Metrics
"Measure or measure not. There is no try." -- My response to being called the Yoda of SaaS metrics. Just a quick post to highlight my recent appearance on the Metrics That Measure Up podcast, hosted by Ray Rike, founder and CEO of RevOps^2, a firm focused on
Marketing
Ask most startups about their go-to-market (GTM) these days and they'll give you lots of numbers. Funnel metrics. MQLs, SQLs, demos, and associated funnel conversion rates. Seen over time, cut by segment. Win/loss rates and close rates as well, similarly sliced. Maybe an ABM scorecard,
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
Management
The good people of Costanoa Ventures invited me to speak at their summit where they gather portfolio company CEOs to participate in an impressive set of sessions related to building and scaling startups. I was honored to be in the company of friends and respected colleagues like Nick Mehta and
Entrepreneurship
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by UCLA Anderson professor Richard Rumelt is by far my favorite book on strategy. In this post I'll explain why I love this book, provide an overview of Rumelt's core concepts, and offer a few thoughts on (and dare I say an
GTM
I was talking with my old friend, Mark Tice, the other day and he referred to a startup mistake as, "on his top ten list." Ever the blogger, I replied, "what are the other nine?" Mark's been a startup CEO twice, selling two companies
Marketing
Just a quick post to plug my appearance on a podcast hosted by PMM Hive, a product marketing community that was recently launched by my old friend and colleague Crispin Read, and that's already loaded with some superb product marketing content. Check it out. I'm excited
Marketing
(Revised 8/13/26) I was talking to an old friend the other day who's the marketing chief at a successful infrastructure startup. "Congratulations," I said, "I know it was a long slog, but after about a decade of groundwork it looks like things have
Career
Markets are complex. Customers are complex. Products are complex, sometimes very. Heck, the world is complex. What's a marketer to do? Great marketing is about making things simple. We do that by imposing simplicity on a complex world. We might be attacked for so doing – people might accuse
Boards
We’re announcing today that I’m joining the board of directors of Profisee, a leader in master data management (MDM). I’m doing so for several reasons, mostly reflecting my belief that successful technology companies are about three things: the people, the space, and the product. I like the
Career
So, you're thinking of taking a job at a startup, but are nervous about the risk, perhaps having trouble telling one from another, and unsure about knowing what's really important in startup success. In this post, I'll share what I consider to be a
Bubbles
Today famed venture capital podcaster and now venture capitalist at StrideVC, Harry Stebbings, released a new episode of the Twenty Minute VC podcast with me as his guest. (iTunes version here.) Harry's interview was broad-ranging, covering a number of topics including: * Financing lessons I've learned