“I like you, Brett. And I really like what you’re (company is) doing,” Jack, the Venture Capitalist, said to me. “However, I think I’ll wait until you have a VP Engineering before I invest.” In my pitch I had been upfront with Jack that we were looking for a VP…

If there’s one thing I am an expert in, it’s bad co-founders. After all, the first two teams of co-founders I tried to start my company with didn’t work out. There were “Jim” and “John”, my first two co-founders. We worked together for about five months before they quit, stole…

“You can’t tell the new investors that ‘Tommy’ quit!” “Raul”, one of my existing investors, said to me when I told him our new VP Sales had resigned that morning. “Your job now is to get him (Tommy) to change his mind,” Raul said. I called Gill, our other investor…

“You screwed up,” “Bob”, the CEO, said to his executive team during our weekly operations meeting. “How am I going to explain this to ‘the street’?” Bob was upset because the company had missed its promised numbers to Wall Street, again. And now Bob would have to explain the miss…

“It’s the suckiest thing about being a startup CEO,” I said to “Bill”. I could see the sadness written all over his face. “I can totally relate because I went through the same thing,” I said. …

There’s only one thing you have complete control over when you start a company. Only one. Everything else, to some degree or other, is out of your control. What is this one thing that’s in your control? It’s your cash. As I said at the beginning, everything else isn’t completely in your control. Let me give you an example. The first product…

“You’re not going to hit your numbers,” I said to “Josh”. “You’re way too optimistic. I’d much rather you underpromise and overdeliver, especially right now. Josh is in the middle of a sale process for his company. He’s working with an investment banker to manage the sale process. The sale…

I don’t why, but years ago, when I was in high school, my Dad got involved in a business building replicas of old classic cars. As I remember it, the company bought old VW? engines, put a classic car chassis around them and sold the cars at a profit. The…

I don’t why, but years ago, when I was in high school, my Dad got involved in a business building replicas of old classic cars. As I remember it, the company bought old VW? engines, put a classic car chassis around them and sold the cars at a profit. The…