Dick Costolo gave a really raw, heartfelt talk about Feedburner, venture capital fund raising and venture capital. I won’t dwell on it here, but even though I’ve never worked directly on anything with Dick, we’ve had an amazing exchange of ideas and conversation over the years. Someday I hope I can take that relationship to an even higher level – mostly for the personal growth that I know it would cause rather than the monetization events it would likely bring. He gets it. Dick never stops learning and interacting every day. That restlessness is critical to his perpetual personal growth. Sorry, I think I did dwell on it a bit….anyway, here are my raw notes or his passionate speech that bordered on a rant at times…in the most positive way:<\/p>\n
4 startups including Feedburner<\/p>\n
Feedburner all founders had same equity percentage \u2013 very important to teamwork dynamic and success<\/p>\n
Entrepreneurs worry too much about valuation<\/p>\n
Market Opportunity \u2013 sizing, does the market need it, team, product, market<\/p>\n
Location \u2013 No Black Swans<\/p>\n
Funding
\nCash \u2013 Don\u2019t kid yourself<\/p>\n
CCs, your misunderstood friends \u2013 finding the right one<\/p>\n
Options\/Equity – options, pool, common stock, dilution<\/p>\n
Board Meetings \u2013 Should be strategic discussions, not operations, board package, timing and who should attend\u2026<\/p>\n
Hiring \u2013 Best Available Athlete, Roles and Flat Organizations, Hierarchy begets bureaucracy, replace with tools (eg SFA)\u2026Don\u2019t hire for position\u2026hire people that can do almost anything\u2026a jack of all trades\u2026this reminds me of a lot of what BlackRock was like\u2026I sat at 23 desks in 4 years, I don\u2019t know how many projects I worked on during my time there, I understood every process in the company.<\/p>\n
No offices. Open culture and communication are critical\u2026<\/p>\n
Experience or Enthusiasm?<\/p>\n
Performance \u2013 performance reviews and subjectivity<\/p>\n
KPIs<\/p>\n
Growing the team
\n– Sales and Marketing \u2013 don\u2019t hire until you are ready to sell
\n– Interview process – long<\/p>\n
Product Development and Business Strategy
\nSerendipity and Adjustment \u2013 visit to the eye doctor<\/p>\n
Launch Late to Launch Often \u2013 data models and programs architected for extensibility can beat point solutions every time (I agree this is critical)<\/p>\n
Focus and Speed of Execution are a competitive advantage
\n– Internationalization
\n– Early biz dev can hurt you, so can any biz dev<\/p>\n
Competitive advantage
\n– Be first to market, not most sophisticated, not the best product, be itirative and fast<\/p>\n
Let people you don\u2019t know help you win (open\/api) and provide your products\/service with the best opportunity to evolve in the market<\/p>\n
Startups who ask people to sign NDAs are stupid! Gave a great (and way too fast!) discussion on this\u2026I wish he\u2019d write a detailed blog post of his rant. ?<\/p>\n
Quantum barriers to entry and market share – Get market share, market share is the only thing you should focus on.<\/p>\n
Revenue plan: Don\u2019t kid yourself. Revenue ALWAYS ramps slower than you think it will.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t do unnecessary things because you think you\u2019re supposed to<\/p>\n
Try to let the business model come to you
\n– Easy to say, not easy to do
\n– It\u2019s easier to lower the price than to raise the price?
\n– Look for always on opportunities<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t worry about an exit strategy, worry about everything else<\/p>\n
Be a big small company
\n– Public face of the company
\n– Have a specific voice, have a culture<\/p>\n
Be competitive on your merits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dick Costolo gave a really raw, heartfelt talk about Feedburner, venture capital fund raising and venture capital. I won’t dwell on it here, but even though I’ve never worked directly on anything with Dick, we’ve had an amazing exchange of ideas and conversation over the years. Someday I hope I can take that relationship to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,13,16,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chicago","category-customer-experience","category-entrepreneurship","category-venture-capital"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daviddalka.com\/createvalue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}