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 […]
Founder DNA – How Investors Evaluate Startup Founders
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 […]
Startup CEOs Need To Do Sales
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 […]
Startup CEOs Make Millions of Decisions
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 — […]
CEO Paralysis: the Microscope and the Telescope
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 […]