This week has been a fascinating one with the blowup of crypto-exchange FTX and the related fallout. Unlike Theranos, many well-known Silicon Valley funds were investors in FTX and will lose serious money, which seems to be causing a lot of folks to dunk on venture in...
Great founders do many things well, and one of the things recently I’ve observed founders doing especially well is soliciting outside advice from other founders, investors, and advisors. Especially in times of uncertainty, I find that gathering these additional...
Your number job as a CEO of a start-up is simple. Never run out of money. Your already hard job just got harder. Uncertainty is high, but I can tell you with confidence that we are in a reset period (how long it is going to last, how much slower capital will be...
It’s my job to have a lot of open-ended, serendipitous conversations. I’m continually reminded of the value of these conversations and relationships as time passes. The opportunistic, open-ended conversation could be one of the highest ROI conversations you’ll have,...
Build trust and enlist support by communicating bad news early Founders by nature are optimistic - otherwise they’d never start and believe in the crazy journey that is required to build a company from scratch. And sometimes that pure optimism is the only thing that...
I’ve had the opportunity to talk with thousands of people about what they want in their next role and it generally boils down to three things: The right problem (aka purpose)–people focus on working for a company where they understand, support, and even champion the...
At Range Ventures we love it that founders dream big, think about the future and building billion-dollar+ companies. Having that mindset is 100% necessary - you aren’t going to build a billion-dollar company if you aren’t trying to build a billion-dollar company....
I had three separate interactions with Range Ventures portfolio company CEOs last week that reminded me how important it is for CEOs to be great at managing (and winning when needed) hard conversations. Founders at the simplest level need to be able to do three things...
In the context of a post-Series A stage company, annual planning is hard and time-consuming. Even more so at the early stage when volatility is high and often the data needed to make forecasts is not robust enough or non-existent. I also often see that first-time...