Only Hire A+ People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class This is part of my ongoing posts on  Startup Advice .  There are people who tell startups that they should hire the most senior people that they can find.  I believe that you should always hire people are are looking to “punch above their weight class,” which means to hire people who want to be one league above where I’m not one of those.  Don’t confuse this with the quality of the individual. 

Francisco Dao came up with the idea of letting 10 companies that weren’t selected for Twiistup to do a presentation the night before to a group of people and let the audience pick one company to win the final slot at Twiistup.  I I’ll put up the video when they post it on their website. You’re not lecturing to a college Most people suck at presenting to big groups.  It’s It’s a shame because the ability to nail these presentations at key conferences can be once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to influence journalists, business partners, potential employees,

This is part of my ongoing series called “ Start-up Lessons .” I came across this blog post about getting a computer science degree as the best degree for getting into venture capital or working at a VC-backed start up. BCG, Bain, LEK – they’re all great), a few years at a start-up or a few years somewhere like Microsoft, Google, Amazon or Apple.  8221; I

Let me start by saying I’m a huge business book cynic.  I But Net had told me that he picked up some valuable lessons from the book, so I thought, “WTF? So people diligently put in their hours every year, brag about how little vacation they’ve taken and try to save up for 45 years so that one day in their late 60’s (or in today’s era 70’s) they can do what they’ve always dreamed of.  They A couple of years ago I read the popular book, “The Four Hour Workweek ” by Tim Ferriss.  It It was recommended to me by my friend,

I grew up believing that human behavior was 20% nature, 80% nurture.  Now of all data is made up .  OK, OK, not literally made up.  I’m So going into a startup scenario you bring these innate skills or you don’t.  At Nature vs. Nurture.  You’ve You’ve all heard the question before.

There’s no doubt (at least anecdotally) that the pace of VC investments in early-stage technology companies has picked up in the past few months.   The hear from several sources that Sequoia is very active in the market aggressively chasing several deals and even driving up prices on some early-stage deals.  And Ron Conway has proclaimed that he wants to do up to 40-50 rapid-fire deals in the next 18 months in what is becoming In my previous post, The VC Ice Age is Thawing (for now) I wrote about the reasons why the VC market came to a screeching halt in September 2008 and remained largely shut until at least April 2009.  There

But I’m also sending this to a couple of class-action lawyers. But in the past few years I’ve entered what is called the “sandwich years” in which you start helping to take care of your parents as well as young kids.  I 8221;  I asked him why he signed up for these services and he said that he wasn’t really aware that he had signed up or why he did.  He This has been a year where people got mad in mass at financial institutions.  It’s It’s hard not to when you think about the amount of money that flowed into their coffers

Seattle-based startup Earth Class Mail has landed in Los Angeles, saying Monday that the firm has opened up shop on Santa Monica Boulevard for the firm's Internet mail service. Earth Class Mail -- which is venture backed by the Keiretsu Forum -- said the new location will help "entertainment-industry professionals and jet-setters" to gain a Hollywood area mail address. Earth The firm scans in every page of mail received by the firm, and also allows users to recycle, shred, or archive those mail items. According to Earth Class Mail, the new Los Angeles retail location

Launchpad LA , the business incubation and mentoring effort started by GRP's Mark Suster , said today that it has opened up applications for its second class of companies. The effort--which pulls together a number of venture capitalists and successful entrepreneurs, who closely mentor startup founders--said it is looking for 10 companies to participate in its second year class. The effort's mentors include Mike Jones, Keith Richman, and Adam Bain. Launchpad is open to companies who have raised less than $1M, haven't yet raised institutional venture cpaital, and are

And how she launched her latest startup, SkinnySongs. We were all starting out together and building our companies and competing and cooperating much as is the case of the technology industry today so a lot of fun, we’re all sort of around the same age, so it is very similar I think of what goes on today in the Valley with you know with the web companies. So that ends up being funny. The Harvard Business School Case Study on Heidi Roizen talks about the dinner parties she hosts for tech leaders like her personal friend, Bill Gates, and how people skills helped her build one of the most admired careers in Silicon Valley.