Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?

I recently did a post for startups on understanding sales people.

Never Hire Job Hoppers. Never. They Make Terrible Employees

The Four Main Things that Investors Look for in a Startup

Want to Know How VC’s Calculate Valuation Differently from Founders?

Back in 1999 when I first raised venture capital I had zero knowledge of what a fair term sheet looked like or how to value my company. Due to competitive markets we ended up with a pretty good term sheet until…

How to Manage Employees When They Make Mistakes

I was recently involved with a company (not as an investor) where an embarrassing mistake was made. One of the leaders took a sort of “heads will roll” approach. It’s not my company so I basically stayed out but tried to encourage him to think…

The Right Way to Cancel a Meeting

Canceling meetings is part of modern day life. I seem to get so over programmed that if I ever want to have a “break-out” unplanned trip somewhere I seem to have to reschedule meetings.

It’s Better to Beg for Forgiveness than to Ask for Permission

Invest in Lines, Not Dots

Everyone seems to be in such a rush to get shacked up these days.

In normal times investors will look for “traction” before investing. We want to make sure we’re in love. This sometimes frustrates entrepreneurs who just want to “get back to running the…

Be Careful not to be Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Justyn Howard, founder of Sprout Social has a blog post that he’s written about his experiences of migrating from scrappy tools to more efficient ones (i.e. Using Balsamiq instead of SnagIt, Website Optimizer over just Google Analytics and FTP).

Is Convertible Debt Preferable to Equity?

Seth Levine of Foundry Group addresses this important topic this morning on his blog with a post, “Has Convertible Debt Won?”