Articles

There’s a right way to do software product management. There are schools to teach it, certifications prove it, and plenty of articles on it. This is not one of them. This is an article on how to manage an early-stage product when resources are too constrained to do it perfectly. When money is too tight…

Building a successful VC-backed company requires getting everything just right. Getting it right means hitting a bullseye where three factors intersect: Founder Competency, Market Reality, and Investor Approach. When you hit that intersection, you have a big exit and sail away to your private island. When you miss, you either hire or negotiate, depending on…

“Sounds like a feature, not a product.” Anyone who has been on the VC trail a few times has probably heard these words. It’s one of the most common reasons for VCs to pass on your business. It makes sense. Features don’t get to VC scale, and they can easily get knocked-off by large platforms.…

Startup failures send perfectly good tech to the scrap heap. That’s nothing new. What is new is that more and better tech is getting abandoned earlier. It’s an inefficiency created by our convergence around a common playbook. It starts with taking the path down a very narrow funnel The standard startup playbook goes something like…

I was looking through a list of around 40 companies that had gone through a certain startup accelerator’s program. Of the 40, I knew of two exits (one small, one large) and one viable continuing operation. 90% of the companies were either gone, or on life support. Using VC math, one might argue the one…

I grade myself a solid ‘B’ at sales. I can get the job done, but not nearly with the aplomb of many others I know. Still, one of the biggest mistakes I ever made as a CEO was hiring an ‘A’ seller too early. In doing so, I extracted myself from talking with prospects, at…

I spent the go-go days of the late 90’s in a rare Internet startup for the era. Due to groundwork laid before I arrived, we were profitable. We declined most of the VC we were offered, watched our overhead, and grew methodically. We were misfits of the so-called “new economy,” and we sold for 30x…

Venture capital can create opportunities that would be nearly impossible without it. But it also takes options off the table. It is important to consider whether objectives are aligned before assuming you need or want VC. There is a very important difference between VCs and entrepreneurs that is the root of potential misalignment. VCs are…

In business school I had a new venture class in the school’s basement. During a group project, while we were devising overwrought strategies based on theory and not much else, the professor said, “I think it’s time for you to get out of the basement.” Maybe he meant it literally, but I’ve used the expression…