Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

You should also focus heavily on his or her former employees. I would take a strong employee referral from an existing employee I trust 10x over a person more qualified on paper (given similar skill levels). Many teams pay bonuses to employees who bring in people they know. In many ways that can be way more telling.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Cofounder San Francisco Silicon Valley 320

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 22, 2014

A while back I talked about how and where to find a co-founder in “ For a Startup, Two Heads are Always Better Than One ”. In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.” In this context, I’m broadening the definition of partner from co-founder to “business partner.”

Partner 269

Partner Software Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 269

View from Seed

APRIL 14, 2020

VCs are always founder focused no matter the market environment. But in a FOMO world, more investors are willing to take a chance on a founder that they don’t know, but seems to match some of the heuristics of other high quality founders. This gets really challenging if it remains difficult to meet in person or to travel.

Early Stage 374

Early Stage Software Review Technical Review Due Diligence 374

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 26, 2023

The path to success is far from easy, which is a lesson Quattro Development’s founders, Rob Walters and Mike Liyeos, know all too well. The duo recall their most profound failures as co-founders, as well as the steps they took to overcome misfortune and become a premier national developer.

Cofounder 148

Cofounder Developer United States Founder 148

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2019

These days, it is almost impossible to find a small business where everything is done at the home location, by full-time employees. Utilization and personal growth of virtual employees is not my problem.” Some entrepreneurs view their outsourced employees as temps, or as a cheap way to staff the company during its startup phase.

Entrepreneur 303

Entrepreneur Philippines Bandwidth Cofounder 303

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 3, 2022

For example, I remember a classic book, “ The Best Team Wins: Build Your Business Through Predictive Hiring ,” by Adam Robinson, CEO and cofounder of Hireology, which details the how and why of hiring your most valuable assets today. It’s a small cost to prevent a long-term loss. Give priority to attitude over experience.

Hiring 337

Hiring Technical Cofounder Cofounder Retention 337

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 8, 2023

Cash isn’t always the scarcest resource startups have to invest – more often it’s the leadership capital of under-experienced and over-stretched entrepreneurs and co-founders. Most new startup founders start out by assuming they need to spread their leadership efforts evenly across all team members.

Employee 267

Employee Leadership Cofounder Matching 267

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 10, 2020

by Zain Jaffer, serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Zain Ventures. The loss of these major customers can have a dramatic impact on both internal (employees) and external contributors (investors). Company culture may also be a contributing factor in the manner in which employees deal with hindrances.

Customer 347

Customer Development Team Review Advisory Board Private Equity 347

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2022

Supportive co-founder and executive positions. Every startup needs two or three key advisors who have the domain experience, connections, and complementary skills to guide the founders through those early crises. Member of the Advisory Board. Manage customer service. Labor-intensive roles, including warehousing and construction.

Advisory Board 368

Advisory Board Dividend Angel Investor Cofounder 368

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 4, 2014

The lack of team cohesion and respect for individuals has probably been one of the biggest weaknesses of Zynga – at least from nearly EVERY employee I’ve ever talked to who worked there. ” Of course we all go into businesses expecting to be aligned with our co-founders but over time life changes.

Founder 340

Founder Cofounder Sacramento Technical Review 340

VC Cafe

MARCH 31, 2025

Michael Seibel first joined YC as a founder (twice: w07, w12) once with the live streaming service Justin.TV (which morphed into Twitch) and later on Socialcam, another streaming app. All co-founders should have roughly a year’s worth of very frugal living expenses saved up and must have quit their jobs.

Cofounder 88

Cofounder Silicon Valley Technical Review PR 88

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2023

Venture Studios are an “idea factory” with their own employees searching for product/market fit and a repeatable and scalable business model. But these look for founders who have a technical or business model insight and a team. They do the most to de-risk the early stages of a startup. Carlos stirred his coffee.

Technical Cofounder 368

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 368

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 16, 2022

Thus I was pleased to see a much more complete and broader perspective of employee support recommendations in a new book, “ Employees First! ” by Donna Cutting, who is a globally-recognized guru on employee culture and optimizing customer service. Of course, you as the business leader have a key role in making all this happen.

Technical Review 353

Technical Review Cofounder Employee Global 353

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

Unless you have a co-founder or two with the business skills to complement your technical ones, you need a friendly Advisory Board. The cost of a co-founder is usually fifty percent of your equity. What you learn will apply to employees.

Advisory Board 356

Advisory Board Bandwidth Cofounder Technical Review 356

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Why do these founders get to stay around? Because the balance of power has dramatically shifted from investors to founders. VCs competing for unicorn investments have given founders control of the board. A pre-IPO board usually had two founders, two VCs and one “independent” member. Technology Cycles Measured in Years.

Founder 281

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 281

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 18, 2020

Supportive co-founder and executive positions. Every startup needs two or three key advisors who have the domain experience, connections, and complementary skills to guide the founders through those early crises. Member of the Advisory Board. Manage customer service. Labor-intensive roles, including warehousing and construction.

Advisory Board 312

Advisory Board Startup Dividend Angel Investor 312

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 4, 2019

by Josh Fechter , co-founder and CEO of Squibler. Why keep employees engaged? By understanding employee engagement , you can enhance productivity, improve retention in demanding fields and deliver higher quality products and services. Although not all employees like working together, many thrive on the prospect.

Employee 147

Employee Technology Cofounder Viral 147

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Sam also had a vision as early as 2012 about how MakeSpace would be a large employer of middle-income jobs: The company would hire employees rather than just have contractors and he would lead the effort to ensure they had opportunities for growth and benefits for their families. Seriously, this happens.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 13, 2020

by Simone Semprini, CEO & Co-Founder, TourScanner. It is no secret that transportation is a sector that generates pollution and CO 2 emissions. The reduction of the business trips of their employees goes in that direction. All employees can decide where to work and where to live.

