One of My Liabilities as a Leader Was Not Acknowledging the Wins Along The Way — “I don’t want praise, I want to know what I could have done better.” For years this was my default response to even the smallest of positive feedback. Forget the PROS, I just want the CONS. There were a variety of reasons for this posture: a strong conviction in the…

Why I’m Not Telling Every Startup To ‘Pull The Brakes’ Just Yet — Here’s how I’ve generally described what’s occurring in tech land over the last few months: For a variety of reasons, technology companies were being rewarded with valuation multiples which far exceeded historical norms and the view on their growth rates, amount of capital they could/should spend to capture revenue/market share…

We Wrote These For Our Portfolio Founders But Want Everyone To Have Them — When we started our venture fund Homebrew one of our goals was to help grow the startup pie, so to speak, not just get our slice. Writing up what we consider ‘best practices’ and sharing with the broader founder community is an attempt to live these values. Thanks to our…

Why Some Smart Startups Are Putting (Paid) Projects Ahead of Employment Offers — 80–90% of startups shouldn’t follow the advice I’m about to give. Instead these companies are better off just investing resources in improving their hiring via candidate flow/sourcing, interview process, offer communication/negotiation and closing experience. …

Some Recommendations For Startup CEOs to Help Make Sure Your Team Member Actually Shows Up — Most hiring processes start with an antiquated assumption that companies select people to work for them. In the world of technology startups we know that it’s usually the other way around: the best talent have plenty of optionality and the question is, how do you get *them* to choose you? …

I’ve Spoken With Hundreds Of Potential Employees, Most Don’t Ask Everything They Could — The other day I was sitting in a New York City park, talking to a senior engineer who had an offer from an early stage startup we backed. His questions of me were pretty comprehensive — trying to understand our rationale for investing, getting a VC’s perspective on what they…

What Makes A Culture “Bad” Isn’t Just That You Don’t Like It — I won’t invest in a startup that doesn’t care about its culture. Because a culture is going to form regardless so you might as well be deliberate about it. And it’s with your first hires that your intended culture will be solidified, evolved, mutated, or challenged. So be thoughtful about…

Tough Love, Running Effective Meetings, Making Products That Produce Emotion, and More — Cross-country flights are great times to catch up on newsletters and unread feeds. This week there’s a bunch I want to share with you. How Levels Does Meetings Levels is a consumer health company focused on glucose monitoring and they run themselves in a very deliberate manner, mostly asynchronous and…

The Things to Know When You Lose Your Job In A Downturn — RIF aka reduction in force. Sounds like a Magic: The Gathering card but it’s actually a polite way of saying you’re being laid off. And with the tech valuation reckoning underway, if you’ve been RIF’ed you’re not alone. I can’t tell you whether this is just a few months of…