Thoughts on people, teams, organizations, communities, effectiveness and success
There are lessons that some startups learn after they’ve crashed, and mistakes that successful startups either learn early or avoid making.
If you want to be successful as a startup, learn these lessons early – or be very lucky and avoid them.
Lunch yesterday with my friend and colleague Dr. Jo Whitehouse – a rockstar in the startup world – highlighted two of them.… Read the rest
Over hot chocolate (Peet’s non-fat, no whipped cream) this week, the search headhunter – newer to that side of the desk after running executive recruiting for one the nation’s blue chip companies on the other side of the proverbial desk – asked the awkward question.
His candidate search work for engagements had been outstanding; his new business development success had been missing in action.… Read the rest
There are a number of formulas for success for building “can’t miss” start-up and founding teams.
Here’s one that actually works.
A disclaimer first; depending on your business you’ll need to have reasonable domain expertise. If you’re in the internet networking space, you need to have people on your founding team that have the technical chops to have the engineering aspects nailed, as well as somebody who understands the competitive market dynamics (who buys gear, who is the competition, who is a player, who is not, etc.).… Read the rest
Yankee baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra (king of malapropisms but no relation to Abe Lincoln on the right) once said “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
The same is true of most of the organizational stuff that you do that touches people in companies; figure out where you want to end up, and work backwards.… Read the rest
There are few things that are more important than first impressions (that tagline: “You only have one chance to make a great first impression“), the time in-between, and leaving that lasting impression by how you say goodbye.
People can forget at times a lot of bumpiness in that in-between period if the bookend hello and goodbyes are done well.
Seth Godin recently blogged that “unreasonable is the new reasonable” – the only person or business that succeeds are those that offer qualities or service that no one can ever approach.
I quibble with Godin’s assessment (I believe it’s more hype that actual performance). I don’t quibble with his take to the appearance of those qualities.… Read the rest