Thought Leadership Threads

I’ve been asked a lot why there’s so much variance on “valuations relative to traction”. Some companies are getting 100X ARR multiples while others are getting 2X. There’s no simple answer but a big driver is if a company can demonstrate “Multiplicative Momentum”.

Do you want to know a little secret regarding how I build conviction during my #startup diligence process? Do you want to know something that I spend time on that many early stage #VCs brush under the rug as silly and unnecessary? Short thread:

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but in the #startup world, if it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly running then your business is probably about to die. The same is true at highly successful bigger companies. Let’s start with an analogy:

Many #Startup CEOs struggle to redefine their own role as their company scales. I’ve been asked by startup CEOs many times: “What should my job be?” What follows is a framework I’ve used to guide various CEOs through the evolution from a “Small Team CEO” to a “Proper CEO”:

Building a #StartUp business has similarities to a spacecraft crashing down on an unknown planet. I talk to Founders about this all the time. Unpacked:

Have you ever had a concept explained to you that helps frame complex issues you’ve been wrestling with and opens your eyes to new possibilities? A concept that I share that seems to resonate well with Entrepreneurs and Investors is what I call “Truth Files”. Unpacked:

Of all the questions I’m being asked on recent diligence calls about our companies, the most common is “What are the skills/gaps of the Founder(s)?” Given COVID, this has become an important topic so I thought it would be worth sharing how I think about the issue. Unpacked:

I’ve been told that some of the simple concepts I routinely share with Founders get adopted by their firms as “truths” (which is flattering). I was asked to outline a few of them in Tweet form. Unpacked:

The biggest question coming out of my recent tweet thread about the evaluation of startups is: “How important is the startup’s distribution strategy in your diligence work?” The answer is: “Damn important because the business needs customers to exist!” Unpacked: