Somewhere along the way, you and your co-founders will be faced with the need to hire your first employees. Regardless of how much funding you have for salaries (versus equity…
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Somewhere along the way, you and your co-founders will be faced with the need to hire your first employees. Regardless of how much funding you have for salaries (versus equity…
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I regularly get introduced to a career corporate execs that has an interest in mentoring or advising startups. Oftentimes, it is because the executive recently retired or is planning to…
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It royally sucks when a founding team reaches a point where they decide they can no longer work together, especially if many months or longer of hard work has already…
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Successful emergency room doctors must be highly intelligent and calm under pressure. Successful triathletes must to be goal-oriented and driven. Successful songwriters must be creative. What about entrepreneurs? Entrepreneurship is…
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You built your MVP, got it launched to the delight of some paying customers and just raised some seed funding to move to the next phase of your company’s evolution. …
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You see it all the time. A young, invincible hacker-hustler duo join together as startup co-founders to pursue a dream of becoming the next Google or Facebook. The hustler takes the CEO…
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In the earliest days of a startup venture, there are no published compensation rates or even good studies to use as guidance. That’s because each company and founder situation is…
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The title of this article suggests you’ve already decided that you need an advisor. But spend time with your co-founders discussing this to make sure you agree it is something…
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How much equity should you give to compensate an advisor? Should the shares carry any special provisions like anti-dilution or change-of-control acceleration? What about giving the advisor cash compensation? Tough…
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Startups commonly give 0.5% equity or more to attract an experienced advisor (see related article titled “Compensating an Advisor”). Sometimes after a few months they find themselves wondering if they…
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If you’ve seen my bio or LinkedIn profile, you’ll know I’ve served three stints as a CMO and roughly half of my professional career has been spent in a marketing…
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I’m a firm believer that business development activities should be focused and with a stated purpose/objective and expected return. But what most companies do is hire one or more BD…
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It’s unbelievable how many startups get into trouble not because they aren’t finding product-market fit or because their customer acquisition model is inefficient but rather because the co-founders have some…
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For years I’ve helped friends and former business colleagues with their job search. If I find out they are thinking about working for a startup or early stage company, I…
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