Via Andrew Parker of Spark Capital, the key to business development is understanding your audience: You need to recognize that the person sitting across from you at the table represents their company but will not necessarily act in their company’s best interests… Be brash enough to ask how that person is bonused. Be creative enough…
Read more
Stumbled across this list of e-commerce laws from BVP which contains several gems. #8 caught my attention: What Would Amazon Do? As a loyal Amazon Prime member, I enjoy learning about Amazon’s organizational structure and logistics. Most people have heard about the “two pizza team” concept but fitness functions—a concept borrowed from genetic algorithms—was new to me:…
Read more
Ben Horowitz on the value of 1:1 meetings: The key to a good one-on-one meeting is the understanding that it is the employee’s meeting rather than the manager’s meeting. This is the free-form meeting for all the pressing issues, brilliant ideas and chronic frustrations that do not fit neatly into status reports, email and other…
Read more
Fred Wilson on the false choices tied to short-term profit maximization: ROI is not the right framework for companies to evaluate investments. ROI is for the wall street folks. They will use it to decide if they want to invest in your company. But when you make investment decisions in your company, don’t use the…
Read more
Tom Tunguz on understanding markets: Markets dynamics evolve. Competitors enter. Technologies advance. Consumers become more sophisticated and demanding. Through it all, the team with the best aptitude for understanding the market throughout its convolutions and respond with a product informed by their insights will succeed. Steve Blank’s Customer Development Manifesto echoes similar challenges: 1) There…
Read more
