Years ago I attempted to raise money for my first company, Flowtown, with my co-founder Ethan. You know what we did? We cold emailed investors. We figured “We have a startup, they invest in startups… so surely they want to hear from us”, and hoped our confidence would cut through the noise. It didn’t work. Obviously. They didn’t even bother
Health is wealth. It’s a mantra I repeat to myself a dozen times a day anytime my brain wants to slack off on training, or reach for those nachos. It’s also a belief I share with many of my entrepreneurial friends, like David Hauser. I first met David (co-founder GrassHopper.com / Chargify.com and many others) 10 years ago when I
I love speaking at live events and conferences. But at what cost? For about 4 years I was regularly invited to talk on stage and found myself getting more and more frustrated when I wasn’t getting enough results to justify it. I’d spend time away from home, away from my family and away from the business work that needed to
Building a tech startup and pricing it right can feel like being lost in a jungle. You don’t know where to turn, what path is gonna get you out, and all you do is wake up in survival mode. Don’t worry, I’m here to help. I’ve personally gone through every pricing and product pivot you can imagine. Going freemium. Selling
In my career, I’ve hired dozens of salespeople… and I made some big mistakes when I did. Expensive mistakes. In my 20s I hired a guy and paid him $80k salary and all he did was talk about how he was going to close big deals… without ever doing it! For a whole year, this guy promised me the world
A few years back I had the privilege of hanging out with Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and Square, while we were on a speaking tour in Canada. This guy is a machine. He’s running 2 x Billion dollar businesses with a combined employee count of over 5000… at the same time. So I figured a guy with a
Another episode of Escape Velocity, and another opportunity to level up your game as an entrepreneur! We are jumping right into a topic of major importance for your business – POSITIONING! Getting your positioning super tight and specific can be the holy grail of growth… and many of the major players in the SaaS space are proof of that! It
How do you get invited to spend a week at Richard Branson’s house in Switzerland? Or for guys like Mark Cuban and Travis Kalanick (founder of Uber) to happily invest in your company? Or to get invited to travel to 8 European cities on a private jet? These all happened to me… and I believe it’s a natural result of
I’ve seen this happen before… A business that’s already growing decides to start their own SaaS. It always seems like a great idea. You’re already serving your customers, you know their problems, and you’ve got company resources to work with… So it’s gotta be easier than starting from scratch, right?
Imagine this scenario… You’ve launched a great SaaS product and things are starting to look up… GREAT! Now you are doing marketing, sales, dealing with clients, upgrading the product, doing everything you can to stack up your MRR. The more you grow, the more you have to delegate and rely on your team members. There comes a point where you
