Startup Whisperer Blog
Raising Venture Financing Is A Sales Process
Some recent posts have generated a lot of interest around the process of raising money. This post is really around running the fund raising process. For those of you that have sales as a competency or profession, you’ll understand that this spreadsheet is a poor man’s sales funnel. Raising money is a sales process. Understanding…
Building corporate culture in startups
Your startup corporate culture is key to getting things done. Corporate culture embodies your common corporate vision, goals, shared values, and beliefs of your company. Its is easy to defineorganizational culture from a top-down perspective. You as the CEO can define the management structure, objectives and strategies of the business. But, the corporate culture is…
RBC Internet Conference Notes
I am attending the RBC technology, media, and communications conference. The meeting is very well structured and has a fantastic format for both private and public company CEOs. The Of all of the many conversations that I had and the panels that I sat in on today, I most enjoyed the "Lead Generation Comes Of…
Managing Your Board
We all strive to be the best stewards for our businesses. We’ve talked in this blog the importance of communication to your employees. Communication is extremely important to your Board and investors, too. Here are some tips for managing your Board. Board meeting a. Keep the formal – Startups are fun because they are more…
What’s In Your Wallet?
An entrepreneur asked me recently, "how much money should I have in the bank before I look for more money." He was really asking, "at my current burn rate, when should I look for more money." The best answer is that you shouldn’t because you are cash flow positive and don’t need a lot of…
Startup Employee “Pit Crew”
If you follow auto racing, imagine a pit crew coming out and quickly enabling the driver to have fresh tires, gas, and quick maintenance to get back into the race. That is how you should approach getting new employees contributing in your company. When you are in startup mode (which is seemingly never-ending), you will…
What Is You Fortress of Solitude?
It is stressful starting a company. You have employees, investors, competitor circling you at all times. You are reading 200 + RSS feeds/day, managing your personal life, and trying to hit your numbers. The signal to noise ratio is very high. There are times when you need perspective. I was prompted to think about this…
Would you pay your employees $1,000 to quit?
This is an interesting piece from the Harvard Business Review on Zappos. Apparently, Zappos pays customer service reps $1,000 dollars to quit (if they don’t like their job). 10% of employees take them up on that offer. The interview details the hiring practices of Zappos. I found it to be an interesting piece which could…
Closed Our Series B Round
I have been posting quite a bit about venture capital. Some of the readers guessed that I must have been close to finishing our process. We just announced it yesterday and have received some nice press pickup. For anyone that is interested, there is more detail on the WidgetBucks blog. We are very excited to…
Guest Post by WetPaint CEO Ben Elowitz: How To Raise Venture Dollars
Ben Elowitz has graciously agreed to a guest post. The timing is apropos since Ben just raised $25 million in the largest technology financing in Washington state this year. Wetpaint is the leader in social publishing with nearly one million hosted user-powered sites. They have recently made a very smart move by enabling their platform…
How to pickup an entrepreneur
Guy Kawasaki has a great post on the Sun Microsystems blog concerning how entrepreneurs can pickup VCs. Since we’re closing our Series B round, I thought I would provide my counter on how VCs can pickup entrepreneurs: 1. Investor: Does not respond to an email or voicemail from the entrepreneur. Entrepreneur: hasa long memory and…
Tootsie Roll Pops and Term Sheets
Remember that old commercial with the owl and the Tootsie Roll pop. The commercial asks the question how many bites does it take to get to center of a tootsie roll pop. Maybe its because I am near the end of my fundraising cycle, but this commercial had me wondering about how many VCs does…
