How To Make Your Investors Work For You
As CEO of a growing company, it’s your job to maximize the value from all the resources available to you, including your investors and advisors. Here's how.
View ArticleCore Values: How To Create A Sustainable Valuable High-Growth Company
Having strong core values in place is the only way to really lead a fast growing startup business.
View ArticleThe Term Sheet Doesn't Matter -- 13 Things You Should Know Before Accepting...
If you do decide to pursue VC money, there are a number of implicit obligations not stated in the term sheet. Obligations that are more important at the end of the day than any actual written term....
View Article7 Habits Of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs
What constitutes an A-entrepreneur? They typically have domain expertise, operational experience and strong business acumen. They are driven, willing to takes risks most wouldn’t, and optimistic almost...
View ArticleStartup Cooking--Key Ingredients For A Winning Team
Here are the personas or roles that Bryan Stolle thinks are required to ensure the highest probability of success of a growing startup.
View ArticleThe CEO Checklist - What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneurial CEO
“What does it take to be an effective successful entrepreneurial CEO?” There are many ways we try to assess a potential entrepreneurial CEO and their ability and capacity to build a great business. One...
View ArticleMessage To Marketers: Location-Based Marketing At Its Best Is A Two-Way Street
How do marketers verify that their messages are seen by the right people, at the right time and place?
View ArticleOn Sales Leadership: How To Make Your Numbers, Every Time
This post addresses some core values or best-practices for sales leaders and individual sales reps.
View ArticleStartup Cardinal Sins -- Under-Pricing Your Product Offering
In this post, I outline the methodology for making sure that startups don't charge well below both the purported value of the offerings and what the market should be willing to pay. And one thing I...
View Article12 Mistakes To Avoid When Raising VC Dollars
Most mistakes that entrepreneurs frequently make when raising venture capital are easily avoided with forethought, coaching, and some insider tips.
View Article5 Ways To Avoid The Epic Fail -- Guarantees, Expectation Setting &...
As a startup executive and employee, your customer is your lifeblood, and deserves to be treated with respect, accountability, and commitment to their success. Find out 5 ways to avoid the epic fail here.
View ArticleHow Much Money Should I Raise For My Startup?
Fortunately for entrepreneurs raising capital, there is actually a pretty formulaic answer for how much money startups should raise.
View ArticleReady! Aim! Fire!: How To Execute Successfully Every Time (Part 1)
Ready! Aim! Fire! This legendarily accepted process of operations works universally whether shooting a gun, a bow and arrow, playing golf, or leading a team to achieve an objective. Get them wrong, and...
View ArticleReady! Aim! Fire!: How To Execute Successfully Every Time (Part 2)
This is the 2nd installment about startup planning and execution based on the concept of “Ready, Aim, Fire” - a time-tested, tried-and-true adage that applies as much to the subject at hand as to...
View ArticleStartup Cooking: 10 Rules For Making A Successful Startup Pancake
Creating a valuable business takes the right steps and ingredients, just like making pancakes. Here are the secrets to creating a thriving startup.
View Article10 Lessons From The Pitch: How To Pitch Your Startup And Win, SxSW Style
Must-have lessons for pitching your startup company and winning pitch competitions, from the judge's perspective.
View ArticleThe Gender Bias Question In Technology And The Tech Startup World
Bryan Stolle shares his experiences and poses questions about gender bias in the technology and startup worlds.
View ArticleStartup Cooking: 5 Ways to Manage Like Joe Torre, Former New York Yankees...
Joe Torre's coaching tenets are directly applicable to managing a startup team successfully.
View ArticleHeadhunting Basics (Part 1) -- When to Engage a Professional Search Firm
One of the biggest challenges for a startup seeking to hire top talent is knowing when to engage a professional headhunting firm - either contingency or retained.
View ArticleHeadhunting Basics (Part 2) -- How To Engage A Professional Search Firm
A sequel to last week's post, Bryan Stolle maps out how to effectively engage a head hunter to maximize the chance of finding and landing the perfect candidate.
View Article9 Reasons Why Now Is The Time For Fintech
Bryan Stolle discusses why Fintech is one of the hottest startup and investment categories now.
View ArticleWhy We Invested In Earnest -- Inside A VC's Mindset
Bryan Stolle describes the decision-making framework he uses to invest in startups like Earnest.
