Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” Many companies have hired ahead of their growth rate because they had the cash to do so. In our portfolio, we generally don’t have this problem because we aren’t big fans of either (a) overfunding companies or (b) escalating burn rates based on headcount.

Cap Table 70

Cap Table Down Round Liquidation Preference Founder 70

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 15, 2020

It's never selfish to hire. The customer acquisition costs are going down. I said, "Hire people. Hire them to do whatever you can find them to do." So anything you can do to keep them hired, you just improved their sanity. It's never selfish to hire. They asked me, "What else can we do?"

Dallas 68

Dallas Employee Government Social Media 68

Eric Friedman

NOVEMBER 8, 2011

In the world of web startups, you can hire individuals and try to make the team hum, or you can buy an agile group that you know can perform. Hiring Option. Hire 2 people per month ~ $100K/month/per person across 12 months is 24 people at a $2.4MM burn rate.

Burn Rate 90

Burn Rate Agile Equity Hiring 90

Up and Running

OCTOBER 1, 2014

Nelson has some tips: Know your burn rate. She notes that if you’re considering acquisition as an exit strategy, creating and maintaining relationships is going to be key. Hire and surround yourself with people who are hungry for the opportunity and super driven,” she advises. How do you balance it all?

Bootstrapping 107

Bootstrapping Cofounder Portland Burn Rate 107

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. What’s the customer acquisition cost? Who influences a sale? Who recommends a sale?

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

He knows how to advise entrepreneurs on hiring/firing, running teams, managing funding, when/how to control burn rate, and making other tough management decisions in the real environment of startups. I often say I have a larger collection of personal mistakes than most people in the venture business.

Burn Rate 87

Burn Rate Hiring Engineer Entrepreneur 87

Ben's Blog

SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

What’s our burn rate? For instance, it wasn’t a shocker when we stopped hiring as we were raising money. As we were preparing to file our S-1, we hired a CFO with public company experience that insisted that we start “practicing” as a public company. What are the biggest problems we are facing?

IPO 78

IPO Burn Rate Leadership Employee 78

thestartuplawyer.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Who must be a co founder and who can remain a hired principal? When I find, and hire on options, the three perfect CEs/directors must I consider them co founders and treat them accordingly? Who must be a co founder and who can remain a hired principal? He obviously never launched a startup and got shafted by a co-founder.

Cofounder 40

Cofounder Founder Preferred Stock Startup 40

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

Its thesame with acquisitions. For example, a seed firmshould be able to give advice about how to approach VCs, which VCsobviously dont need to do; whereas VCs should be able to giveadvice about how to hire an "executive team," which is not an issuein the seed stage. Every startups rule should be: spend little, and work fast.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Hire the absolute best and the brightest, true experts in their fields, who in turn can hire the smartest people possible to staff their departments. By hiring experts, conducting lots of focus groups, and executing to a detailed plan, the company became deluded that it knew what customers wanted.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150