49 posts tagged with "Business"

The question people ask most is “How can I be as successful as you?” The better question is personal: have you got what it takes — for the problem you care about, over a multi-year journey, when the path is not a textbook?

You are what you hire. Every person is a Lego block in the company you are building — additive or dilutive. There is no sideline version of this sport.

Hiring is the number-one practical challenge startups report: not only finding the right people, but making sure those hires stick. A “great” resume that leaves in six months was never the right fit — and the cost of that mistake compounds fast when you are five people and just lost 20% of the company.

You think you know who your target customer is. The harder question is: how do you actually find them and start a conversation?

Strategy advice already exists — do things that don’t scale, founder-led sales, charge for the product. This article is about the tactics of getting customers 1 through 10.

The pitch is not a performance class. It is a framework for whether a VC will take the next step with you — and, more importantly, a window into what they are evaluating while you talk.

Frameworks are not answers. They are a basis on which to ask better questions — and to take action without feeling stuck.

If you know where you start (value proposition) and where you are headed (vision), the work in between is a roadmap: a series of dots you fill in as you take risk out of the venture and put value in. You cannot connect those dots looking forward — Steve Jobs was right — but if you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there.

A breakthrough demo is not a business. VCs qualify almost every pitch with one blunt question: is this a feature, a product, or a company? The hard work is closing the gap between something that works and something customers buy repeatedly — with a go-to-market, business model, and execution culture that can scale.

One of the hardest early challenges is deciding whether an idea is worth building a business around. A sharp value proposition is how you answer that — qualitatively first, then quantitatively — before you plough into product and go-to-market.

If you do not define culture, it will define itself — and you may not like what grows.

Vision, mission and culture are not soft posters for the office wall. They are the operating system of the company: they decide who joins, how people decide when you are not looking, and whether the team stays aligned through the long, messy path of building a venture.

The number one reason for success is that people focus on things with high potential consequences.

The number one reason for failure is that people focus on things with low or no potential consequences.

That line sits at the centre of Brian Tracy’s talk How To Build A Business That Works — a condensed masterclass for owners and would-be owners of small and medium-sized businesses. This article turns that talk into a clear, reusable playbook.