Operations

About Yaw Yaw Aning is the CEO and Founder of Malomo. Malomo is a shipment tracking platform that helps eCommerce brands turn order tracking from a cost center into a profitable marketing channel. Episode Takeaways Yaw joined us for season 3, episode 2 of our Founders Forward Podcast to dive into his career as a founder. He started his career in consulting which eventually led him to founding Malomo. Since founding Malomo, the team has rapidly grown and they’ve raised $8M+. Before ever thinking about funding, Yaw and the team had to determine what problems they were going to solve and did everything in their power to find their first customers. Yaw joins us to break down: How Malomo found their first customers The importance of finding a co-founder How and why you need to solve customer’s problems How Yaw found his co-founder The importance of being able to shut down How to prioritize time Watch the Episode Give episode 2 with Yaw Aning a listen below (or give it a listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you normally consume podcasts) The Founders Forward is Produced by Visible Our platforms helps thousands of founders update investors, track key metrics, and raise capital. Try Visible free for 14 days.

Hiring and attracting top talent is a major responsibility of any startup founder. In order to compete with large corporations, startups oftentimes have to get creative to attract top talent. One of the top benefits a startup can offer is employee stock options. This gives an employee potential upside and ultimately aligns both parties. There are two major forms of stock options — NSOs (non-qualified stock options) and ISOs (qualified incentive stock options). How do you know what type of stock options to use for your company? Check out our breakdown of both ISOs and NSOs below: Note: We always recommend seeking advice from lawyers or councils when working with your equity. What Are Qualified Incentive Stock Options or ISOs? As put by the team at Investopedia, “An incentive stock option (ISO) is a corporate benefit that gives an employee the right to buy shares of company stock at a discounted price with the added benefit of possible tax breaks on the profit. The profit on qualified ISOs is usually taxed at the capital gains rate, not the higher rate for ordinary income. Non-qualified stock options (NSOs) are taxed as ordinary income.” The main difference between ISOs and NSOs are the tax structure and possible benefits. Traditionally, ISOs are awarded to high-value employees. How Are ISOs Taxed? As mentioned above, ISOs are taxed at the capital gains rate. This means that ISO holders are subject to tax benefits as the capital gains rate is generally lower than the ordinary income rate. It is worth noting that ISOs are taxed at the time of selling the stock (not when vesting or exercising). When an employee (or person) is granted sock options there is a strike price (which is the value at the time of granting). Once an employee decides to exercise their options, they have the ability to sell their stock or hold on to the stock. If the same person sells their stock at (the fair market value) at a later date the difference between the strike price and fair market value is the profit — or what the employee is taxed on. Check out the long-term capital gains tax rates in 2022 (for the US) below: Learn more about other tax implications and the alternative minimum tax (AMT) in our next section. The Impact AMT Has on ISOs According to the IRS, “The alternative minimum tax (AMT) applies to taxpayers with high economic income by setting a limit on those benefits. It helps to ensure that those taxpayers pay at least a minimum amount of tax.” So what does this mean for ISOs? While very rare and generally reserved for high-earning individuals, the AMT can be triggered if the profile from selling ISOs is large enough. This means that the stock seller will be subject to more taxes and negate some of the benefits of an ISO. What Are Non-Qualified Stock Options or NSOs On the flip side are non-qualified stock options (NSOs). As put by the team at Investopedia, “A non-qualified stock option (NSO) is a type of employee stock option wherein you pay ordinary income tax on the difference between the grant price and the price at which you exercise the option.” NSOs are generally more common than ISOs. While they might not have the tax benefits of ISOs, NSOs are generally more common than ISOs and offer their own benefits. It is worth noting that NSOs can be granted to non-employees as well (board members, advisors, mentors, customers, etc.) Learn more about NSOs and their tax structure below: How Are NSOs Taxed? The main difference between NSOs and ISOs comes down to how they are taxed. If you recall, ISOs are only taxed at the capital gains tax when they are sold. NSOs can potentially be taxed on two occasions. To start, NSOs are taxed when the stock options are initially exercised. If/when someone decides to exercise their NSOs they will pay a tax on the difference between the fair market value and the strike price. Next, NSOs are taxed when someone sells the actual stock — similar to ISOs. Depending on how long someone holds their stock between the time they exercise it and sell it, will determine if they pay short term or long term capital gains tax. The Impact AMT has on NSOs As we mentioned earlier, an alternative tax minimum (AMT) is a potential downside of ISOs. Unlike their counterpart, NSOs are not subject to AMT. ISO vs NSO Which One is Right For You? Now that we understand the difference between qualified incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified incentive stock options (NSOs) it is time to understand how and when you should be using both. Both have expected use cases and their own set of pros and cons depending on the use. Related Reading: How to Fairly Split Startup Equity with Founders When to Choose an ISO Of course, most employees will likely want an ISO plan as it offers tax benefits. However, it is lesser used and should be reserved for high-value employees. As the team at Investopedia writes, “This type of employee stock purchase plan is intended to retain key employees or managers.” A few times for when you should choose a qualified incentive stock option for your employees: When offering stock options for an employee (ISOs are not eligible with individuals who are not employees) When trying to incentivize and retain a high-value employee — this might be a manager or executive that is closely aligned with your companies success. When your company is in a financial position to offer ISOs instead of NSOs When to Choose an NSO While they do not necessarily have the tax benefits of ISOs, NSOs are widely used and are more common than ISOs. Below are a few examples and pros of choosing an NSO instead of an ISO: When issuing stock options to non-employees. This could be consultants, board members, mentors, and more. From the team at Pasquesi Partners, “With NSO, companies are able to take tax deductions when the employee chooses to exercise their option in the stock. Because of the way they are structured, NSO earnings are viewed as income for the employee, hence the tax deductions.” When looking for a more simple option and straightforward stock option to offer employees Share Stock Option Information With Your Investors with Visible No matter how you structure your cap table and share equity with investors, employees, and more, it is important to be straightforward and transparent the entire time. Want to improve your investor reporting and communication? Let us help. Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days.

