The Right Way to Cancel a Meeting
Canceling meetings is part of modern day life. I seem to get so over programmed that if I ever want to have a “break-out” unplanned trip somewhere I seem to have to reschedule meetings. Not fun, but a reality. And people reschedule meetings with me on a regular basis, too. If done correctly I never [...]
This Week in VC Episode 6 with @Jason Calacanis: Best One Yet
We just had our sixth episode of #TWiVC and I felt this one was the best. This week was had Jason Calacanis as our guest. It’s always fun chatting with Jason because he’s knowledgeable about the market, quick on topics and pushes me to talk more about VC / entrepreneur issues. We’re staring to get [...]
Avoid Decision by Indecision
I recently wrote a piece about how Entrepreneurs Should be Respected, Not Loved. The premise was that some leaders are too enamored with the approbation of their peers than making the tough decisions in the business that are bound to upset some people. The corollary to this rule is “decision by indecision.” This is one of [...]
Entrepreneurs Should be Respected, Not Loved
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to be a great leader and seem to be having this conversation a lot lately about Facebook, Yahoo!, Zynga and others. I wrote several of the characteristics when I did the Top 10 (11) Attributes of an Entrepreneur. One thing that I’ve realized over the years [...]
The Agile Board
I recently wrote an article on how to respond to board members between meetings. I basically took some time on a weekend and just hacked out what was on my mind. Two people whom I respect (Babak Nivi and Brad Feld) added commentary that made me want to come back and clarify my thoughts. If I [...]
The Toxic Nature of Email
I haven’t written a blog post in a week. I travelled for a couple of days for work and decided to get some sleep on those days rather than staying up into the wee hours as I often do when I travel. I closed one deal (I’ll talk about that soon) and issued one term [...]
How To Communicate with your Investors between Board Meetings
Running the “Agile” Board Most early stage startups having monthly board meetings. I normally recommend 8 meetings per year. It makes no sense to meet in August or December due to travel schedules of most investors. You can do calls if need be. And I often recommend that board meetings be every 5 or 6 [...]
The Long-Term Value of Loyalty
Oh, boy. Here we go again. Another post on job hopping. This will be my final word on the topic. I promise. My goal here is to move the debate forward, add my POV but not inflame things any further. Inflaming was never my goal. Let’s see if I can achieve that. My WORD of [...]
Job Hoppers Redux: An Employee’s Perspective
On Thursday of last week I cranked out a post on job hoppers . To say that it was controversial is an understatement. I intended for it to be provocative but not inflammatory. So let me start with an apology. Not for my point-of-view (which I stand by and accept that not everybody feels the same way) [...]
Never Hire Job Hoppers. Never. They Make Terrible Employees
This is part of my startup advice series. This post isn’t going to be popular. I’m sure of that. That’s OK. It’s still important advice for startup founders and something that I’m passionate about. And I care more about the debate than trying to be popular. And it’s important because it’s true. I never hire [...]
Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?
I recently did a post for startups on understanding sales people . A few people have asked me to try and define the perfect startup organization chart. I don’t believe that one exists. Every team configuration is different. But I do have more insight into understanding your startup team. This time I thought I’d try and [...]
Want to Raise Venture Capital More Easily? Clean Up Your Own Shite First
Clean up your own shite. Ok. I know that the tone of the title and post will seem a bit aggressive for a post from a venture capitalist on fund raising. It’s meant to be a bit provocative but the reality is that I give this advice to entrepreneurs all the the time and I [...]
How to Improve Hiring at Startups
This is part of my ongoing series with Startup Advice. OK, hiring is a loooong topic and I couldn’t do it justice in single post. But I thought it might be useful to do a headline view of the key components and then come back and do the individual topics over time if people seem [...]
Don’t be a Grin Fucker
OK, this will be a test of whether using real curse words in your title or post gets all of your stuff blocked by spam filters or from appearing on HackerNews or the like. I thought about trying to spell it differently (like Guy Kawasaki always says Bull Shitake (as in the mushroom, but slightly [...]
I’m Moving You to BCC
After a few days of controversial blog posts I thought I’d try something more light hearted today. Fred Wilson once wrote about the topic of how to introduce two people who don’t know each other via email. He called it the “double opt-in introduction.” He talks about the stuggles of email introductions when you’re dealing [...]