View Article8 Key Startup Lessons-Learned 2015 Style
Startup CEOs reflect on what they learned in 2015 about building successful businesses.
View ArticleWhere Product/Market Fit Breaks Down
A tweet from GrowthHackers caught my eye recently -- “Our #product market fit and NPS are off the scale, but we're struggling to grow. Any ideas why?” Like most tools in a well-stocked tool chest, a...
View ArticlePods Aren't Just for Whales -- Scaling a SaaS Sales Team
The distribution build-out is probably where more venture capital (usually Series A and even sometimes Series B) gets consumed (and often wasted) than anywhere else. My blog “How Not To Blow Your...
View ArticleWhere Angels Fear to Tread - How Angels Get Screwed in The Startup Game
An angel investor friend recently got a bit of hard news – they were going to get significantly less on a recent acquisition of an angel investment than they had expected. It was a good lesson in the...
View ArticleRaising The Next Round -- Proving Minimal Viable Repeatability (MVR)
When an entrepreneur takes investor money, they are expected to deliver on the plan and milestones they “sold” to investors during the fund-raising process. These expectation dynamics are covered in an...
View ArticleRaising The Next Round (Part II)-- Proving Minimal Viable Traction (MVT)
“I know it when I see it,” said Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, talking about pornography. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs get much the same answer from VCs, when asking the question, “what do...
View ArticleTo Stretch Or To Sandbag, That Is The Question
As a serial entrepreneur, private and public tech company CEO, and institutional venture investor, I have developed a firm viewpoint on this: it’s sandbag!
View ArticlePRTech's growth could mean more integration with marketing technologies
In 2014, I made a case for PRTech and the opportunities that lie therein. Since I wrote the article, PRTech has seen explosive growth, a fact marked by continued consolidation of the old guard and the...
View ArticleWhat Makes A Great Board Member? (You Really Need To Get This Right)
A great company board is the result of having great board members. So what does make a great board member?
View ArticleThink Like a Navy SEAL: Training Lessons for Entrepreneurship
Bryan Stolle applies lessons from Navy SEAL training to the challenges faced by entrepreneurs.
View ArticleStartup Cardinal Sins -- Stupid Management Tricks
As a participant in several startups that reached varying degrees of scale, up to and including going public, as well as being an angel investor, board member and then institutional investor, Bryan...
View ArticleVision Without Execution Is Just Hallucination
"Vision Without Execution Is Just Hallucination," is a variation on an ancient Japanese proverb -- "Vision without action is a daydream.” However, there is a second part to that proverb -- “Action...
View ArticleSaaS Myths (#1) -- Great SaaS Companies Don't Have Professional Services
The most pervasive and pernicious SaaS business model myth? It’s that “Professional services revenues are ‘bad’ and have no place in a SaaS company’s revenue mix”.
View ArticleSaaS Myths (#1) -- Great SaaS Companies Don't Have Professional Services...
In the first installment, we showed how professional services are a key component in most successful SaaS company playbooks. Mature SaaS companies derive almost 20% of revenues from professional...
View ArticleSaaS Myths: #1 - Successful SaaS Companies Don't Have Service Revenues (Part...
We’ve established in Parts 1 & 2, that professional services are a significant part of many successful SaaS company playbooks, and we have identified the scenarios where it’s important to build out...
View Article2019 Predictions And Trends: Playing Catch-Up, Checking Out, Ducking For...
For better or worse, its popular to ask venture investors what they see happening in the new year. Alas, I am no exception, so I’ve put my predictions here, instead of doing a dozen various interviews....
View ArticleSeven Notable Trends From SXSW 2019
Artificial intelligence stole my crypto! Another SxSW Interactive is in the books, and some noticeable trends emerged. Admittedly, my take has selection and exposure bias. SxSW Interactive is so big,...
View ArticleTruth, Lies, and Personalization: What Keeps CMOs Up at Night
There has been a significant uptick in marketers’ efforts to prepare and deliver more personalized messages and experiences to targeted audiences across all channels. Forrester reports that 91% of...
View ArticleBuilding The Enduring Startup: On Digital Oil and Trapped Value
The terms Digital Oil and Trapped Value are nice catchphrases, but we are often asked what they actually mean.
View ArticleDigital Oil and Trapped Value in Practice (Part 2 of 2)
Today's corporations have a plethora of aging business models with massive amounts of trapped value waiting to be freed.
View Article
