Writing things down has an amazing impact. It commits us more. It serves as a reminder and marks our past. It allows us to get things out of our brains so we can fill them up with more cool ideas. It pushes us into the future. It helps visualize things. It creates structure. It acts […]
Archives for June 2010
A Systematic Strategy for Sourcing Startup Talent
Companies with the best record and most success at hiring top people don’t sit around and wait for those people to show up. They go out and grab them by the throats. OK, it’s fair to say that grabbing someone by the throat and dragging them to your office for a job isn’t going to […]
Startup Onions
This isn’t about stinky startups or startups that give you bad breath. But it is about startups that might make you cry. Recently I’ve spent a lot more time meeting with entrepreneurs and listening to their pitches. It’s not in any formal sense, but I’m happy and eager to provide 30-minute or 1-hour blocks of […]
The Importance of Domain Knowledge for Startup Founders
When I launched Standout Jobs I didn’t know much about the HR / recruitment industry. I could clearly identify problems in the space, and I was passionate about fixing some of those problems, but I lacked a real appreciation for the industry itself. This led to numerous challenges, and without a doubt had a negative […]
8 Questions to Ask When Interviewing at a Startup
Job interviews are meant to be conversations. The interviewer asks some questions and the interviewee does the same. It’s never a good sign when an interviewee doesn’t have any questions. It shows a lack of interest. This is particularly true when interviewing for a startup job because there tend to be so many more unknowns […]
Useless Feedback
Not all feedback is created equal. A lot of feedback is useless. This isn’t necessarily the fault of the person providing the feedback. Oftentimes it’s the fault of the person requesting it, because they don’t really understand why they’re asking for it in the first place. Startup founders need to go out and validate what […]
Misplaced Passion is Common for Early Stage Entrepreneurs
When entrepreneurs are so driven by passion that they’re blind to the realities around them they often find themselves in big trouble. But what we see quite regularly at the early stages of startups is not too much passion but misplaced passion. Ask yourself this question, “Are you more passionate about the problem you’re solving […]
How to Balance Passion and Reality in Startups
Startup founders need inordinate amounts of passion to succeed. Passion is the self-created drug that inspires startup founders to press on during tough times. Since the startup roller coaster goes from incredible highs to suicidal lows in a matter of moments, it’s important to leverage passion as a driving force. But when is there too […]
The Startup CEOs Role: Decision Making
Ben Horowitz has a great post on his blog titled: How Andreesen Horowitz Evaluates CEOs. One of the key elements of their evaluation is decision-making. Here’s just a quick snippet from Ben’s post: Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. Therefore, a CEO can most accurately be measured by the speed […]
Hiring a Chief Editor for a New Montreal Tech Startup Site
About 2 months ago I put out a suggestion that we bring Montreal Tech Watch back to life or something similar to it. The site helped people a lot, and I’d like to see that happen again. I’d like people to be able to discover the startup ecosystem in Montreal, find jobs, find co-founders, share […]