A few weeks ago, a very good friend who works at a growing startup emailed me with the following question (in which I’ve masked just a few of the identifying details): What does it mean when almost all of a startup’s early employees have left the company? By almost any measure, [our company] is doing [...]

A lot has been written about a formal “VC Pitch” meeting with advice about how to handle those interactions with venture capitalists.  But not all conversations with venture capitalists are formal pitches, nor are they expected to be.  And sometimes it’s unclear if it’s a pitch meeting or not. Of course it’s productive to follow [...]

As a VC, I end up meeting some amazing people of many different backgrounds and profiles.  But there are two categories of people which are tightly correlated, but distinctly different.  The difference between what I’d call an “Inventor,” someone who has many ideas for businesses to start, and a “Founder,” an entrepreneur who starts a [...]

When was the last time all of your startup’s management team came together to take a step back from day-to-day minutiae and think big picture?  I think it’s actually incredibly valuable for startups to occasionally, and regularly, have offsite planning sessions.  Unlike at “big companies,” a startup offsite isn’t about a boondoggle, it’s not about [...]

VCs rarely go into an entrepreneur’s pitch meeting with a completely open mind. Of course they have biases given their past experiences, like with any human interaction. More importantly, though, they have biases about whether or not they are going to find the opportunity attractive even before a word of the dialog has been spoken. [...]