When Mitch Kapor started Lotus 1-2-3 in 1983, he projected the company’s first year revenue as $3M. That was all good, except he was terribly off with his projections. Lotus had the first year revenue of $53M. Two quick thoughts: 1/ Pick the right market. Lotus could have an immense success only because the PC … Continue reading Underpromise and Overdeliver
Startup funding environment continues to be challenging, which means a lot of founders are going through some really tough times now. I feel the pain – I’ve been there multiple times. These are some of the things that I tell the founders around me going through tough times: 1/ It’s a feature, not a bug … Continue reading When Things Aren’t Going Well
Make no mistake – there will be many $10bn+ new startups coming out of the AI space. Saying OpenAI will do everything is like saying Amazon will sell everything to everyone in the entire world. It’s just that the bar is so much higher now because everybody can access the same, super powerful technology so … Continue reading The Bar Is Higher Now
As an angel investor, I get various investor update emails. Some are good and some not so good – just quickly sharing a few of my personal observations here. 1/ Consistency is far more important than quality For me, a founder sending brief regular updates like clockwork feels more trustworthy than a founder sending a … Continue reading Investor Updates
What do you do when your company grew, but your cofounder didn’t? Unfortunately this happens more often than desired – company grew from 5 people to 50, and the CEO has effectively stepped up and is now battle-tested, but his cofounder hasn’t grown as much and isn’t really pulling her weight anymore. First thing to … Continue reading When Your Cofounder Isn’t Pulling The Weight
Founders – before having a strategy meeting with your team, try to provide the right context and expectations. There are three types of discussions leaders can have with their team: Discussion – “Let’s talk about this. Before we leave this meeting, we will have a conclusion and action items”Brainstorming – “We’re intentionally NOT trying to … Continue reading Discussion, Brainstorming, Mandate
As a leader, you might be wrong, but you can’t be unclear. People don’t expect their leaders to be correct 100% of the time. But they expect leaders to be clear 100% of the time. Continue reading Being Right vs. Being Clear
In my previous company, we asked everyone to create a “Player’s Card”, with the top entry item being “What I do at this company.” There’s a great power in succinctly defining what someone does at an organization in 3-4 bullet points, as a self exercise. Everyone comes in based on a job description. But things … Continue reading What Do You Do Here?
True story: an LA based entrepreneur I know recently said he couldn’t get a spot for his child’s preschool; he said for one spot, there were 70 applicants. At 1:70 competition rate, it’s probably worse than most ivy league schools. They wrote parent essays and did multiple rounds of interviews but still couldn’t make it. … Continue reading Better Private Education For 3-5yo Children
For a startup under 50 people – if your newly hired VP says these things, it’s an immediate red flag: “We need to hire this agency to do this market research”“My good friend is running a marketing agency and we should commission them”“We need budget to bring our entire team to this convention in Paris … Continue reading Being Resourceful