Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down for an intimate fireside chat with Slack’s Stewart Butterfield as he was honoured with C100’s Icon of Canadian Entrepreneurship (ICE) award. This award is presented yearly to a Canadian who has played a historic role in technology and innovation, as well as…
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,…
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…
There’s a lot of debate surrounding the right time to bring executive level hires into your start-up. But one thing is clear: how you build your team over the first few years can determine the trajectory of your company more than any other decision you make. There are no right…
About two to three years post launch, companies typically undergo an interesting transition: they’ve made it through the survival phase and are maturing. It’s time to focus on building a company long term. For most companies, this is a hard transition to make. In the early days, the goals were…
