Thought Leadership Threads

I wish the 50-year old me could go back and give some “tough love” advice to the younger me. I’m not sure I would have listened, but maybe someone out there in the #startup ecosystem will.

Here are 8 pieces of hard earned wisdom that might serve you well:

I was in a Board meeting not too long ago where the CEO and one of the company’s Board members obviously weren’t seeing eye to eye. It was awkward and avoidable if each person realized how they were behaving. The situation reminded me of a well-known parable:

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:

There’s a supply/demand imbalance in the startup world (too much capital/not enough great companies). This means it’s a great time to be a Founder if you have an epic idea, but how do you know if your idea is any good? I asked some amazing VCs and here’s their advice:

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: