Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

In all of these new product and cost-focused new trends, a big problem has emerged that all of these movements have not addressed. Let’s start with how much value you think you’ll create for your customer if they use your product in terms of hours saved, costs avoided, extra sales, better conversion rates or whatever.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 28, 2011

Who do you hire after you have a product built & shipped and being used in the market? Who do you hire when you raise that first $2-3 million? Your first hire after that first round of capital is an office manager / company-wide assistant. But what comes after the original team? “What? You’re joking, right?”

Hiring 325

Hiring Early Stage Valuation Engineer 325

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 18, 2014

Almost every startup company starts off “scrappy” and there’s a well established culture in the tech startup scene to embrace the “be cheap at all costs” mentality. I wrote that the most controversial hire after an A-round is actually an office manager / admin person for the company.

Seed Stage 352

Seed Stage Startup Retention PR 352

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 3, 2014

” So I did want any rational person who wants to improve does – I hired a coach. They are the lifeblood of many companies yet they are different than the traditional technology startup DNA so the ways that you hire, motivate, compensate and assess performance of these individuals will be different.

Sales 382

Sales Startup Technical Review Matching 382

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 27, 2010

My original post was directed at hiring managers. It said that I didn’t believe it was a good idea to hire job hoppers. My view still stands – for many hiring managers a large factor in looking through resumes of somebody who is 30+ and has never worked somewhere for more than 18 months will be the job hopping element.

Venture Capital 285

Venture Capital Hiring Software Review Stock Options 285

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 8, 2010

If you ever have to interview, hire, judge the performance of, decide whether to promote, assign clients/regions to them or have to decide whether to fire sales people, I think having a framework for thinking about them is helpful. Mavericks do work well in early-stage companies and are probably your best bet for you first hire or two.

Early Stage 350

Early Stage Startup Sales Campaign 350

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

So rather than hiring a VP Marketing [to establish a strategic marketing plan, build and manage the marketing team, manage outside vendors, etc.] I recommend hiring or appointing a growth hacker.” The more the supply of dollars spent in your channel the higher the cost-to-acquire new customers.

Technical Review 384

Technical Review Hockey Stick SEM Channel 384

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 22, 2011

Ones that offer amazing value (low relative margins) at high volumes that makes it nearly impossible for high-cost incumbents to compete. In order to grow we hired successful and expensive sales people who in turn were able to (and incentivized to) sell projects at higher margins and close big deals. think Amazon’s Storage costs).

Non-Compete 386

Non-Compete Startup Internet Cost 386

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 6, 2013

Nobody wants to leave their loved ones in a cold, impersonal dog kennel not to mention the costs of doing so. He wanted to work in venture capital and I was new to the industry and in no position to hire anybody. A few years later I was in the position to hire but Aaron was way more senior than our entry-level positions.

San Diego 344

San Diego Technical Review Seed Capital Sacramento 344

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 2, 2015

It’s such a tricky balance between being cost-focused & scrappy versus being impractical with how you spend your time. For a well-funded seed company I have controversially recommended hiring a great office manager that doubles as an administrative assistant. But alas I must scale with businesses and make money.

Operations 150

Operations Metrics Early Stage Non-Compete 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Because I am true to the hiring practices I preach, I wanted a strong exec who would “ punch above their weightclass ” by taking a job they hadn’t yet done but would hugely aspire to and thus work harder to out perform. And we wanted a head of global marketing. I told him that this had been a big theme for me for some time.

Southern California 359

Southern California San Francisco CTO Hire SEM 359

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2010

This is a topic that comes up often in Los Angeles because many CEOs are tempted to hire their tech teams in the Bay Area. I prefer the first sales hires to be in the home office. As your company develops you’ll obviously need to hire sales talent in multiple locations. I understand the need to have geographic coverage.

Distribution 335

Distribution Offshore CTO Hire Bulgaria 335

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

Lately I’ve been having to say things I thought I’d never have to remind people, like, “getting to positive gross margin in several territories is a very low bar to claim success” or “profitable excluding marketing costs” is not actually a real thing. But not doing basic research makes no sense.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2010

.&# I took it to mean, “making decisions with small amounts of money (pennies) that end up making bad sense for affecting larger amounts of money (pounds, as in Great British Pounds).&# I thought of it as people who cut corners on small costs but paid dearly in terms of lost productivity on expensive staff.

Warrant 333

Warrant Germany France Cost 333

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 19, 2013

The era of VCs investing in successful consumer Internet startups such as eBay led to a belief system that seemed to permeate many enterprise software startups that hiring sales or implementation people was a bad thing. It’s Profitable Revenue Covering Your Fixed Costs. This article initially appeared on TechCrunch.

Technical Review 403

Technical Review Software Review Startup API 403

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 5, 2010

About 18 months ago in early 2008 we hired an analyst (pre-MBA), but wanted to wait until after Summer to hire a post-MBA associate. We weren’t ready to hire an associate yet so I offered him a summer internship. Once you’re done raising a fund you’ll hire anybody you want! What about VC’s and Risk? It was May.

Entrepreneur 293

Entrepreneur CTO Hire South America Salary 293

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 4, 2011

The next step after measuring the customers you’re adding is to add the “cost to acquire” by channel. In the early phases if you can’t acquire customers cost effectively enough you’ll need to diagnose why and how to fix it. Make sure that you count the “true” cost to acquire customers. SEO is seldom “free.”. lowering $1.50

Metrics 346

Metrics Startup Acquisition SEM 346

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 25, 2009

They encourage you to hire senior people on your team who have gold-plated resumes. I hired a guy, Azhar Khan, who was raised in the Indian subcontinent (Pakistan, actually) but educated and worked his whole life in the US. I’m not anti Pakistan by any means (they guy I hired was Pakistani!), They are condescending.

