Avoiding the Ten-Year Stock Option Trap (and Other Stock-Option Considerations)
I’ve increasingly spoken to startup employees who find themselves in a difficult trap. Let’s demonstrate it via an example: Say you joined a startup in September 2009 as an early employee and immediately received a stock-option grant of 400,000 shares with a strike price of $0.10 when you joined. The company, while having experienced some […]
Appearance on the Twenty Minute VC: Financing Thoughts, The Private Equity Sales Process, and More
Famed venture capital podcaster and now venture capitalist at StrideVC, Harry Stebbings, released a new episode of the Twenty Minute VC podcast with me as his guest. (iTunes version here.) Harry’s interview was broad-ranging, covering a number of topics including: Financing lessons I’ve learned during prior bubble periods and, perhaps more importantly, bubble bursts. The […]
Highlights from the Fenwick & West 3Q18 Venture Capital Survey
It’s been a few years since I wrote about this survey, which I post about less to communicate recent highlights and more to generate awareness of its existence. The Fenwick & West Venture Capital Survey is must-read material for any entrepreneur or startup CEO because it not only makes you aware of trends in financing, […]
Lost and Founder: A Painful Yet Valuable Read
Some books are almost too honest. Some books give you too much information (TMI). Some books can be hard to read at times. Lost and Founder is all three. But it’s one of the best looks I’ve seen when it comes to giving the reader a realistic look at the inside of Silicon Valley startups. […]
Video of my SaaStr 2018 Presentation: Ten Non-Obvious Things About Scaling SaaS
While I’ve blogged about this presentation before, I only recently stumbled into this full-length video of this very popular session — a 30-minute blaze through some subtle SaaS basics. Enjoy! I look forward to seeing everyone again at SaaStr Annual 2019. (Cross-posted @ Kellblog)
The Domo S-1: Does the Emperor Have Clothes?
I preferred Silicon Valley [1] back in the day when companies raised modest amounts of capital (e.g., $30M) prior to an IPO that took 4-6 years from inception, where burn rates of $10M/year looked high, and where $100M raise was the IPO, not one or more rounds prior to it. When cap tables had 1x, […]
The Two Engines of SaaS: QCRs and DEVs
I remember one day, years ago, when I was a VP at $10M startup and Larry, the head of sales, came in one day handing out t-shirts that said: “Code, sell, or get out of the way.” Neither I, nor the rest of marketing team, took this particularly well because the shirt obviously devalued the […]
Focus is the Startup Advantage
Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash The single greatest competitive advantage a startup has is it’s focus. It’s what you must do. It’s how you can survive and advance. It’s where you find differentiation. It’s why you can slay big dragons. Here’s some key considerations for finding your Startup Focus and putting it to work. The […]
A Look at the Tintri S-1
Every now and then I take a dive into an S-1 to see what clears the current, ever-changing bar for going public. After a somewhat rocky IPO process, Tintri went public June 30 after cutting the IPO offering price and has traded flat thus far since then. Let’s read an excerpt from this Business Insider […]
The Strategy Compiler: How To Avoid the “Great” Strategy You Couldn’t Execute
Few phrases bother me more than this one: “I know it didn’t work, but it was a great strategy. We just didn’t have the resources to execute it.” Huh. Wait minute. If you didn’t have the resources to execute it, then it wasn’t a great strategy. Maybe it was a great strategy for some other […]
