Informative, helpful, and often actionable insights, recommendations, best practices, and “how-to” articles
In my last post about pitching your company to investors and not your product, I half-jokingly concluded that my next post was going to be on pitching your product to customers and not your company. A few readers have since asked (thanks mom and dad) when I’m going to share Read more…
Pricing Strategy: Avoiding Common Mistakes Proper pricing is one of the most leveraged attributes in any commercial strategy. Everything else being equal to a higher price will drive a higher contribution than any other factor. Yet, pricing mistakes are all too common: Reduce the price instead of increasing value/utility Innovation Read more…
80% Growth in Average Selling Price A Salesforce Enterprise SaaS app company was selling a “tactile marketing” app to marketing teams in the enterprise marketplace. This app helped enterprise sales execs close more deals. Their offering was impressive and they had engaged some amazing logos. Despite their successes, they had Read more…
As an entrepreneur, especially an early stage founder, you’re heavily focused on developing your company’s product or service. It’s understandable that you would conflate your product and your company. After all, you’ve been conditioned to differentiate your product, describe the features of your product, and generally sell your product. However, Read more…
A CEO I invested in asked me about raising money from Sequoia Capital recently, so figured I would share with the group, hopefully, to share some learnings. We were two years into building Kahuna and we were again constrained by capital. We had closed Tier 1 customers and needed a bigger team Read more…
The United States Patent and Trademark Office was established in order to protect inventors and give them the freedom to operate without concerns or push by larger corporations. “The strength and vitality of the U.S. economy depends directly on effective mechanisms that protect new ideas and investments in innovation and Read more…
In my innovation workshops, we believe in learning from playing with ordinary objects. I’ve written recently about improving creativity using LEGO pieces. But pipe cleaners can also be very useful for exploring creativity. What’s special about pipe cleaners? They are simply thin wires coated with some fuzzy plastic material. What Read more…
Introduction Does it ever make sense to abandon objectives in order to achieve those objectives? Perhaps counterintuitively, the answer is sometimes “yes!” It was early morning when I got a weekly blog from my business coach. As I was reading the first few lines, I could clearly hear my mind Read more…
The concept of LEGO pieces is brilliant. In the latest iteration, the company uses computer technology to transform any image into a structure that can be assembled from LEGO pieces, based on a design submitted by a customer. The only condition is that the final assembly still looks like it Read more…
The literature is rife with articles, books, blogs, magazines, and online posts on the art of interviewing and hiring. How to interview, what to look for, what questions to ask, use of psychoanalytic tools, and reference checking can all be part of the process. The intent of this post on Read more…