Every week I send out a short email with quick updates on what I've written. My goal is to be actionable, insightful, and honest.
If you're looking for something a little more interactive, Teaching Startup is my project to fill the gap between blog post and formal advisor. You'll get a daily email with responses to direct questions from a smaller group of subscribers. This project will grow and evolve. First 30 days are free, then it's $10 a month. Join the wait list now.
Here's how this works. Use the form to tell me about your question or issue. Give me as much detail as you can and be specific. If I feel like I can honestly help, I'll respond over email (I don't do phone). I can't answer all of them. If you don't hear from me, I got overloaded. The catch? I might use your scenario for a post, but I'll keep you extremely anonymous.
I get tons of inbound from entrepreneurs and founders, from first-timers with an idea to CEOs with millions in annual revenue, and they all ask what basically boils down to the same question: "I've taken my startup this far, how do I get the money to take it to the next level?"
* Featured in TechCrunch *
Let me ask you a strategic question. Where do you want your company to be three years from now? What will your product or service look like? Which new features will you roll out and how will your business evolve?
Nobody likes hardware startups. Investors can't run away from them fast enough, customers are always hyper-skeptical, and retailers love inventing new hoops for new products to jump through.
* A Medium Editorial Feature *
Last week, one of the founders I'm advising landed a lucrative and potentially game-changing customer. This was a moment of truth in more ways than one.
* A Medium Editorial Feature *
If I gave you unlimited funds, time, and talent, could you build a wildly successful product? Wait. Stop. It’s a trick question. None of those things actually matter. As recently as a few years ago, a startup could get away with hiring a crack development team to build a product from the ground up, based solely on a good idea.
No matter what your startup is selling or who you're selling it to, in order to survive, you'll need big customers and you'll need lots of them. But how do you land million-dollar deals with limited resources and no credibility?
* Featured in TechCrunch *
Last year, around this same time, I committed to writing two startup advice posts a week on Medium. I started on January 2nd, 2019 and this will be the next to last one for the year.
In the hundred or so startup advice posts I've written this year, my secret is that I'm not trying to advise you to start a company, or join a startup, or invent something world-changing. I just want you to understand that no matter what you do, where you do it, or who you do it for, you still have the time, the talent, and the resources to become exactly who you were meant to be.
A partnership with an existing business can be a huge win for a startup. But just because a bigger, shinier company wants to be your new BFF, it doesn't mean the revenue firehose is going to be aimed your way.
These days, it seems like anyone can stitch together a simple two-sided marketplace. All it takes is using readily-available technology to gather a big group of customers on one side and a curated list of providers on the other.
* A Medium Editorial Feature *
Each service business is unique and comes with its own problems and limitations. So here's my advice to the hundreds of you who have written in and the (probably) thousands more who haven't.
Should you be slow to fire or quick to fire in the early days? It's a tricky question and the right answer depends on some thorny subjects. So let's talk through it.
* A Medium Editorial Feature *
Whether you're a founder or you just have some equity, there's a bunch of stuff you need to know before you decide to sell your startup, stuff that you won't actually learn until you've been through it.
* Featured in TechCrunch *
Every entrepreneur will arrive at a crossroads where we can do the right thing and lose or do the wrong thing and win. If that kind of win never sits right with you, read on.