Growth
Building a startup can feel like a scene from the movie Groundhog Day. Each day feels like you're fighting battles you've fought before. One reason for this is that product-market fit is a constantly moving target. The term product-market fit sounds like a fixed destination. Find
Growth
Digiday published an interesting piece yesterday on the subscription pricing strategy of the Daily Beast. For those that don’t know, the Daily Beast is a news and opinion site owned by IAC that was originally founded by Tina Brown in 2008. It has publicly struggled to find a sustainable
Growth
David Frankel, a Managing Partner at Founder Collective, posted an interested tweet last Friday. His point was that if you pull back too hard on growth to try to get to profitability, growth might slow to the point where you will find it very difficult to get back onto the
Growth
In building the Huffington Post, Thrillist, and JackThreads, I've invested a lot of venture capital into building tech platforms. Even though we were media and commerce companies, we described ourselves as tech companies. VC's loved that description. It absolutely helped increase our valuation in every round.
Growth
Have you ever been in the lead on a hike through deep snow? It sucks to be up front. You're the one breaking through all of that fresh snow, stomping it down to make a path for those behind you. It's exhausting, and if you don&
Growth
There is something about being the founder of a company that leads you to believe that you're supposed to be an expert in every discipline, from marketing to software development to creative production. One of the hardest lessons to learn is how to delegate. One of the most
Growth
Have you ever ordered too much food at a restaurant, only to end up with a stomach ache because you felt you needed to clear your plate? Have you ever held on to a stock far to long, watching it go down day after day as your losses mount, reluctant
Growth
The 20 - 60 - 20 rule of thumb is a great framing to keep in mind as you think about where to invest in your company, and where you need to dig deeper to avoid throwing good money after bad. Here's how it works. 20% of the
Growth
HuffPost has published a piece about the rise and fall of Mic.com. It's worth a read to get some perspective on what it's like to build a startup in a frantic search for a sustainable business model. There are a few good takeaways here that
Growth
Go big or go home! This is the advice the board gave to the CEO of a company in the middle of a critical pivot. Take the biggest swing they can. Lean in as hard as they can to the big idea. Singles and doubles won't grow valuation
Growth
One of the hardest parts of leadership is getting comfortable with making difficult decisions with imperfect data. But it's a critical skill to be able to move your company forward, particularly in an early-stage company. Let's think about the possible sources of data that could help
Growth
Wired Magazine published a story yesterday entitled Blitzscaling Is Choking Innovation - And Wasting Money that speaks to significant shifts in fundraising over the last decade. The article's main focus is on the massive amount of money that is being thrown at companies in later rounds to try