Wouldn’t it be great if you could validate your startup idea in less than one hour because you absolutely, positively have to validate your startup idea? There are seven steps that you need to take to validate your startup idea. …

Do you think I would be better off stepping down as CEO?” “Wayne”, a CEO I’m working with, said to me. “My investors are offering to make me Executive Chairman or CTO. Maybe I should take the offer?” “I think it’s a huge mistake for you to step down,” I…

“The co-founders were fighting all the time,” Abdenour, an engineering candidate, said to me about the previous startup he worked at. “It made the work environment really bad. I think that’s why we failed.” Abdenour’s right. When you and your co-founders are fighting all the time, there’s no way that…

“He needs to understand that asking for more equity is like pulling on a string,” I said to Adolfo, my co-founder and VP Marketing. We were reviewing what offer package we should give a potential employee, and Adolfo was indicating the applicant wanted more equity. “What do you mean, Brett?”…

“You’re at $5 million in revenue. Since we’re in the last quarter of the year, this is the perfect time to do some long term planning,” I said to “Kevin”, a CEO I’m working with. “What did you have in mind?” Kevin asked. “I love to go through the exercise…

“They even got me an apartment to stay in when I went to Shanghai,” “Tommy”, my new VP of Sales said to me. It was an offhand comment Tommy made about his time consulting with another startup that was based in China. But, the comment didn’t ring true to me…

You’ve lost the minute you try and prove your technical prowess — Now, I have a little experience as a non-technical founder of a technology company. Even though I have a BSEE and a few patents to my name, I hadn’t designed the products we were developing (Analog Integrated Circuits) in years. So there was really only one option for me if…

“That’s insane,” I said to “Kevin”, a CEO I am working with. “Your investors want you to have weekly meetings with them. Good luck with that.” “That’s too much?” Kevin said to me. “But the weekly meetings will just be updates, and there will be monthly board meetings.” I sighed. …

“Brett, we’re going to need to shutdown our advertising,” Tina, our controller, said to me. “We need to preserve our cash until we get more funding. Look at the cash flow (statement).” Tina and I were reviewing what we needed to do after one of our investors, the notorious “Donald…