I had to respond to a post NY angel investor Mark Birch recently wrote called Entrepreneurship and the Passion Deficit. He claims that “the number one reason startups fail is because there is no passion!” Mark’s a smart guy, but in this case, I totally disagree. For 17 years, I’ve been buried in the startup scene, working in Austin, the …
When you can’t get that A round
The startup ecosystem is currently at the “thousand flowers blooming” stage. The number of large second-stage angel or VC-led A rounds will not be able to keep up with the number of new companies. Consequently, there are going to be a lot of frustrated and disappointed entrepreneurs out there. But just because you struggle to raise money does not mean …
The Tech Crunch
CNN recently wrote an article on NYC startups and I laughed when Nosh Petigara from 10gen (MongoDb) said, “we don’t have trouble hiring engineers.” When you are a 10gen, Hunch, bit.ly — i.e. when you have a strong technical lead (your anchor) already and an interesting technical problem, good computer scientists want to work for you. Unfortunately, quite a few …
One Lesson From Each
The other week I spoke and mentored at The Lean Startup Machine in New York, which was a ton of fun for everyone involved. I had a young entrepreneur come up and ask me an interesting question: “What was the #1 lesson from each of the companies you have been involved with?” It is always hard to pick just one, …
Back to Big Raise, Big Spend?
Mark Suster has an important post on his blog today called “9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month“. It may sound strange, but too much funding is just as dangerous if not more so than too little funding. Go read his post. I agree with so many of the things he warns against, and have unfortunately experienced quite …
Selling your company – some core questions and answers
A friend’s startup was recently approached by an interested buyer, which spurred me to write up some thoughts on M&A in hopes that they could be useful to other entrepreneurs. For those that do not know my background, I have both sold a startup and managed multiple tech deals as an investment banker at Broadview (now Jefferies). Here is my …
Landmines on the Road to Product Market Fit
On Friday, I gave a 20-minute talk at a product design conference organized by Ty Ahmad-Taylor (CEO of FanFeedr) and Hard Candy Shell (the talk shared the same title as this post). I discussed mistakes and lessons from Aprizi’s journey. I don’t think it was videotaped, so I am going to take advantage of this flight to California to write …
How a blog can help you with customer development
There are many strategies for customer development, and here is another one: start a company blog focused on the problem you hope to solve and the people you hope to solve it for. In this context, your purpose with the blog is not to get vast amounts of traffic, but rather to help you connect with and learn from lots …
Don’t believe in magic
Two observations: 1. Very little happens in a startup if you don’t make it happen. 2. Very little is done right if you don’t examine best practices and iterate your own efforts. Common sense, right? And yet here are some further observations: Right after I posted about demo tips and the importance of practice, I ran into someone who was …
Lean Startup Machine Presentation
Lean Startup Machine As promised, here is my 20-min presentation to the Lean Startup Machine event on July 23, 2010. Regarding the event, I was pretty impressed with how much the teams accomplished over the weekend, and their willingness to get out of comfort zones. This deck is neither as pretty nor as good as David Cancel’s recent talk, but …