deep end of
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