Technical Review 278

Technical Review United States China Cofounder 278

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 29, 2020

by Hema Crockett and Jamie Jacobs, co-founders of Gig Talent . In the past, working remotely was considered “normal” for entrepreneurs or independent contractors in the gig economy only, but organizations wanted employees, and consultants, to be onsite and working in the office. Employees clearly want and enjoy the flexibility.

Technical Review 275

Technical Review Cofounder Leadership Employee 275

Steve Blank

APRIL 3, 2018

It does mean that success in building a company that scales depends on finding product/market fit, enough customers, enough financing, enough great employees, distribution channels, etc. These are entrepreneurial skills you need to rapidly acquire or find a co-founder who already has them. Lessons Learned.

Technical Review 335

Technical Review Entrepreneur Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 335

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 1, 2014

Supportive co-founder and executive positions. Every startup needs two or three key advisors who have the domain experience, connections, and complementary skills to guide the founders through those early crises. Member of the Advisory Board. Manage customer service. Labor-intensive roles, including warehousing and construction.

Entrepreneur 266

Entrepreneur Advisory Board Dividend Angel Investor 266

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2019

by Peter Johnston , founder and CEO of Kalo. Micha Kaufman, CEO and co-founder of Fiverr, believes the freelance ecosystem will become a viable solution for entrepreneurs who need assistance with a variety of tasks for their growing businesses. But what about freelancers? But what type of technology can help?

Technical Review 228

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Due Diligence 228

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. I know a change is going to come. Loss of status ?

Part-Time VPE 334

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 334

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Most experienced VCs won’t push you to give up founder control at this stage of the business nor should they. Founder’s perspective. You’ll get empathy. Experience. Relationships.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

The show included a surreptitiously recorded conversation with an employee of a “product-destruction” facility, who described receiving truckload after truckload of Amazon returns and shredding everything—ostensibly for recycling, although the recoverable content of a chewed-up random selection of consumer goods is not high.

Technical Cofounder 104

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Coder Canada 104

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 31, 2020

by Roland Polzin , MBA and Co-founder of Wing AI. According to a survey conducted by DELL Technologies, 82% of surveyed managers expect integrated teams to consist of employees, machines, and systems in the next few years. Computers are not yet actually smart.

Artificial Inteligence 214

Artificial Inteligence Mali Management Technical Review 214

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2012

I often get asked about finding cofounders and I usually give the standard list of characteristics of what I look for in a founder. And I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets – i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps. So I asked her to write a guest post.

Cofounder 332

Cofounder IPO Early Stage Green 332

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 14, 2017

I read commentary or Twitter or blogs and realize that there are also strongly held convictions that there are these evil VCs who do terrible things to mostly altruistic founders. But unlike the popular press reporting of this conflict — 80% of the time it is founder-to-founder conflict and not investor-to-founder conflict.

Cofounder 217

Cofounder Stock Options Equity Technical Review 217

The Startup Magazine

MAY 13, 2022

Equity distribution among co-founders may be a complex procedure while starting any business. How you split founder startup equity can be even harder for a tech startup due to different roles and contributions from the founders. Founders often earn the greatest initial ownership, which is predictable.

Equity 172

Equity Founder Vesting Cofounder 172

View from Seed

JANUARY 27, 2021

Today, we have invested in over 100 high-growth companies, some of which have grown to be household names with thousands of employees making a huge impact in the everyday lives of everyday people. . We lead or co-lead most of our investments and we develop our individual conviction vs. trying to hang around the hoop for market signals.

Operations 227

Operations Hiring Seed Stage Boston 227

YoungUpstarts

MAY 11, 2017

by Ana Grasic , cofounder of WeGrowth. Try to keep your emails as short as possible , especially those that you need to send to your employees. If you don’t want to spend half a day reading a mile-long email, then your employees shouldn’t, either. That way, you will not forget about it.

Small Business 196

Small Business Product Cofounder Email 196

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2018

These days, it is almost impossible to find a small business where everything is done at the home location, by full-time employees. Utilization and personal growth of virtual employees is not my problem.” Some entrepreneurs view their outsourced employees as temps, or as a cheap way to staff the company during its startup phase.

Philippines 181

Philippines Bandwidth Cofounder Affiliate 181

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2020

Thanksgiving might look a little different for your employees this year. For the better part of 2020, employees have kept businesses going strong. It positively impacts everything from employee well-being to job satisfaction to motivation to productivity. Then open it up for employees to thank and compliment one another.

Turkey 147

Turkey Employee North America Cofounder 147

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 3, 2020

by Erin Yurday, CEO, Co-founder and Editor of NimbleFins. Failures by employees or service providers. Any acts of negligence committed by your employees can lead your business to a lawsuit. Although the industries may not have much in common, consultants of all stripes face some of the same risks in their work.

Intellectual Property 165

Intellectual Property Software Review Cofounder Architecture 165

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 16, 2020

In fact, according to Founders Forum’s survey of 400+ startup owners, 94% of the respondents were already working from home before the pandemic. All of these businesses had to roll back their remote work policies and call employees back on-premises. Unhealthy Employee Morale. Image Credit: pixaby.

Technical Review 200

Technical Review Startup Belgium Software Review 200

View from Seed

APRIL 27, 2020

Founders do not have this luxury. Most founders are going through hell right now, and that is not going away any time soon. For investors and founders, the next several years are going to be very different. Pre-seeds will be tougher as investors gravitate more towards proven founders or folks within their existing networks.

Cofounder 194

Cofounder Software Review Portfolio Technical Review 194