You Need Operators

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to succeed.

Not the initial success of getting a product or service out into the world or even getting to product/market fit. I mean the daily grind of ongoing success. The ugly underbelly of building lasting…

Money Doesn’t Come For Free

In today’s funding climate (at least here in Silicon Valley) it sometimes feels like money comes easy and for free. The news are full of startups raising millions of dollars of pre-seed funding before they even have a product. Or companies raising tens or even hundreds of…

Language Is Powerful (Or: There Are No Fucking Unicorns)

People love to talk about unicorns in startup land these days — what they refer to is the rare breed of startup which breaks through the $1BN valuation mark.

Scaling The Mountain

The other day one of our fellow Heretics asked me to give some pointers about the right time to scale your organization.

It’s an interesting question — as I believe that a lot of us obsess over the idea of scaling and thus put their organizations at great risk…

Adult Supervision

Google famously brought Eric Schmidt on board to provide “adult supervision” for Larry & Sergey. A decade before that eBay hired Meg Whitman to provide experienced leadership for the company founded by Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll. And long before that Apple brought on Pepsi Co.’s former…

Lessons In Leadership

One thing I learned the hard way in my first startup is — when you are the leader, your people will take every word from you as gospel.

It took me quite a while to realize that every time I opened my mouth and spewed out a half-baked idea, my team would take this…

Never Burn Your Bridges

The other day I was pulled into a conversation between two companies which tried to do business with each other. The one side is a very professionally run group of serial entrepreneurs running a startup, the other a well established, somewhat larger company.

Hotel California

In 1977 the Eagles released their song “Hotel California”. The song tells the tale of a luxurious hotel — one where the food is free and the entertainment plenty.

Sounds familiar?

Surround Yourself With A-People

There is an age-old saying of “It’s not who you are, but who you know”. Some believe this to be about people who can open doors for you — the ones who have achieved societal status. So they spend their days hobnobbing. In the end they might end up with a bunch of contacts…

Why Google (Or Facebook, Or …) Won’t Eat You

I hear a variation of the following statement from entrepreneurs all the time — typically delivered with a certain amount of terror in their voice: