OnStartups

AUGUST 5, 2015

The following is a guest post by William Griggs. William is the Founder of Startup Slingshot , the resource for battle-tested startup strategies. Access the audio interviews of today’s featured growth practitioners, the full 43 page guide, and tons of resources here (free for now). “ A startup is a company designed to grow fast.”. Growth is what founders and investors alike are constantly searching for.

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Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 6, 2015

Startups today are growing faster than they have in the past. US VC backed startups in 1998 grew revenue 63% per year on average. In 2014, the median startup grew at 85% CAGR before going public. More impressively, newer startups must be 5x larger than 15 years ago before going public. In 1998, the median IPO-bound startup reported $11.8M in revenue in their S-1 (inflation adjusted dollars).

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Berkonomics

AUGUST 6, 2015

This piece of wisdom came from Jeff Bezos, founder & CEO of Amazon, during a board meeting for one of the companies where he sits as board member. Jeff asked the question “Is there anything big or small, which is working better than you expected? Is there anywhere we could double down?”. Bezos’ point was that we spend a lot of time focusing on what’s not working in Board meetings (especially during difficult times) and not enough time focusing on what is surpassing expectations and how we c

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Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 5, 2015

We all build products based on assumptions - assumptions about our users, who they are, how they think, what they expect. When the underlying assumptions underpinning product design no longer holds, new opportunities are created. Jakob Nielsen, a [famed user experience researcher]( [link] ), writes about one such secular dislocation of UX assumptions in the Anti-Mac interface.

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Lack of digitalization decreases business competitiveness. To thrive, embracing modern solutions becomes essential. The approach to digitalization often aligns with a company's business model. This shift not only boosts productivity but also automates processes and improves security. The tech market offers a wealth of technologies tailored for management, planning, and forecasting, replacing outdated pen-and-paper methods.

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Tomasz Tunguz

AUGUST 4, 2015

The prevailing wisdom for hiring the first VP of Sales is roughly $1M in ARR, or whenever the company has figured out some repeatable sales process. The rationale behind this advice is, at this point, the company needs someone to build recruit, incentivize, coach and manage the team that will grow to acquire more and more business. While that all makes sense, I was curious to see if startups do this in practice, and whether the timing of the VPS differs by ACV.

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