Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 22, 2021

As I talk to many of you in my role as business advisor, I still often hear the concern for maximum return to the business and stakeholders, more than a passion for sustainably enriching the lives of your customers and team. This applies to your own team, as well as customers. Make every customer experience memorable.

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Customer Custom Satisfaction Metrics 114

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

As a CEO you never stop needing to go on sales calls (or to work the phones in telesales or customer support) and ceasing to do this as your company grows because you’re focusing on investors, recruiting, PR or whatever is a mistake. As a content management system we had lots of write activities and went with Postgres.

Startup 308

Startup CTO Coach Technical Review CTO Hire 308

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2021

In these days of rapid change, the pandemic, and worldwide competition, you need to make sure your entire team is customer-focused, innovative, and always looking around the corner for the next big thing. Find folks who are customer-centric and sensitive to competition. The right people will recognize the big picture.

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Coach Activity Customer Custom 174

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

I acted as the occasional mentor, advisor and coach to Ethan. And because I wanted Ethan to be able to attract a great team, build & iterate a product, test it with initial customers and refine his strategy before having to take the wrappers off of his company. The company was called Red Beacon. So there you have it.

CTO Coach 359

CTO Coach Google CTO Hire Yammer 359

SoCal CTO

MARCH 4, 2010

Activities As I went through my 30+ different startup experiences and tried to classify them a bit more, I realized this is very messy stuff. That said, I think it starts with what a laundry list of different kinds of needed technology activities and what the current team can reasonably accomplish.

Technical Review 170

Technical Review Technical Advisors CTO Coach Startup 170

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2010

It’s an active job throughout the entire life of the portfolio company. One of her early-stage investors, Jeff Clavier, played a very active role. I’m typing this from SFO right now after just attending an executive offsite set up by Motorola and some of their largest retail customers. I agreed to help. Or the CEO?

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Invest Angel Venture Capital Yahoo 280

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 9, 2022

I too often see people who are quick to make excuses, blame failures on peers or customers, or see management as the reason for their lack of productivity. Here are my key recommendations for how to prepare and what to do in more mundane business environments and organizations: Make sure your activities are aligned with business goals.

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Activity Organization Mentor Training 109

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2021

For example, Elon Musk says he seeks out innovations from his team by constantly asking them how they can make things better, how often they get out of internal meetings and into customer shops, and actively encouraging them to try new things. Spend more time mentoring and coaching your team.

Tips 159

Tips Satisfaction Coach Mentor 159

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

I think that mindset is useful to remind entrepreneurs that it is a shared journey and capital (whether active or passive) is a part of your success and your ability to access it when you need to and for the amounts you need is a very critical differentiator between successful companies and unsuccessful one. Mentorship.

Startup 325

Startup Sales Technical Review Software Review 325

socalTECH

JUNE 10, 2009

Active Network , the San Diego-based operator of an online community for sports and recreational activities, revealed Tuesday that Active.com has been named the technology provider for iHoops. Active explained that, as technology provider, it will host and maintain iHoops.com, which is slated to launch in the fall. READ MORE>>.

Sites 100

Sites Web Activity San Diego 100

TechCrunch LA

AUGUST 11, 2021

Snipfeed started as a content discovery platform with 44,000 weekly active users — but when Snipfeed added a creator monetization tool to its platform, it became its most popular feature. So, in February 2020, with little to no funding left, the company completely pivoted to its current link-in-bio business. Image Credits: Snipfeed.

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Platform Commerce Startup Tool 286

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Yes, I know it’s my job as the CEO to be the coach for people and that’s fine. The company had less than $5 million in revenue yet we had a multi-tab spreadsheet doing activity-based costing on our customer service staff, operations and technology. Should she take a chance and potentially ruffle feathers?

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Entrepreneur Technical Review Slides CTO Coach 414

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 9, 2023

I’m sure you can imagine how much that impacts any business or startup’s ability to react to changing customer needs and growth opportunities, no matter how insightful their leaders. If you and your team are confident in each other, and proud of your business solution, you will not be afraid to innovate as customer requirements change.

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Coach Mentor Study Activity 117

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2022

Instead of sizing up new opportunities and actively courting every new customer, you start worrying about cutting costs, repeatable processes , and overtaking known competitors. As a consultant, I hate to see you lose that startup focus on innovation, change, and customers. Don’t forget these.

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Startup Artificial Inteligence Metrics Netflix 154

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

Partly out of the fact that in 1 week I depart for England to speak at LeWeb, attend our DataSift board meeting and generally make myself available to the DataSift team to meet their customers, partners and employees. In Rob’s spare time he always seems to be going to a boxing class or some other competitive, physical activity.

Tips 365

Tips Email Venture Capital CTO Coach 365

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2021

Perhaps you need to do more to be a role model for accountability , and provide more coaching on exactly what it means. I often think of the scope of this example in my role as mentor to a struggling entrepreneur who is quick to blame his problems on employee mistakes, or even changing customer expectations.

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Training Examples Startup Social Media 173

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 25, 2020

According to the classic book, “ One Second Ahead ,” by noted authority on training the mind, Rasmus Hougaard, there are some basic rules that can really help you manage your focus and awareness in all work activities. The key to cultivating joy is to anticipate at least some activities you enjoy daily.

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Email Activity Social Media Coach 170

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2021

While I do agree that many attributes of a good entrepreneur, such as curiosity, confidence and determination, are largely determined by early-life experiences, a good education is critical in understanding the elements of creating a business and wooing customers. Get involved in startup-business incubator activities with peers at school.

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Entrepreneur Tips Writing Coach 149

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 11, 2021

Authors Adrian Gostick and Chestor Elton, with their deep backgrounds as executive coaches and organizational consultants, recommend some simple methods, consistent with my own beliefs, to reduce the pain of uncertainty, and increase productivity, in your teams and employees: Make it okay for them to not have all the answers.

