Archive for 2007

Your technical co-founder will speak.

And shortly, they will quit.

And the reason is, technical co-founders are humans and they want to be heard.

Your job is to listen, and then solve your technical co-founders’ problems as much as they are solving yours.

If you are seeking VC funding, always find out if the person you are dealing with has the power to say “yes.”

If they don’t, don’t bother negotiating with them.

And realise, you aren’t talking to a VC about funding.

You’re just having a nice chat with a random stranger.

The great thing about daily writing, and by consequence, daily publishing, is that what I say is now out there.

You can agree with it.

You can disagree with it.

You can support it.

You can pick it apart.

But once you’ve read it, you can’t ignore it.

Once I’ve shipped my words to the world, it is no longer just something I said to someone, but something I wrote to everyone.

I either have to stand by what I said, and believe in it, or I had best not write it.

Integrity isn’t just doing the right thing.

Nor doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

It is being willing to stand by the thing that you did because you believe it was the right thing to do.

When I run a start-up, I like to put in place a clearly defined hiring referral programme as early as possible and make it as explicit as possible to all employees and contractors.

Bring us someone’s resume and we bring them in for an interview?

$500.

We hire someone?

25% of a generous referral bonus on hiring.

50% of the remaining referral bonus after first successful performance review (usually within 90 days).

25% upon promotion or after the 1st year anniversary of the new hire.

And make the referral bonuses stack: Percentage increases in referral bonus for each new hire you bring us.

Refer a new hire to us that is an asset to our company and that new hire stays around for a year?

Let’s make damn sure you are incentivized to bring us a second new hire referral.

And a third.

Why limit the referral bonus to a stingy $1,000 when we can be generous?

If you are bring us great people, we should be falling over ourselves to make sure you keep bringing us great people.

There are three types of entrepreneur within the realm of social media:

1. Those that aren’t on social, don’t see the point of social media, don’t get social media, and unable to benefit from social media.

2. Those that are on social media, get social media, want more followers, friends or connections from Twitter and Facebook and the like.

3. Those that are on social media and are lying about point number two.

Your technical co-founder will go radio silent at some point.

And that’s okay, because you don’t yet have the communication skills to overcome that problem

If you did, there wouldn’t be radio silence.