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Instigator Blog

Lean Analytics, startups, angel investing, product management and more!

The Hustler

July 20, 2012 by Ben Yoskovitz

You spend enough time with enough startups and you genuinely come to appreciate the importance of The Hustler. The Hustler plays a few levels above where he* should, but gets away with it because of sheer willpower, ego and perceptivity. Tweet The Hustler learns the rules quickly — breaks those he needs to — and […]

Filed Under: Startups

Founder DNA – How Investors Evaluate Startup Founders

October 21, 2010 by Ben Yoskovitz

Are entrepreneurs born or taught? I’d say a bit of both. Environmental and genetic influences are so intertwined for most things (diseases, our health, intelligence, etc.) there’s no simple answer. Having said that, when we talk about founders and startups we often think of it as something intrinsic to the people, something inside them, built […]

Filed Under: Angel Investing, Startup Fundraising

Startup CEOs Need To Do Sales

December 29, 2009 by Ben Yoskovitz

Doing sales isn’t typically one of the favorite things of most startup CEOs (and by extension, startup founding teams). Certainly they want sales (because sales = $$), but they don’t want to actually do the sales. This is a huge problem for startups. Startup CEOs need to be very close to their prospects and customers […]

Filed Under: Customer Development

Startup CEOs Make Millions of Decisions

December 22, 2009 by Ben Yoskovitz

The job of startup CEO is all about making decisions. Lots and lots of decisions. We tend to focus on and remember big decisions — over-emphasizing their importance in the grand scheme of things. But the trick to being a successful startup CEO is mastering the art of micro-decision making. Micro-decisions are small decisions — […]

Filed Under: Startups

CEO Paralysis: the Microscope and the Telescope

May 26, 2009 by Ben Yoskovitz

Check out this tweet from @exectweets (I believe originally from Tom Stewart): CEO paralysis caused by trying to look simultaneously through a microscope at every cost & a telescope at the future It was too long to re-tweet effectively without having to edit it, so I decided to write a blog post instead. To say […]

Filed Under: Startups

Ben Yoskovitz

Founding Partner at Highline Beta, a hybrid venture studio and VC firm that works with large, ambitious companies to identify new areas of opportunity through internal and external innovation.

Previously I was VP Product at VarageSale and GoInstant (acq. $CRM), and Founding Partner at Year One Labs.

Angel investments include: Breather, Spoiler Alert, SendWithUs and others.

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