For a long time, we’ve been living in a product economy where brands compete with one another to deliver the best products at the lowest prices. That race hasn’t been…
In 2002, Amazon launched a side business with little fanfare: cloud Infrastructure as a service. 20 years later, it now makes over $70B in annual revenue. It’s a huge business.…
Again and again in the press, even now in the mainstream press, there are reports of hyper-growth (unicorn) companies that suck at customer/partner support. They are so bad at it…
Brief post this week. Not a new idea (I’m sure), but humor me as I work through it. I often meet teams that are in the midst of trying something…
Many teams start with a list of opportunities, features, problems, or ideas. And then tack on success metrics, initiative KPIS, OKRs, or whatever to each thing. Work —> Goal This causes problems. Measurement…
Over the past decade, a number of generational consumer-facing marketplaces have been built on the internet: Uber, Airbnb, Doordash. The wave of technologies that enabled these businesses (mobile, payments processing),…
Why not to do a startup Posted on June 18, 2007In this series of posts I will walk through some of my accumulated knowledge and experience in building high-tech startups.…
Key Takeaways Founders need to understand factors that help maximize the valuation of their business and increase the propensity of new investors to come in at the highest possible valuation.…
Customer churn is bad. As a statement, that’s uncontroversial. But for all its truth, it’s also pretty unhelpful. As any SaaS founder knows, some degree of churn is unavoidable —…
Whether it’s the capital on offer, the equity investors demand, or simply their willingness to invest, every aspect of startup funding is tied together by one seemingly inscrutable concept: valuation. The…