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How Boards Need to Evolve Over Time

Both Sides of the Table

By now you have many smart people around your board but probably people who don’t totally understand the nuances of your employees, customers, sales reps, marketing messages, technology challenges, competitors and strategic choices. how much energy to put into channel partners vs. direct sales. And here’s the thing.

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What I Would Look for When Choosing a VC – Knowing What I Know Now?

Both Sides of the Table

VCs should be more of a coach than proscriptively telling you what to do. SEO marketing vs. social marketing. Of course it is super helpful if a VC can drop you in to important people for business development, recruiting, PR, sales and eventually M&A. I think of VCs as coaches. I call them “ VCs Seagulls.”

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6 Mindsets That Separate the Most Effective Leaders

Startup Professionals Musings

I believe these same mindsets are equally applicable to the entrepreneurs I mentor, and all of you small business leaders, so I offer you my summary of the authors’ conclusions, paraphrased here, with my own insights: Be bold in vision, strategy, and resource allocation. Get organization alignment through culture and talent.

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Be Careful About Being a Meddling Startup CEO

Both Sides of the Table

In practice it can be a fine line between sparring partner / coach and stepping over the line to brute-force persuasion. At times I wanted the engineering team to produce features to support our sales efforts to I occasionally leaned on them a bit. Another area we CEOs often meddle is in sales. I did this. ” PR.

Startup 150
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Why you should never have a data room — the most counter-intuitive fund-raising advice you’ll ever…

Both Sides of the Table

When you raise money from investors you produce information that you are told they want and care about: A fund-raising deck that articulates your company strategy, plans, team, market, competitors and so forth. For starters you have to realize that fund-raising is a sales process. and then asking to take a brochure home with you.

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People Management: Startup Teams Should Dip but not Skip

Both Sides of the Table

You’ll get sales information from your VP of Sales, marketing information from your VP Marketing, tech information from your CTO and so on. An obvious example would be in sales. You’re also learning directly about the skills of your sales staff by observing them in action.

Startup 308
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10 Signals That You Can Be A Trusted Business Leader

Startup Professionals Musings

I saw a good summary of the required principles for long-term trust in a new book, “ The 10 Laws of Trust ,” by Joel Peterson, Chairman of JetBlue, professor at Stanford University, and thought leader in this area: Practice personal integrity in all that you do. Show humility while acting as a mentor and coach.

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