Save the big announcements for big deals — If you want to give your new business a decent shot at success, you need to build traction — clear, measurable evidence that people are interested in what your company is offering. And that won’t happen on Day One. So why do startups make big, splashy announcements the day they…

The more revenue you have coming in, the better the chances you can raise (and not waste) investor funds — At startups, the difference between survival and running out of runway always comes down to taking our eyes off revenue. We don’t want to do this, and we certainly don’t do it on purpose. But when we’re in the middle of the startup run, it’s pretty easy to fall into…

Your product offering needs to be able to take a fair bit of abuse — A well-thought out free-tier strategy can be incredibly effective for bringing in new or “on-the-fence” customers. A poorly executed free-tier strategy can damage your brand forever. A friend of mine is the owner of a minor league baseball team. He once told me that he had one rule for the…

Don’t just give your product away blindly, make those trails lead to revenue — There’s a lot of misunderstanding around free trialing, the “try before you buy” approach to finding product-market fit. I’ve been running and advising dozens of startups over the past 20 years, and I’ve seen the free trial model produce tremendous results — and also crippling mistakes. On one hand, a…

Plan for the unplannable — I’m not gonna sugar coat it. Last month was a pretty bad month for me. On top of the normal day-to-day business problems, my personal life took an unexpected turn when my wife took a spill on the tennis court, broke her wrist, and required two back-to-back surgical procedures of…

Here’s a conceptual framework to keep your no-code sane — I’ve released almost 200 versions of my web-based app to paying customers over the last 18 months. And I’m not even officially on version 1.0 yet. So last week, when I released version 0.9.24.25 via my no-code platform of choice, Bubble.io, I broke … well, almost everything. What’s worse, it…

The short answer is now. The correct answer is a little more nuanced. — Ask any veteran entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that raising money for your startup is exactly like running on a treadmill — only the treadmill is set to automatically increase in speed with the close of every new round of funding. …

Watch out. The emptiness will sneak right up on you. — A few weeks ago, I was at a startup investor event — my first time getting back out into the local scene in ages — when I was introduced to a founder I’ll call “Brian,” by an investor friend of mine who had invested in the seed round of Brian’s…

Poor release management sabotages great products and features — Every single person who has ever been involved with building and delivering a product has suffered the inevitable heartbreak of creating something great — maybe even better than great — and then a few weeks or months later realizing very few customers are using it, and even fewer like using…