Ask anyone who’s worked at more than one startup and they’ll probably tell you the same thing: Young companies start to go off the rails once they hit 50 employees. I call this the “teenager” startup phase, and I’ve been there several times, both as an employee and an executive.
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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…
Let’s talk about how much you should charge customers for something when you’re not totally sure what that thing is yet.
A startup has to get its pricing right or the product will be dead at launch. The problem is, there aren’t a lot of hard and fast rules for…
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…
Every so often, I talk about the lessons I learn from running the startup I’ve created around delivering startup advice. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. It’s actually a little bit crazier, but in a really satisfying way.
This week, as I was putting the finishing touches on answers…
If you missed the headlines a little while back, DoorDash is “forcing” all of its employees — everyone from their engineers to their CEO — to make deliveries on the platform. And some of the employees are “furious.”
That’s the headline, at least. The truth is a little more nuanced…
Not long ago, a colleague of mine said some nasty things about the no-code and minimum viable product (MVP) movements in front of me. And that bugged me. At first a little, then a lot.
It’s no secret that I’ve been a pretty vocal proponent of no-code tools and MVP…
Let me know if this describes your outbound marketing program: You send a bunch of cold emails, maybe the right amount, maybe too many. You get a smattering of opens, a trickle of clicks, and a few conversions.
Most of the time, you’re disappointed with the results, and what’s more…
I’ve been perfecting a leadership practice over the last 20 years that has produced some surprising gains in both productivity and innovation. I call it “productive downtime.”
At first, the concept might seem counterintuitive. But once you figure out how to do it right, the results can be game changing.
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Not too long ago, one of the companies I advise launched a new software product. It was a two-fer product, one that would enhance the capabilities of their current customers while also opening a new line of business to attract new customers.
I love those.
Once the new product settled…
