Category Archives: Management issues

Jul 11
Fred Destin

Dave McClure on growth hacking your way through the Series A crunch

Dave McClure’s new talk at Startup Festival in Montreal (#startupfest) slaps entrepreneurs across the face with the dire need for doing more marketing early to survive the funding drought … a.k.a. growth hack your way through the Series A crunch. …

5 Comments
Jun 27
Fred Destin

There are no shortcuts to intelligent Founder – CEO transitions

 Founder transition is one of those tense topics that holds limited upside for the writer, especially when said individual is a venture capitalist. However it’s also very often one of the defining moments in a startup’s life; a moment that, …

5 Comments
Jun 18
Fred Destin

The key VC qualities that Great Entrepreneurs look for

 I ran this simple question on twitter : “what key qualities do entrepreneurs look for in a VC ?”.  Here is what came back from entrepreneurs, most of them established names with hands-on VC experience.  Trust was very clearly the …

2 Comments
Jun 5
Fred Destin

Dave Balter’s framework for being a great leader

I have been thinking about teaching at Intelligent.ly as I have been mightily impressed with the concept and list of classes.  So I dropped in impromptu on Dave Balter who was running a session inspired by what he learned inside …

2 Comments
Mar 7
Fred Destin

Startup Mentoring, the Socratic Way

 I have been involved in many environments in which mentoring is a core part of the value proposition. Seedcamp or Techstars succeed almost exclusively on the quality of their mentoring. As a board member I try to be a good …

12 Comments
Aug 31
Fred Destin

Premature Scaling Kills Startups: the Genome Data

The new Startup Genome project tries to bring structure and data to the following question: why do so many companies die from premature scaling ? I was impressed by the first report the Startup Genome team produced so when Bjoern …

6 Comments
Aug 24
Fred Destin

Startup Lifecycle – Lean to Fat, Launch to Scale – Video

The video and accompanying presentation gather much of the current thinking around building startups from scratch to scale. This was my annual contribution to Seedcamp, in the form of a new Prezi and accompanying commentary on Startup Lifecycle, which I …

2 Comments
Aug 16
Fred Destin

CFOs in startups: you need to OWN the cash problem

Last few weeks I was in the South of France waiting for my kit to arrive to the Port of Boston.  By chance I hooked with a good friend of mine who's enjoying a season off after selling the last …

6 Comments
Jun 11
Fred Destin

Saving time in preparing for board meetings

Some of the startup companies I work with do awesome board presentations.  Stylish visualisations, tons of data.  I suppose it's because most of them are consumer facing businesses, but boy are they good at communicating.  I always feel very sorry …

4 Comments
Jun 8
Fred Destin

In praise of the (self-aware) Maverick

On a flight from Geneva to London, I find myself reflecting on the type of founder profile that I like to work with.  They tend not to conform to any classic profile. In venture land, probably over 50% of investors …

4 Comments