Mistakes happen—but they can be avoided. David V. Cappillo has a list of the 8 Great Mistakes that Entrepreneurs Make; a list that should provide entrepreneurs of all ilks the cautionary tales needed to avoid serious pratfalls and improve leadership skills. Two favorite leadership skills: Failing to appropriately address founder equity. You need to have meticulously detailed discussions with co-founders about how founder equity will be divvied up. Cappillo also recommends “subjecting founder equity to a vesting schedule so that if a co-founder leaves, the company can repurchase the equity.” Spending money…
There are many different types of financing strategies, numerous paths towards funding, and they all carry divergent benefits. So when you’re looking to raise venture capital, which route will you take? Goodwin Procter lists 7 great financing strategies for you to pick and choose from. The list includes: Note Financing: a loan which is either repayable upon demand by the investor or upon a stated maturity date. Common Stock Financing: investors receive an ownership stake in the company (i.e. they own a certain percentage of the company) in the form of common…
Most potential hires are polite and pleasant, eager to please to secure a job. But sometimes the hiring process goes drastically wrong and interviewees become graceless. This isn’t tolerable behavior. Sharon Drew Morgen shares some examples of bumping into coarse behavior during recruitment. They are pretty shocking. One potential hire ignored the job description’s caveat requiring good spelling and sent an email rife with typos. Another applied for a technical position … with no technical skills whatsoever. When you’re scouting for new hires, maintain your professional standards, stick to your guns,…
You may not know it, but your management teams’ business mindset is crucial to effective leadership. So do you have the right one? Writing for the Harvard Business Review, John Hagel III and John Seely Brown contrast the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. In a fixed mindset, you’re set in stone. “Whatever skills, talents, and capabilities you have are predetermined and finite. Whatever you lack, you will continue to lack.” In a growth mindset, you’re adaptable. “Your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts … everyone…
Innovation as you know it is dead. There’s now a new definition of innovation for startups. It’s a conglomerate of different business strategies and management distinctions. Chris Baggott explains: “Innovation isn’t a goal. Usefulness is a goal and you need to innovate to provide something that is both useful and new.” Some of the other qualities startups need to redefine company innovation: Technology: Teams need cutting-edge technology to broadcast ideas. In Baggott’s experience, the free do-it-yourself options were ineffective. Liability: Employees should feel empowered to communicate their ideas, but “there is a liability that…
This is a part of a series that was created to help you get the practice of retrospectives built into your company. This series will walk through the approach, necessary roles, in addition to guides for each role to help your company get started quickly. Retrospectives/after action reviews (AARs) enable the team to reflect upon the process and offer ideas on ways to improve the process the next time around. Here is an example report that captures the ideas provided by a hypothetical project team. Notice how specific the actionable recommendations are. Name of Meeting After Action Review, ABC Email…
One road your company doesn’t want to traverse is the one that leads to a court appearance because of legal troubles. Legal issues are an unavoidable concern for businesses.
Inside every company, employees are determining how the workplace is perceived.
If the employees show up bright-eyed and smiling every morning, eagerly anticipating their day, you have set a great work atmosphere. And when the opposite is true – a situation where employees dread their jobs – you have established a poor corporate culture. There are obvious benefits to treating your employees well, mainly that they’ll work harder for you. Here’s how to treat your employees: Make sure you’re nice to your employees. This one is self-explanatory, but horror stories do exist.…
With the first introduction of SaaS software came a lot of question marks.
These pertained to the functionality, distribution, pricing and nearly every other aspect of the service. But as the years went on, certainties began to present themselves. Standards were set. Yet some companies failed to recognize that strategies were emerging, and as a result, didn’t secure a competitive advantage in the field. Here are some of the considerations you should be making as part of your SaaS offering: Are some of the recently developed avenues for SaaS worth exploring? These…
Companies invest a lot of time and money responding to customers, measuring results, and tweaking their product to meet market opportunities. All of that is important, but companies can sometimes forget to tap in to one of their most valuable assets: their own people. Inc. magazine published an article in April that focused on the importance of communicating with your employees. In fact, employee engagement and communication is something the magazine is particularly keen on. There are numerous blog posts and articles on the magazine’s website addressing those issues. The magazine focuses on that topic for good reason. Businesses –…
