Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2011

Jud is an extremely experienced CTO / technical product manager and developer, but had never been a CEO. Oh, and they are hiring as fast as they can find great people ; across the spectrum (business, sales, & engineering). At this point, the other co-founder, Jud Valeski, stepped up to be the CEO.

CTO Hire 131

CTO Hire Cofounder Architecture Product Development 131

Feld Thoughts

MAY 26, 2021

The thing is, the categories were things like “Existentialism” and “Philosophy Reference” where overall sales are lower – they are applicable to the book as categories, but not really our target market (for the record, the book is selling nicely in “Entrepreneurial Management”, where it was briefly #2.). Ahhh, that feels better.

New York 91

New York Lean Reputation Email 91

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 8, 2021

In the mid-1990s, when I had a bunch of money after the sale of my first company, I bought and sold some public company stocks. I got sucked into giving some of my money to a money manager at Goldman Sachs and one at Lehman. I put a bunch of Exodus stock I’d gotten from the sale of a company into the fund. my investment.

Stock 172

Stock SEC Equity Matching 172

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 27, 2012

I thought it was a powerful summary of part of our discussion, specifically around the sales pipeline for Q4 and overall sales execution. ” I hung in there in this case and continued to make my point about playing offense on sales forecasting. .” Best Practices When It Comes to Sales Pipeline Stage Definitions.

Revenue 145

Revenue Forecast Semantic Sales 145

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 5, 2013

Your board is paying attention to your performance against plan, and you and your management team are executing based on the plan you had approved, which likely includes both a revenue plan and an expense plan. If your sales and revenue are not on or ahead of plan, it’s time to take a hard look at what is going on.

Forecast 158

Forecast Revenue Metrics Sales 158

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 4, 2014

On Monday we had a Foundry Group portfolio company sales summit. We are fortunate in that we’ve got a bunch of amazing sales execs in our portfolio, including several CEOs like Howard Diamond of MobileDay and Matthew Bellows of Yesware who have long histories selling and building sales organizations. Sales ROI yesware'

Software 140

Software Portfolio Sales Cofounder 140

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2014

In the last five years, I’ve managed to find the time to write, publish and promote multiple books, including two award-winning bestsellers , develop a web application, maintain a blog, and present at conferences. Here’s how to calculate break-even point in sales.”. Maybe you just want to kick butt in your day job. Telecommute.

Technical Review 195

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Software Review Cofounder 195

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 26, 2014

books) will be created and consumed as well as how the connections between reader and author will be established and managed. But what about sales and distribution? ” With iOS, Android, HTML5, and web apps, BookShout has created technology to power the sales and distribution of ebooks from nearly any site.

Distribution 155

Distribution Viral Audience Revenue 155

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

As the company grew, we partitioned a lot of things – I became the sales guy – generating much of our new business. Dave became the software guy, managing the team and getting the work done. Management management motivation' The post The Last Page In The Book Problem appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

Boston 146

Boston Management Hiring Technology 146

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 8, 2021

In the mid-1990s, when I had a bunch of money after the sale of my first company, I bought and sold some public company stocks. I got sucked into giving some of my money to a money manager at Goldman Sachs and one at Lehman. I put a bunch of Exodus stock I’d gotten from the sale of a company into the fund. my investment.

Stock 70

Stock SEC Equity Matching 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 26, 2014

books) will be created and consumed as well as how the connections between reader and author will be established and managed. But what about sales and distribution? ” With iOS, Android, HTML5, and web apps, BookShout has created technology to power the sales and distribution of ebooks from nearly any site.

Distribution 133

Distribution Viral Audience Revenue 133

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 22, 2015

We have one “larger” company based in Santa Fe: Thornburg Investment Management which thankfully provides 250 high wage jobs. Santa Fe’s anemic economy is due in large part because Santa Fe has an older population made up primarily of retirees in addition to federal, state and local government workers and service-based workers.

New Mexico 70

New Mexico Mexico Technical Review Colorado 70

Feld Thoughts

JULY 12, 2013

Bill, the managing director for the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, is a close friend and amazing thinker on entrepreneurship. Bill’s book Disciplined Entrepreneurship is currently available for pre-order , but will officially go on sale August 13th. I hope you will join us!

Software 121

Software Hosting Sales Entrepreneur 121

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Last night I got an email with a Q3 sales update from a company I’m an investor in for a while. They consistently meet or beat their plan and are an extremely well managed business.

Cost 131

Cost Email Sales Management 131

Feld Thoughts

JULY 7, 2011

Highly qualified yet bad attitude hires wreak havoc with your culture, suck up a ton of management bandwidth and ultimately don’t get anything done. For example, ask a sales person to do a presentation. We’ve axed many sales people because they fell apart during the presentation. Never sacrifice your culture.

Bandwidth 134

Bandwidth Leadership Hiring Sales 134

Feld Thoughts

JULY 29, 2014

AWS sales are off slightly. Second quarter net sales of AWS — or at least the category in which it is embedded– were off about 3 percent sequentially to $1.168 billion from $1.204 billion for the first quarter. “Could Amazon Web Services be feeling the heat from new public cloud competitors?

