Philosophy & Beliefs

Bits of wisdom accumulated over the years... boiled down to aphorisms.

Management

  • Waiting costs: do it now!
  • In any project, 99% of the work takes 99% of the time and money; the last 1% takes the next 99% of time and money.
  • If you are going to have to do it anyway, you might as well get it over with.
  • Everything is more complicated than you think.
  • Trust your instincts, not your CFO.
  • Insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results.

Prioritization

  • Learn creative schizophrenia: focus absolutely on short-term success and focus absolutely on long-term goals.
  • Everything matters.
  • After you think about selling, spend time thinking about selling.
  • At first, founders and investors serve the business. However in the end, the business must serve the founders and the investors.

Money

  • Investment money doesn't solve anything, only revenue does.
  • Take as little money as you can: raising too much money has killed more companies than has raising too little.
  • We have never seen a company that died of dilution.
  • Know where the next payrolls are coming from; don't run out of cash.
  • Don't pay your vendors early.
  • Don't max out your credit cards.
  • Pay your taxes.

Partners

  • Investors are not your friends... unless you are ahead of plan.
  • All that matters is alignment; bumps put things out of alignment.
  • Trust, but verify.
  • People don't have to be out to screw you in order to screw you.

Hiring

  • Hire smart people.
  • Even poor sales people can sell themselves.

Communication

  • There are no Babelfish: talk in their language, not yours.
  • If you cannot fix it, feature it.
  • The most important key on the keyboard is Delete.

Success & Failure

  • The only thing worse than bad news is mild good news.
  • Startups fail fast but succeed slowly.
  • Success is better than failure, but not by as much as you'd think it would be.
  • Survival = Success
  • Startups have to be perfect; established businesses can survive a few mistakes.
  • Define what must happen to keep the business going—if it doesn't happen, don't make excuses, shut it down.

Summary

  • If you're doing this just for the money, go sell bonds.