Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 1, 2016

Having time to think about “leadership” at most startups feels like a luxury. The reality of most startups is about survival. So spending time thinking about what your leadership style is, whether it’s effective and what you could do to improve it can yield dividends. It’s a new year – 2016.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

I have been writing a series on how startup boards get selected, who sits on them and what to avoid. I started this series in part to help entrepreneurs but also to help newer investors because I’ve know with so many new companies you have so many new board members and many people are trying to figure out there respective roles.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

What person hasn’t crouched at an airport to get 18% extra on one’s battery before boarding an airplane? Leadership over backbenchers? I wish I had 20% of her confidence, focus and leadership skills at 25. Startup Lessons' Are you willing to give them the benefit of the doubt?

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Fred Wilson also wrote on a similar topic in his usual more succinct manner , with a great quote being: “One thing I know for sure is that those who advise and invest in startups cannot and should not meddle in the day to day decision making. It’s harmful and hurtful to the startup and those that lead it. Startup Lessons'

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Nearly every successful tech startup I’ve observed over the past 20 years has gone through a similar growth pattern: Innovate, systematize then scale operations. Innovate In the early years of a startup there is a lot of kinetic energy of enthusiastic innovators looking to launch a product that changes how an industry works.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

Investors let him control the board as long as he continued to make them paper rich, and then actually rich--so they couldn’t technically force him out. Take the story of luggage startup Away’s CEO Steph Korey. Don’t get me wrong--the mental and emotional well-being of startup employees is a serious issue. The second reason?

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 19, 2022

Last year, after more than five years at the helm, Julie decided it was time to pass the baton to a new leader and she and I and a group of board members spent the fall talking to lots of people and we found a fantastic new leader named Jason Clark. Jason starts as the Executive Director of Tech:NYC next week.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 2, 2014

Many startups these days are started by young, technical or product founders who are in the idealistic phase of their lives and careers. I can assure you that move wasn’t a walk in the park for the board. I call it “ the Co-Founder mythology ” and it’s persistent in our startup mythology. Foursquare?

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2011

After 10 minutes I felt like we were old buddies because we had both been through the trenches of startup tech land and had had similar experiences. He was recounting one of his higher profile startups to me. When that happens it is no longer acceptable to be the founder on the board trying to reinvent yourself. It happens.

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American Entrepreneurship

DECEMBER 4, 2024

In support of military Veteran-founded startups, the Fund focuses on space, AI, and cybersecurity leveraging a veteran’s leadership. Miliary veterans possess attributes, experience, and skills that can be well-applied to entrepreneurship through leadership and knowledge of technology. in their journey post-service.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

APRIL 21, 2021

.” I don’t entirely agree with that and my experience with it has been different, but it brings up an incredibly important topic about leadership. I like to keep things simple and in my simple mind, leadership comes in two flavors, visionary leadership and operational leadership. It will be an incredible trip.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 17, 2012

Successful entrepreneurs achieve much through their personal leadership traits that inspire others to do great things with them – sure. And that person has almost certainly chosen specifically to be a startup lawyer over serving other types of customers because he or she enjoys working with entrepreneurs. EXECUTIVE RECRUITERS.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 26, 2022

We believe this consistency in leadership and intuition for where the markets were going in the heady days of 2019–2021 helped us to stay sane in a world that momentarily seemed to have lost its mind and since we have new capital to deploy in the years ahead perhaps I can offer some insights into where we think value will be derived.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 5, 2021

During my career — spanning entrepreneurship, academia, arts management and venture capital — I’ve learned the importance of female leadership in contributing to successful outcomes. Startups received an unprecedented amount of financial investment during the pandemic, yet female founders lost ground. How can we do that in startups?

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? I was meeting regularly with entrepreneurs and offering (for better or for worse) advice on how to run a startup and how to raise venture capital from my experience in doing so at two companies. thought leadership.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

When you set up a board it is often initially a combination of the founders and the early investors. This post sets out how I believe founders (and investors) should think about independent board members having worked with many of them for the past 20 years. The board is where large equity investors get their representation.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 3, 2015

The same is true at startups. I watch founders who want to get “air cover” for hard decisions by getting too much input from their teams or boards. You’re a startup, not GE. I’ll take a good decision now over a perfect decision in 6 months any day of the week in a startup. This drives me nuts.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2020

leadership, mentorship, competitiveness, communications, relationship-building?—?and In any job you either find leadership opportunities for your best people BEFORE they ask or other people start asking them to become leaders somewhere else. Leadership is about recognizing your next generation of talent and helping lift them up.

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David Teten VC

JUNE 9, 2021

You can work as a consultant, an interim executive, a board member, a deal executive partnering to buy a company, an executive in residence, or as an entrepreneur in residence. . connects startups to experts in building new businesses. Board of Directors. (See How to negotiate a partner role at a VC or private equity firm.)

