As the market improves, my guess is that many of you will likely be thinking about raising funding for your company. With my latest startup, I’m now a venture-backed startup founder (I’ve raised $33 million in three rounds of capital for my marketing software company). So, I’ve got some direct experience...
Ahhh...spring is in the air. The Red Sox kicked off the baseball season last night with an exciting win against the Yankees! Good times! Speaking of good (or at least improved) times...Q1 2010 is in the books. All in all, there is a lot of momentum and optimism in the air around the tech community...
I was asked by a reporter yesterday what are some of the things I most fear. When I was a child, my nightmares were that I would show up at school naked; thankfully now I usually remember to get dressed before leaving the house. But the discussion yesterday started me thinking about what are some...
Think about the team you have at your startup. In the early days it probably looks something like 3 coders, 2 marketing/business experts and 2 user experience/designers – maybe 2, 1 and 1. This “silo-ing” of skills is extremely common but what's crazy is the rigid set...
As most of you might know, the current TechStars program is going on in Boston with a fresh new roster of startups. Last year's program was a huge success with several great companies launching: oneforty, AccelGolf, Amp Idea, LangoLab, Localytics, Sensobi, TempMine, HaveMyShift, Baydin. Ever wonder...
One of the things I most love about startup companies is the ability for talent to really move the dial. At large companies, with established products and process, great talent is more likely to incrementally make an impact than dramatically make an impact. At a small startup great...
Thanks to everyone for the comments on my last post about the raison d’etre of this blog, it’s nice to start seeing a bit of community around my little grain of sand contribution to startups. In the spirit of that post, today I want to talk about the very beginning phase of a startup. I find...
Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and Fred Wilson of USV have been having a blog debate on whether entrepreneurs should pursue a "lean" or "fat" approach to building software-based startups. Horowitz - The Case for the Fat Startup; Wilson - Being Fat is Not Healthy...
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I was asked by the Client Services folks to provide some guidance on how to present more effectively to clients. Here are my “Top Ten Presentation Tips,” with an eye toward client presentation of marketing strategy and creative. 10. Have a point. Yea, sounds obvious. So what...
In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit. Failure to get...
I’ve been on both sides of the hiring equation for a number of years. I earned my recruiting MBA on the streets of the dot com era when we were challenged to aggressively compete or simply loose. It was a crazy seller’s market where companies did unusual things...
I'll never forget my first marketing class at business school. Our professor peered at us with an intense glare as he pushed back on our standard, "chip shot" comments. At one point in the class he asked the guy next to me to opine on the case we were discussing, which involved...
There is no such thing as the best or optimal vesting schedule in a startup. That doesn’t mean current vesting schedules are really good but it does mean that many of the so-called best alternatives are not much better. Unfortunately, this doesn’t prevent some people from having deep...
VentureFizz is one of the many supporters of this week's Jobnob event being held in Boston. Jobnob, originally started in the Bay Area, is making its first appearance in Boston on Wednesday, March 24th. The event is being held at Tequila Rain in Boston and starts at 4:30pm. Have some...
