Last week I had an interesting call with one of the founder/CEOs in my portfolio. No longer “founder & CEO”, but rather “CEO & Founder”. Think about it – at the early days of the business, the founder roles are the most critical: Being agile, identify quick opportunities, recruit fast, make unusual bets. MORE >>

Lean startup is built on agile development and iterative customer development that starts from some minimum base product (the absolute minimum thing that the market could theoretically use) and evolves over time based on measuring, customer feedback, etc. I have been following the lean startup movement for a while now. Fat Hiring. MORE >>

My last post was about agile ideologies , the practice of suspending disbelief and trying something without too much thinking or tweaking for long-enough to collect quality data but not long-enough to go native and lose perspective. Early stage startups don’t have  Innovator’s Dilemma but their founders do. Make it fun. MORE >>

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Some startups fail because the founders cant have this conversation - they either blow up when they try, or they fail to change because they are afraid of conflict. It increases the runway without additional cash. Both are lethal outcomes. MORE >>

In the early days, the founders. Agile methodologies can work in sales as well. First off, just to be clear, I’ve never been a sales person. ve never even. played a sales person on TV. All the points below have been pulled from startup. sales teams that I think work pretty well (including the team at my marketing software startup). MORE >>