YoungUpstarts
NOVEMBER 27, 2018
Worse yet, they may simply hire employees of high skill out of your market area and deny you the workforce you need to make your idea feasible. Worse yet, your fundraising history might actively work against you if you opened the floodgates too soon or handed out too much stock in return for small investments.
Steve Blank
OCTOBER 23, 2023
At first many start-ups hire a lobbying firm. Larger companies hiring a Chief of Staff often look for someone who has an MBA, experience with one of the big consulting firms, or experience doing the job already. They can vote to hire and fire the CEO. A Board of Directors has a formal and legal role. They need you.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 30, 2014
It’s true the some VCs have started writing so many checks that they resemble stock pickers but the majority of us still have less than 10 board seats at any time and tend to go pretty deep so the result is that we care deeply about where we commit our time. I seldom hire patent attorneys during due diligence but this was too important.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 16, 2010
At one of our initial board meetings we had agreed on the general principle of an advisory board and put together an overall stock budget to compensate advisors. One of the first potential advisors I reached out to was someone who 10 years earlier tried to hire me as the VP of Marketing of his new division at Sun Microsystems.
Steve Blank
OCTOBER 19, 2009
I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Our company’s stock was an inducement, but all of them were in it to help us build a better computer. These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
He just hired Meg Whitman. Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Startups wrote business plans, generated expansive 5-year forecasts and executed (hired, spent and built) to the plan.
Steve Blank
APRIL 10, 2019
For most startup employee’s startup stock options are now a bad deal. Why Startups Offer Stock Options. In tech startups stock options were here almost from the beginning, first offered to the founders in 1957 at Fairchild Semiconductor , the first chip startup in Silicon Valley. Here’s why. Why would they do that?
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
113 
Let's personalize your content