Entrepreneurshit. The Blog Post on What It’s Really Like.
It’s 4.50am. Sunday morning. And I couldn’t sleep. I have much on my mind since I just returned from a week on the road. 5 days. 3 cities. Late night Mexican food. Beers. Airports. Delays. I left on a Sunday. I had to miss a full day with my family, camping in the mountains. I [...]
Why if You are a VC You Should be Insanely Rich
Ok – First, I know some folks are going to challenge this math, but I think it’s basically correct. Second, being a VC is hard. Not always 100 hours-a-week hard work, but hard to do well. But — investing in someone else’s hard work is obviously far easier than founding and inventing something yourself. With [...]
The Farther You Go, The Tougher It Gets
Something many entrepreneurs don’t realize is that the farther you go with your startup, the tougher it gets.When you start with an idea, it’s easy to be excited. Since it only exists in your head, it morphs every day, possibly even with every convers…
Weekend Review: Steve Jobs By Walter Isaacson
Just finished reading the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and thought I will add few thoughts here. Two words that came out of my mind after finishing the book: Filthy Genius I saw many reviews that talked about possible bias in favor of Jobs but I never spotted the bias. In fact, I started reading the [...]
One Surefire Way to Screw up Your Lifestyle Business
Some businesses are designed – maybe even destined – to be owner operated. Industry parlance often refers to these businesses as lifestyle businesses. Wikipedia has a nice definition. They are typically small, profitable, generate cash and enable their owner-operator to sustain a well-above average lifestyle. In some circumstances, they may even make their owner-operator filthy [...]
Talk With Everyone
Reading Mark Suster‘s excellent post, “Why You Need To Take 50 Coffee Meetings” brought to mind one of my personal corollaries: Talk with everyone. I’m a relatively small-time investor. It’s a documented fact, and I don’t try to hide it. But that means that I need to deliver value beyond money if I’m going to [...]
Startup Mantra: Hire Fast, Fire Fast
I have often said that what separates real entrepreneurs from pundits and bystanders is a bias towards getting things done versus over analyzing things. My credo has always been JFDI. It’s the hardest thing to teach people who come out of big companies, out of conservative jobs. At the big consulting firms, investment banks and [...]
Nothing Matters But Traction
Nothing matters but traction. It makes everything easy, but it is the hardest to accomplish.Too many entrepreneurs focus on working around a lack of traction when they would be better off using that energy to get traction.A common occurrence is that an…
What Should You Do with Your Crappy Little Services Business?
There’s a line of thinking in Silicon Valley that you should build product businesses rather than services businesses. This thinking is largely driven by the venture capital industry (and subsequently Wall Street) who are in search of high margin, highly scalable businesses. It’s nearly impossible to get a services company financed by VCs. You’re small fish.
9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month
I’m a very big proponent of the “lean startup movement” as espoused by Steve Blank & Eric Ries. The part of the movement that resonates the most with me (in my words) is that entrepreneurs should keep their capital expenditures really low while they’re experimenting with their product and determining whether there is a [...]
From product to service: stealing first base?
The other day I read a post about how someone in a poor country is making a living by taking his washing machine across town (rather: slum) and selling it “by the wash”, thus turning a product into a service. The rationale in this specific case is cheap washing machines from abroad pushing existing ones [...]
8 Questions to Help Decide if You Should be Raising Money Now
A year ago I blogged about one of my most common mantras that applies to sales, biz dev & fund raising alike: “Time is the Enemy of all Deals.” When times are really good for fund raising many teams delay to maximize their valuation. Sometimes this pays off, other times it doesn’t. So how should [...]
Get Inside the Mind of an Angel Investor
In my ongoing quest to get you good transcripts of the wonderful interviews we’ve done in the past, I present you with one amazing interview here with Tom McInerney – a friend, co-investor, former entrepreneur turned angel investor and “wizard of Oz” behind the scenes at the uber hot startup Klout. What is wonderful about [...]
The Top 30 Most Respected Venture Capitalists (infographic)
A guide for Entrepreneurs There is a lot of content created by the Venture Capital community that has helped countless entrepreneurs. In fact, one of my favorites is How Andreessen Horowitz Evaluates CEOs. I recently stumbled upon the article again and it reminded me of an article I’ve been meaning to write for my entrepreneurial [...]
Support, Don’t Envy Your Fellow Entrepreneurs
Every day, the Internet brings me an endless stream of news about good things happening to other entrepreneurs and investors–product launches, VC financings, acquisitions. I’m faced with a choice in how to react to this news. A) “Dammit, I’m falling further behind!” B) “It’s wonderful how progress keeps opening up new possibilities!” A lot of [...]
