Startup Life

Startups are hard. Startups are rewarding. Startups suck the lifeblood out of you. Startups energize teams to overachieve. Startups expose your weaknesses. Startups develop your strengths. Startups periodically take a pound of flesh and a pint of blood. Startups provide deep gratification from doing your best and seeing something grow.

The right role at the right startup can be more educational than an MBA. Not all startups expect you to sacrifice your firstborn child to the gods of success. But not all startups are healthy environments. For individuals earlier in their career, finding the right fit to your skills and your goals is key. For those with some experience behind them (or those playing executive roles), building the right foundation and exercising good judgment is key to growing a healthy startup.

A Little About Me

I am a veteran of five different startups. I left the world of technical/management consulting in 1999 after my wife and I started a family. High-end consulting provides great opportunities to work with very talented people on very interesting customer projects, but the time and travel demands are difficult to balance with a quality family life.

I joined my first startup as an Engineering Director and was promoted to VP Engineering shortly before the company shut down in 2000, a casualty when the Internet bubble finally burst. I then served as VP Applications Engineering for another startup with fantastic market-leading technology, but various internal and external issues resulted in that company also shutting down. I then took a CTO role where I built a team that created the technology platform for a financial services compliance company. After successfully launching the application, I left the CTO role and founded my own startup. I learned a ton as a first-time CEO, culminating in a successful acquisition after seven years of steady, consistent growth. After working several years for the acquiring company, I felt the itch to return to my heritage and joined my fifth startup as VP TechOps. This fifth startup had a stellar engineering team that built the best product in the market, but was designed to run very lean, meaning everyone wore multiple hats in order to build and grow the company. Thankfully, Cisco recognized the value of the engineering team and the strength of the product and acquired the company.

Since then, I've helped other active and aspiring founders achieve over $270M in successful startup exits as well as fundraising outcomes. 

Why I Write

I enjoy helping teams win. I enjoy coaching and sharing from my experiences. In some ways, writing this blog is a form of catharsis after many startup trials and tribulations. I’ve been fortunate to see several successes in my startup career. But the truth is, success wasn’t likely until I learned from several failures. The old adage that you learn more from failure than success is absolutely true.

Many seasoned experts and investors provide good advice on a variety of startup matters, but there are a few topics that I rarely see written about. I hope to cover several such topics over the next several months, from high-level strategy to low-level operational execution. I also plan to crossover and write about taking care of yourself so you can keep up with the ever-pressing demands of startup life. I believe in working to live, not living to work – a message that is sometimes lost in the Silicon Valley rat race. I plan to cover topics as diverse as startup job titles, hiring, product management, channel development, legal execution, giving back, and building a strong foundation for your life. 

You are welcome to explore those thoughts for free in our collection of blogs. If you'd like to discuss a specific problem your company is dealing with, you're also welcome to book a consulting call below.