Growing

VCs offer a lot of advice from a 30,000-foot view. Here are 7 bits of practical wisdom I gleaned when managing a large, resource-constrained, growing team that you can apply to your startup today.

Many “atypical” markets are surprisingly M&A friendly, but VCs may not recognize the potential buyers without guidance

As entrepreneurship has professionalized, jargon has proliferated, and platitudes pervade pitches. One helpful tool to combat this scourge of short-hand is:

🏕️ “The Summer Camp Test” ⛺️

When getting ready to pitch VCs, founders often jump right into assembling a slide deck. I think this is a mistake. I’d suggest that you start by writing twenty headlines that sum up your startup, and only then build the slides.

These are the liquidity events that give the impression that startups are a great way to “get rich quick,” even though building a saleable company often takes the better part of a decade. Less often discussed, or championed, is a third option — the “get rich slow” method of building a company and making millions of dollars in profits, for years or decades.