Pakistan 297

Pakistan India Technical Review Software Review 297

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Entrepreneurs are driven to pursue their passions no matter the personal costs, societal pressure, family head-scratching or financial consequences. We hired outside experts. Who sat on the sidelines from the comfort of their keyboards risking nothing and criticizing everything. I have witnessed it working. I did not lose my hearing.

Technical Review 417

Technical Review South Korea San Francisco Software Review 417

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. And it launched this author’s career and taught me everything I know about sales, marketing, hiring, firing, fund raising and so on. Growth, again.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

So I did want any rational person who wants to improve does – I hired a coach. They are the lifeblood of many companies yet they are different than the traditional technology startup DNA so the ways that you hire, motivate, compensate and assess performance of these individuals will be different. Cash, cash, cash.

Sales 316

Sales Technical Review Matching Hiring 316

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As your organization grows and you hire senior staff where you are no longer managing every employee directly the issue of how to manage people that are not your “direct&# reports arises. I never built a Google-sized business but I did build an organization from scratch that grew to 120 employees in 5 countries before we sold it.

CTO Hire 308

CTO Hire Management Technical Review Part-Time VPE 308

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

Huge structural under-employment in much of the country and full employment in some niche tech markets where it’s impossible to hire developers, designers or sales professionals. When your competition does irrational things to grow fueled by low-cost capital it makes it harder for you to compete by playing by the conventional rules.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 10, 2011

Or maybe they need to hire somebody with more gravitas / experience. Each customer segment of your business needs to be analyzed to determine whether they are profitable enough given ongoing costs to serve them relative to the revenue you would receive and the retention money you’d have to money to keep them with your service.

Customer 287

Customer Technical Review Caching PR 287

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2009

They had wasted a lot of money because they had raised a lot of money and therefore hired a large staff. We missed our sales targets that year by 66% and the next year by 45% and never really cut costs very much. They realized that they were selling a bunch of cool products but none that had enough economic value. Or I was asked.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Cofounder Sales 306

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. If you don’t have a strong balance sheet and can’t hire more people that’s fine — but understand this may lead to slower growth.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

They therefore have large cost bases and have to pass on those costs to you. - But the trade-off in terms of flexibility and costs were enormous. You’ve just hired your iPhone development team for you app. Should you now hire Android developers? You have a data problem. And that Palm Pre.

Flash 326

Flash Mobile Application Development Cloud 326

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

We had raised a $2 million seed round, which meant taking almost no salary so we could afford to hire staff. But at the end of the year you write your own ticket if you’re talented because now you have experience and it cost you less than your law school loans! Make it attractive for the person hiring you.

Founder 409

Founder Salary Startup Early Stage 409

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 13, 2013

Because I’m going to say no to you, and the guys you want to hire from Facebook are going to say no to you. Should I hire or not hire this person? Pay me half what you think I want to earn and I’ll pay all my own moving costs.” ” “Well, we’re going to be hiring in six months.

Cofounder 337

Cofounder Technical Cofounder San Diego Startup 337

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

Charge the right prices for the right services – But as less people take the DVD service over time, there will be less revenue to cover the relatively high fixed cost structure of the mailer (Qwikster). When Fox first hired its triumvirate of CEO’s to run MySpace after the founders’ departure, I argued the same.

Los Angeles 329

Los Angeles Revenue Retention Acquisition 329

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

But “he didn’t have the budget to hire a developer until he had raised money!&#. The company had less than $5 million in revenue yet we had a multi-tab spreadsheet doing activity-based costing on our customer service staff, operations and technology. He looked stunned. He still had no website and no prototypes.

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 414

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

They hired a consultant to help them with the review. It just so happened that the consultant they hired to chose a software vendor worked for a company that had owned one of our competitors. Competitors price low to get in the door and then nail them with scope control, change orders, product extension costs and other hidden items.

China 333

China Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review 333

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

They hired a consultant to help them with the review. It just so happened that the consultant they hired to chose a software vendor worked for a company that had owned one of our competitors. Competitors price low to get in the door and then nail them with scope control, change orders, product extension costs and other hidden items.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review 328

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 10, 2014

It’s why I wrote this post that the controversial first hire after an A round out to be an office manager / assistant / HR person who handles everything from stocking supplies to booking travel to scheduling group meetings. What they do with the money is add more engineers and maybe hiring a marketing person. But at what cost?

Startup 381

Startup PR Finance Hiring 381

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 26, 2010

They can tell you the square foot costs of their property, they can tell you how much they spend on Amazon Web Services every month, they can tell you the 12 features that you’re working on for your next release. Did someone else pull you’re financial model together while you did “your job?&# Not good enough.

Entrepreneur 286

Entrepreneur CTO Hire Cofounder Early Stage 286

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

You don’t have to hire as many sales people because much can be sold online. He acknowledged the importance of the growing seed fund movement in creating a new wave of cost-effective innovation. But those of you who do get funded will build stronger businesses, make better returns, hire better & more committed employees.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 20, 2011

They chose the name First Round Capital because they thought capital would be deployed most efficiently at smaller seed stage rounds considering the cost to build an internet business had come down drastically. Management should communicate how the board can help - strategy, markets, key hires, introductions. Investing Strategy.

Pre-Money Valuation 284

Pre-Money Valuation Technical Review Cofounder Cram Down 284