Earlier today I spent a fruitless half-hour trying to convince a solo founder that he would a be lot better off if he recruited a co-founder *before* he tried to raise money, not after. (Side note — the Startup Genome report makes this case much better than I ever will). The founder’s counter-argument was that continue…

Founders create culture, indelibly. Even at 50,000+ employees you can see Jeff Bezos’ personality and values at work in every corner of Amazon; similar stories can be told about Apple, Oracle, Bloomberg, and any other founder-led company. Knowing that every early hire will have a lasting impact on your company culture can be scary for continue…

Harry Houdini was an illusionist and escape artist who died almost 100 years ago. But what he *did* and what successful startup founders do are more alike than they may seem. A few days ago I tweeted out a phrase that stuck in my head as I was driving my kids to school (the kids continue…

This is another one of those ideas that seem obvious to me now, but didn’t always — and I keep hearing from entrepreneurs that it’s new information to them, which tells me I should write it down. Chris Dixon is one of the most articulate entrepreneur / investors I know of on the many risks continue…

The concept of acquired situational narcissism has been in my head since 2001, when the New York Times Magazine included it in their annual “Year In Ideas” issue. The phrase describes the lack of empathy — and resulting self-serving behavior — that the rich and powerful tend towards when they mistakenly interpret their own success continue…

Last week I had several different conversation with entrepreneurs who are on the verge of setting up operations for their new startup. The topics we covered included: Should I self-fund / bootstrap or raise angel money? Should I accept an EIR / incubation offer from a VC firm? Should I keep looking for a technical continue…

Lots of chatter lately about how Seattle investors aren’t stepping up to back promising local entrepreneurs, which in turn is driving the best + most ambitious teams to decamp for Silicon Valley (e.g., GeekWire on Tony Wright’s departure, or Trevor Gilbert’s PandoDaily piece on local funding weakness). This is a big and complex topic that I continue…

I’ve written before about the fractal relationship between running a startup and running a venture fund — here’s another example: Freemium pricing is one of the most powerful customer acquisition strategies in the software business. Many billion-dollar businesses have been built (think Dropbox or Evernote) by giving away a significant chunk of their overall value continue…

Pop quiz — is it easier to: (a) close a sale with a customer who already wants what you’re selling, or (b) sell to someone who’s not even aware they might want a product like yours, much less why they should buy it from you? Easy, right? Every day I meet entrepreneurs who beat their heads continue…

Charlie Munger (Warren Buffet’s long-time partner) is full of pithy maxims for investors, but one in particular has been ringing in my ears lately: “Think forwards and backwards — invert, always invert” By “inverting”, he means coming at any problem from (at least) two different and opposing angles. This is good advice in any situation, but continue…