Cloud 176

Cloud Partner Hosting Cost 176

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 20, 2012

The whole CRM thing is for sales managers who want to actually track what the salespeople are doing. Most salespeople I know live in email, hate their CRM system, and are constantly switching between the two while bemoaning the idiocy of the whole thing. But it’s all about email for the salespeople.

Finance 124

Finance Email Sales Product 124

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 20, 2012

The first articles were weirdly hostile with a focus on how OnLive just laid all their employees off in preparation for a sale in order to enrich the founders/investors at the expense of the employees. Rather than screwing the employees to enrich management, this feels to me like a pretty employee friendly approach.

Recapitalization 136

Recapitalization Stock Options Vesting Equity 136

Feld Thoughts

MAY 11, 2012

My long time friend Chris Moody , president and COO of Gnip, has offered to write some guest posts on management – we’ll call the series Moody on Management. For example, telling me you increased sales by 300% isn’t that helpful. Ask lots of questions about stuff that matters to you.

Startup 146

Startup Matching Hiring Early Stage 146

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 19, 2011

I’ve watched the workflow, even from very disciplined sales people, and shaken my head in total bafflement at the lack of integration and the perverse contortions the sales person goes through to try to make the two systems work together.

Email 130

Email Boston Channel Finance 130

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 13, 2017

The focus of each person is on a specific functional area (finance, marketing, sales) and traditionally scoped. Naturally, you will have a product or engineering leader for Product, you will have a sales, marketing, or operations leader for Customer, and you will have a finance or admin leader for Company.

Leadership 70

Leadership Engineer Finance Sales 70

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 7, 2016

If you sell a physical product, you have a lot of Q4 upside and unpredictability, but now you have to manage your cash to get to Q4 so that you can invest in building inventory to over-perform. If you are a marketplace, you’ve likely got a supply/demand imbalance that you don’t completely understand.

Revenue 70

Revenue .Net Metrics Restful 70

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 14, 2011

When the CEO calls a Code Red, there is often a negative reaction from parts of the organization ranging from sales, development, to operations. If you call it every other week, it’s not a Code Red, it’s shitty management and leadership. I know some managers who hate the idea of ever being in a Code Red situation.

Leadership 129

Leadership Operations Employee Marketing 129

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 22, 2015

In Boulder I ran around asking a number of CEOs and Foundry Partners for company management advice—how to run one-on-ones, structure executive meetings, manage my board, etc. ” Jud invited me to attend his management meetings and let me interview anyone on his entire team at will. Gnip was built right, and it worked.

NDA 70

NDA Portfolio Operations Management 70

Feld Thoughts

MAY 11, 2017

You can shift to more specific questions around a category like sales such as: Are you making progress on lowering churn? If you don’t want to read Porter’s classic book (or read it again if you read it a long time ago), try a Wikipedia shortcut on Competitive Advantage. Have you moved from monthly to annual deals?

IPO 171

IPO Portfolio Channel Revenue 171

Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

The gong that gets rung at Gnip every time a new sale is made or partner deal is signed. As I mulled it over, I realized the specific act wasn’t the key thing, but the power of a tradition that scales across the company. Bowing in and bowing out before and after each meeting. Or Paid PAID vacation at FullContact.

Partner 140

Partner Leadership Sales Product 140

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 6, 2014

I was making plenty of money consulting and, while I was investing much of the money I made from the sale into new companies as an angel investor, the idea of living in Homer was attractive.

Alaska 166

Alaska Widget Colorado Angel Investor 166

Feld Thoughts

JULY 31, 2013

I was one of the day one execs of LVLT, as well as an early member of the management team of MFS Communications. By the time we sold to Level 3, our total proceeds to equity owners and management were $225M. In the sale to LVLT, we kept a portion of this office. I had recently left Level 3 Communications.

Bandwidth 147

Bandwidth Colorado Startup IRR 147

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 20, 2013

This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale. Of course you did – it’s all the mainstream media could seem to write about last week after the now infamous twitter tweet about it. We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013.

SEC 142

SEC IPO Investment Bankers Valuation 142

Feld Thoughts

MAY 23, 2011

The “chief&# one is especially bizarre since it’s not always obvious whether the CSO is a “Chief Sales Officer&# or a “Chief Security Officer&# which in and of itself is a problem. “vice president&# ). I’ve never paid much attention to titles.

Security 139

Security Email Sales Technology 139

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 27, 2012

Today one of our portfolio companies, LinkSmart , has come out of stealth mode and unveiled its product, Total Link Management and $4.7M This publisher then runs a never-ending fire drill with their sales, SEO and yield management teams to fulfill those obligations with their advertisers. in financing led by Foundry Group.

Web 130

Web Stealth SEO HTML 130

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 6, 2020

Cities in the US that have concentrations of technical, sales, or operational talent, usually because of one specific employer or a highly motivated university nearby, have been surprisingly effective. Several of our companies have had great success in Eastern Europe and Russia with technical teams.

Silicon Valley 81

Silicon Valley Seattle Russia Denver 81

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 22, 2013

We managed to stick to our agreements when we knew we would be held accountable the next week. He has seen us through the sale of Cliff’s second startup, our wedding, the birth of our child and the birth of Cliff’s current company Mocavo, all major life transitions. It was clear that we needed a third party.

Startup 174

Startup Software Review Partner Colorado 174