cyrilgrislain

5 ms·

1.
by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Bootstrapping is magnificent. I consider the Calendly funding story absolutely fantastic: under $1M in Seed + Debt and next round comes years mater, at 3.5B valuation.
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
as you say, all customers should have some cash contribution. But if you look at 'net cash', and not 'gross margin' as you seem to describe, then customers economics can take a totally different spin. As you net cash s
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Thank you for sharing in this forum and starting this thread!
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
you may sometimes prefer to, in other occasions need to, but certainly do not always HAVE to declare bankruptcy to do a restructuring :) As you can read, I chose to share a selection of quick-to-implement actions Founders can do. Declaring
5.
by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Yep. and 2 weeks delay in payment is not 'totally screwing' anybody :-)
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
I am suggesting that if your company is on track to DIE, then your utmost duty is to save YOUR company.
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
I think we may find the answers by reflecting upon: what were the incentives for the best astro-aero engineers to leave Nasa, Boeing, etc and join SpaceX in its beginning? Join Elon who had 0 track record in Space, came from dot.com SW? he
8.
by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
True, some Founders just won't succeed at that, for lack of profile or mindset or experience. But ultimately, especially in VC-backed startups, everything starts and stops with the Founders at least until Series B. Handling well hardsh
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
People join forces in a Business, rather than working alone for ex, because they believe the collective sum of resources = inputs will produce greater collective sum of outputs. Responsible businesses are those who maximise the outputs. Oth
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
yep. And VCs will need to deliver even higher returns to stay alive. In fact, the recent exuberance allowed VCs to get rid of the 'hurdle rate' = min return to deliver to LPs before making any carried. This will probably be correc
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
And how damn hard it is for CEOs to have to do layoffs. Especially more in rather small companies, where you do know very well the people you are taking the job away from. Zuck for ex certainly didn't hire himself, know the kids of, et
12.
by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Say you generate +$100 in cash. It is typically composed of customers generating +$200, and other destroying -$100. Typically you have an a) small fraction of cash-generating customers bringing in your +$200, and another b) small fraction o
13.
by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Say you generate +$100 in cash. It is typically composed of customers generating +$200, and other destroying -$100. Typically you have an a) small fraction of cash-generating customers bringing in your +$200, and another b) small fraction o
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Yep. and worse, it's like designing a car without knowing the car's economics. Like building a product for the product's sake. In SW/HW, a PM that doesn't also build the unit economics is a wrong management choice a
15.
by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
imo, the #1 role of a PM is to bring the user inside the company. To be the users' advocate and voice. Anybody who is PM without talking to users and doing that role may be a 'Project Manager', but not a 'Product Manager
16.
by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Agree. And you could argue that Founder(s), owners of the company AND product vision, should keep that role as long as possible. I see too many Founders relinquishing this role too early. One argument being: I need time to raise and recruit
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Everything is a matter of balance and reasonability. Yes, PM role has existed for decades actually, well beyond Tech (also often called Project Management). What happened recently is: the Tech Giants organization have become so ... well, Gi
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by cyrilgrislain 4y ago
Thank you everybody for your time to read my publication and all these rich comments I hope your company's are not in such dire situation to have to apply these tools. But if you are, I am happy to entertain a Q&A in this forum to