5 things a startup CEO must do
I had the pleasure of attending another Secret Sauce conference recently, which is an intensive day of growth hacking speakers. I thoroughly recommend you attend!
One of the most interesting speakers was @russellbuckley, of Spring Partners, an early stage tech seed investor.
Russell spoke about the 5 things a startup CEO must do:
Don't run out of money! Cash is king, so you need to have the future planned out as much as is realistic
Get good at raising money. Get a good pitch deck. Spend as much money on the deck as you do on your website!
Start a business that makes money! Sounds obvious, but businesses have to make revenue!
Be passionate about what you do
And finally, be resilient. It's a tough old world out there, so you need to have very thick skin and persevere when the going gets tricky.
Spring Partners focus is on great teams, not specific sectors. Is your business capital intensive? That makes it less interesting to potential investors.
CEO's need to focus on finding the right ppl. This is time-consuming, as is raising funds, but both are critical requirements to building a great business.
Speed of decision making is important. Typically, successful entrepreneurs canvas a lot of opinions first, but aren't afraid to still go in the opposite direction to what they hear.
And finally, THINK BIG! Having small ideas is as hard as having a large one, so why not think big to start? My friend Mark Moses has an excellent book on the subject.
Happy business growing!!
Cheers,
Duncan.