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Marketing Coach Startup Product 148

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

Most workers are still rushing to retirement, where they hope to escape to more stimulating activities with a real sense of accomplishment. Coach for productivity, performance, and creativity. The traditional once-yearly look-backward performance paradigm has to be replaced by daily or weekly coaching focused on a career roadmap ahead.

Coach 132

Coach Satisfaction Startup Organization 132

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 25, 2022

There is more and more evidence that a more human-centered or heart-centered leadership yields the best results with your team and with customers in the long run. Great leaders learn to listen actively to conversations, so people don’t hold up progress just to be understood. Customer relationships culture is slipping.

Training 142

Training Coach Startup Entrepreneur 142

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 1, 2022

You can have the best technology, but if customers don’t know you exist, or they don’t know how your technology solves a real problem for them, your startup will fail. How many customers will have any idea what this means to them? I like the guidance from marketing coach David Newman’s classic book “ Do It!

Marketing 141

Marketing Startup Social Media Technical Review 141

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 3, 2021

In fact, customers today also seem more attracted to companies with a higher purpose than profit. For most people, a truly fulfilled life means active pursuit and high engagement in pursuing your own goals. One of the keys to my own fulfillment has been coaching, mentoring, and give-back of what I have learned along the way.

Satisfaction 173

Satisfaction Mentor Coach Entrepreneur 173

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 28, 2020

A change process gives you and your team a structure for execution, and clears the desk of non-value-added activities to focus on the strategic work. Team members must be engaged and enabled to do the job – that means aligned, equipped, coached, supported, and valued for the work and changes ahead.

Coach 159

Coach Resource Summary Metrics 159

socalTECH

OCTOBER 14, 2010

John Morris: I think it's trying to make a decent connection with customers, and trying to assess the size and viability of the market. It's really trying to make sense of who is the customer, how do we get to them, how big is the market. Where is this talent coming from?

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Networking Research Startup USC 215

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2009

And you can always bring on a senior person as a mentor / coach to help guide you personally to become a better sales leader until you’re ready for somebody more senior on your team. He felt that we didn’t price correctly and he didn’t want to see customers until he had a grip on it. WTF!! ?? !!

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Startup Sales Class CIO 327

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

For many, it’s hard to make the switch from that top-down order-giving culture, and it’s hard to find the time to recruit and coach the new team members you need to scale the business to success. You need them to make a personal commitment to customer service, improved quality, and change to improve the future.

Startup 147

Startup Customer Custom Ideas 147

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 14, 2020

You need to make sure that everyone on the team, from the clerical assistant to the chief financial officer, knows your vision and product, and doesn’t hesitate to actively engage and be an effective proponent with anyone who might be of value to the business. In fact, having one marketing guru on the team alone won’t get you very far.

Marketing 130

Marketing Develop Development Startup 130

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 12, 2015

The most common proposals I hear are for yet another social networking site ( over 200 active ), or another dating site (now over 2500 in the US alone). It starts with a vision, but benefits quickly from a structured process of idea generation, evaluation, prototyping, customer feedback, and success metrics. Training and coaching.

Entrepreneur 101

Entrepreneur Startup Coach Metrics 101

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 15, 2012

Also don’t confuse a business mentor with a business coach. A mentor’s aim is to teach you what to do and how, in specific situations, unlike a coach who helps you develop your generic skills for deciding what to do and how. The mentor helps the entrepreneur fill an experience gap, and a coach helps fill a skill gap.

Mentor 95

Mentor Coach Startup Ideas 95

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

In practice it can be a fine line between sparring partner / coach and stepping over the line to brute-force persuasion. So he would allocate say – 20% to sales, 15% to marketing, 20% to eng priorities, 10% to customer support, 10% to ops, 20% to ‘platinum customers’ and maybe 5% directly to me as the CEO.

Startup 150

Startup Sales CTO Coach Course 150

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 21, 2019

There is more and more evidence that a more human-centered or heart-centered leadership yields the best results with your team and with customers in the long run. Great leaders learn to listen actively to conversations, so people don’t hold up progress just to be understood. Customer relationships culture is slipping.

Training 123

Training Coach Startup Entrepreneur 123

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

Today, with the Internet and social media, if you aren’t visible in a positive way to everyone, including customers, your leadership efforts will be lost. Allocate time for active participation in relevant outside industry conferences, and public panels or TED talks that look ahead. Set goals and celebrate progress and results.

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Mentor IBM IBM Social Media 145

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 19, 2018

For example, we all know people who really believe that everyone in the world is their supporter, when in fact many are actively working against them. But, like most other skills, you can learn from these priorities: Everyone benefits from active mentoring. Provide and seek coach and advocate relationships.

Tips 95

Tips Mentor Coach Activity 95

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

With some coaching and mentoring from other leaders, I was able to do it myself, so I know you can do it too, by committing to the following strategies: Train yourself to always look for positives, not negatives. Define a clear break between work and private activities. Never use emotion as a substitute for preparation.

Coach 137

Coach Training Satisfaction Mentor 137

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 17, 2013

Also don’t confuse a business mentor with a business coach. A mentor’s aim is to teach you what to do and how, in specific situations, unlike a coach who helps you develop your generic skills for deciding what to do and how. The mentor helps the entrepreneur fill an experience gap, and a coach helps fill a skill gap.

Mentor 101

Mentor Coach Startup Entrepreneur 101

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 17, 2022

Passion is great, but it must be backed by data, confirming a real problem and customers willing and able to pay for your solution. Too many business people let the daily challenges cause them to revert to emotional and autocratic demands, failure to communicate, and inability to coach and mentor team members.

Startup 143

Startup Competition Coach Satisfaction 143