• • Standard operating procedures RIFLE is a decision making framework that helps improve targeting by quantifying otherwise non-quantified decisions. If you have a technology, what market should you apply it to? Should you sell to international or domestic markets? Big or small customers? What channels make the most sense for sales? RIFLE can help you be more rigorous and inspire a more effective way for you to make decisions at your company. Read More
• • Standard operating procedures So, you’re trying to raise money. Here’s a guide for thinking about the kind of information you’ll need to craft a narrative about your company. Depending on your stage of growth, you may want to focus on different elements of this checklist. This is meant as a general guide, not a prescriptive template. Read More
• • Standard operating procedures, Team building • • Standard operating procedures The goal of Team 360 reviews is to provide CEOs with valuable developmental and evaluative feedback from key stakeholders. Read More
• • Standard operating procedures Understand and quantify your major risks and know what you have to prove to get your product to market. Read More
• • Standard operating procedures The goal of if/then scenario planning is to better understand how you can manage your company’s spend and ensure capital efficiency in order to achieve success. Ask yourself what bad things could happen, and what would your countermeasures be? Read More
• • Standard operating procedures, Team building Make the platitude of “hire great people” a more actionable and quantifiable process. Great ideas suffering from poor execution can kill companies, while less spectacular ideas coupled with phenomenal teams can quickly swing a company from troubled to a success. Read More
• • Standard operating procedures A strong team is the most important element of a company’s ability to achieve success. The first few hires help the founders create the environment they will all work in and help drive the product development process. It is also the team that drives (and interviews) all future hires and their ideas and biases get incorporated in the team. There is always talk of startup culture, but it is the founders and their first round of hires that define that culture. Read More
• • Standard operating procedures, Team building Most of the time, startups need a culture of experimentation and an attitude of “change the industry rules, not play by them” is a key requirement . Often in larger, more stable enterprises, repeating yesterday’s strategy is 90-percent of the job. In startups, there was no yesterday and one can’t use “industry rules” to cause disruption. Read More
• • Standard operating procedures, Team building Entities structured with the traditional hierarchy often hire reactively, such as when an opening occurs due to attrition or poor employee performance. Consequently, firms facing market environments where change, innovation and rapid evolution take place can rush into a process that ends with a candidate to “fill the job.” Read More