How to balance judgment and process when you start to scale
In the early days of a start-up, almost all decisions in the company are driven by the judgment calls of the founding team. During this stage, there’s a limited set of experiences to draw from and no playbook. Most of the situations and questions are occurring for the first time, and founders need to quickly […]
The close: How your investors can help you bring top candidates on board
I recently wrote about how to build an ideal investor base if you find yourself in the fortunate position of being oversubscribed in the round you are currently fundraising for. In that post, I mentioned “help in hiring” as a quality that might be potentially valuable to you when considering the right investors. When we talk […]
Skip level conversations: the benefits of board members speaking with senior managers
In the past year, a few of our portfolio companies have introduced regular skip level meetings into the organization. These are direct meetings between managers and team members who are one or more levels below them… for example, board members meet with senior managers (without the CEO) or the CEO meets with team members (without […]
Bringing Transparency to Startup Data: Our Data Repository Project
Two months ago, I first introduced my vision to create a startup data repository. Since then, I’ve chatted with many of you who share the desire to democratize access to information on startups and bring transparency to what’s been a traditionally private ecosystem. I’ve been blown away by the response and appreciate every like, share, tweet, […]
Should you outsource your financial operations?
This week everyone has been talking about Zirtual – the on-demand virtual assistant company that collapsed on Sunday night, suddenly laying off more than 400 employees (the company now is going to be acquired by Startups.co). Zirtual CEO Maren Kate Donovan blamed the collapse partly on an outsourced CFO firm and numbers that failed to […]