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

I’ve sat on ad tech boards with board members who clearly knew little about impressions, fill rates, CTRs, RTB, eCPMs or the difficulties & opportunities of embedded mobile SDKs vs. HTML5. EQ and Team Leadership? Politics are a part of human nature and thus a part of all startups. Startups are hard.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 8, 2010

Most technology startups seem to be founded by three types of people: product managers, engineers or biz dev types (MBAs and the like). But in the end they know how to put the big wins on the board. I generally think that superstars are not the first people to hire in a startup. They’re unmanageable.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). So why did Larry need to return?

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 12, 2016

And while my relationship with Chuck was critical to my investment, so too was the leadership of Trevor Templar , the Chief Revenue Officer. I also have really enjoyed working with Satish Dharmaraj at Redpoint who like me was an enterprise software CEO (he was the founder & CEO of Zimbra — so he’s a perfect board partner for Tact).

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Paul G. Silva

MARCH 11, 2025

The Feedback That Made Me Sick to My Stomach Years ago, as president of Click Workspace, a startup coworking space, I received feedback that literally made me feel physically ill. Our board chairman called me in for a conversation. My standing with the board didn’t just recoverit soared.

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Revolution

MAY 4, 2022

Pandemic-induced office closures led to nearly impossible circumstances for a startup focused on events and coworking spaces. As board members, there were many hard conversations and no easy answers. We leaned in during weekly board meetings and reinvested when others left the cap table.

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American Entrepreneurship

MARCH 30, 2025

The company touts over 200,000 businesses with, a large portion being startups that use its services as a financial backbone, replacing cumbersome platform switching or thejuggling third-party apps. Its been synonymous with banking for startups, but Mercury is built for nearly every business and is a real competitor to legacy banks.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

JANUARY 24, 2020

We asked Adrienne to tell us more about the MyEO Tasimba leadership experience. She reminds me daily to stay connected to all I learned about myself and the world during our MyEO trip into the Tasimba leadership experience. Since transitioning from an active management role at the firm, she continues to serve as a board member.

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Paul G. Silva

FEBRUARY 11, 2025

” At the time, we were running a startup accelerator for 6 companies. Instead, our board pushed us to think bigger: What would it take to truly transform our region’s economy? We jumped to 30 startups that first year5x our previous capacity!!! Traditional wisdom: Only veteran judges can evaluate startups.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JANUARY 1, 2023

I want to focus this post on the macro environment for tech, startups, web3, and climate because that is where my head is at right now. With that macro view in mind, what would that mean for tech, startups, and web3? Startups are going to have a tough year in 2023.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

He first came to see me in 2008 when we was raising money for his 1st startup – NextMedium. Startup DNA. He had made some structural mistakes in NextMedium that meant the Cap Table and leadership team was a bit wacky. I was the first operational startup partner added – having built and sold two software companies.

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TechCrunch

JULY 30, 2021

You’d think tech companies should be the paradigm of how to prep for leadership transitions, since they operate in such a constant state of flux. The findings may not be troubling if these respondents were millennial startup founders, years from leaving their companies. They’re far from it.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

The biggest difference I cite is that Venture Capital often feels like an “individual sport” while startups are a “team sport.” Startups are team sports because you’re all working on the same shared objective of the company. That’s what we’re trying to do at Upfront.

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AsiaTechDaily

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Startups also benefit from essential business services, including consultancy, marketing initiatives, investor relations programs, and educational seminars, ensuring they thrive on the international stage. Pangyo Techno Valley-supported startups are poised to become the trailblazers reshaping the future of the semiconductor landscape.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

JULY 2, 2019

Derrek Kayongo, Global Soap Project; Andrew Wilson, ICC; Shamina Singh, Mastercard; Joshua Williams, Ashoka; Rosemarie “Bubu” Andres, EO Global Chair; and Warren Rustand, Dean of the EO Leadership Academy. both winners and non-winners), EO Cares Startup Engagement, and Young Entrepreneurship Academy. SDG 5 – Gender Equality. •

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

But not everybody has the right skills to build a highly successful and valuable startup from scratch. For some aspiring to be tech entrepreneurs, I often suggest a two-step process, as I argued in this post that “ The First Startup Founder You Need to Invest in Is You.” In fact, I would argue that most people don’t.

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

MARCH 8, 2024

Our global goal is to ignite women leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and future-preneurs to spark startups, drive economic expansion, and advance communities worldwide,” Milena shared. We’ve helped our portfolio companies with introductions with potential customers, board members, key employees, and advisors.”

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

He’s also a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, sits on the boards of several startups, is a many-time entrepreneur himself, and was previously an exec at GE and Intel. As a venture capitalist who frequently works with tech startups, what are some of the traditional competencies that startups typically overlook and underappreciate?

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