The Power of Role Models Throughout my career I've been lucky to have great role models - both personally and for my company. This is one of those things that makes a marked difference when the path forward gets fuzzy and uncertain......
WKI Startups
A Founder’s Biggest Challenge
A Founder's Biggest Challenge Founders often think their biggest challenges will be technical - so they are often surprised when it turns out to be something else.
Building Traction as a Startup
Building Traction as a Startup For all of us in the startup world, the early days of gaining traction can be difficult. It can be a long, winding road to try to get traction on your own. Here's my tips for developing early access partners with impact.
Summer, Sunscreen and Supergoop!
Having spent my career in science and tech, I’m the first to admit I am a novice in the consumer goods space -- there’s an emotional side to pitching and selling these products that I’ve never experienced. Having said this, I’m always pleasantly surprised to see many...
The Importance of Startup Financials
Time and time again, I see pitches and information packets about startup investment opportunities with a glaring weakness – the lack of viable, credible and detailed financial information. I don’t get it. With innovations, technologies and company concepts into which...
Learning How The Game Is Played
As founders start out on their journey, there’s a lot of balls to juggle for sure. Customers, product, competitive differentiator, access to capital, and the list continues. An important one that doesn’t get talked about enough is the Path to Market - how will you...
A Defining Moment for Startups: So What’s the Problem?
When I reflect back to my tech startup days when we were on the napkin and starting out, I am reminded (and sometimes a little haunted LOL) by our inability to articulate the business problem we were proposing to solve. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the...
What “No” Sounds Like
Talking to another seed investor recently, we both got something of a chuckle when discussing a startup that had approached each of us separately. The chuckle was all about this team’s deaf ear to what was really being said to them. The word “No” comes out in a...
Mastery and The Pitch
What makes for a successful pitch? Is it the same for pitching to investors, to potential customers, to future employees, to the local Rotary, and on and on...What makes for success in any endeavor? We’ve measured many aspects of funding success – when startups...
