article thumbnail

Leaving Government for the Private Sector – Part 2

Steve Blank

Laura Thomas is a former CIA operations officer. At first many start-ups hire a lobbying firm. Strategy and Operations roles: These roles help make sure vision, resources (budgets and people), and the market opportunity are aligned. They can vote to hire and fire the CEO. Below is the second of her three-part series.

article thumbnail

6 Key Leaders Every Technical Startup Needs To Thrive

Startup Professionals Musings

Outside professionals are always available, but they may have their own agenda, such as building a career, making money quickly, or managing up the stock price for a quick exit. The operations superstar. The rest can come from early hires (with stock options to assure commitment), equity investors, or even strategic partners.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Why Uber is The Revenge of the Founders

Steve Blank

To turn your company’s stock into cash, you engaged a top-notch investment bank (Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs) and/or their Silicon Valley compatriots (Hambrecht & Quist, Montgomery Securities, Robertson Stephens). Hire a CEO to Go Public. VCs competing for unicorn investments have given founders control of the board.

Founder 245
article thumbnail

How Great, Operationally-Focused CFO’s Can Transform Your Business

Both Sides of the Table

For a well-funded seed company I have controversially recommended hiring a great office manager that doubles as an administrative assistant. This happens because many CEOs are passionate, market-driven people who are constantly trying to launch new products, win contracts, get press, hire staff and woo VCs. HR & Legal.

article thumbnail

How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Your Business

YoungUpstarts

For some time now computers have allowed us to perform breathtakingly complex mathematical operations in just fractions of a second. Although many business owners currently hire virtual assistants to curate content for a business’s social media profiles, it is likely that this is also something an AI bot will be able to do in the future.

article thumbnail

Stock Market Drops. Then It Rallies. What Happens Next for Funding?

Both Sides of the Table

Mostly we got to see the team operate in stressful times and that changed my perspective on the deal. So when the market started showing good signs (iPhone, Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, stock market growth) it was happy days again. Risks of these two factors to the stock market. Depressing. It felt awful. It’s your job.

Stock 305
article thumbnail

Neko Health: Spotify CEO’s Medical Startup Raises €60 Million in Funding

ReadWriteStart

Neko Health will be able to revolutionize the healthcare industry and expand its operations beyond the borders of its home country of Sweden as a result of the funding received. We try to be as clear as possible about what it is that we do and how it operates. million) in funding from venture capitalists.

Sweden 126