We surveyed founders in our community and asked, “How likely are you to refer your current lead investor(s) to fellow founders?” (AKA — NPS score). The results were shocking with an NPS score of 23. An NPS score of 23 falls below the average for the airline industry. Not a great industry to be compared to in terms of customer satisfaction scores. As the venture space continues to grow and mature, the importance of investor’s adding value and opportunities is higher than ever. In order to better help investors support their portfolio (and hopefully move that NPS score up) we’ve put together 3 tips below: Systemize your data collection As Peter Drucker put it, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” In order to best help the founders in your portfolio, you need to have a system in place to collect data, quantitative and qualitative, so you can jump in and help when needed. Setting up a system requires a fine balance between being beneficial for your fund and being efficient and easy on the founder. With that said, it is important you only collect what is absolutely necessary (for founders who are already taking the time to send investor updates you want to make sure they are not duplicating efforts). What we suggest requesting from a founder to start: With Visible for Investors, founders can fill out simple Update Requests from their investors (like the example above) and use their data to fuel future investor Updates. Learn more about Visible for Investors here. Take action on the data Collecting portfolio company data is only half the battle. Once you have the data in hand (qualitative or quantitative) you need to make sure you are closing the loop. Keep an eye on qualitative data As we displayed in our example request above, best-in-class investors are specifically requesting a “Where can we help/problems” section. Being sure you can track and manage this data over time will improve your ability to take action. By setting up a view in Visible or exporting answered requests, you can keep your eye on where your companies stand and where your help is needed. Metric alerts and benchmarking When collecting metrics and data from your companies on a recurring basis, you’ll be able to uncover trends for individual companies and your portfolio as a whole. If you notice a core metric for a specific company is slipping month over month, it might be a good time to intervene and see if they need a hand to tackle a problem. Fundraising and Introductions Startups are in constant competition for 2 resources — capital and talent. As an investor, you will oftentimes see founders need help with 1 (or both) of those 2 areas. Being able to make an introduction to a potential investor or new hire can have a huge impact on a startup’s growth. Being able to open up your rolodex will be a huge win in the eyes of your founders. On the flip side, you can use the data from your portfolio as a whole to help benchmark and uncover new trends to the rest of your portfolio. For example, if you see a go-to-market strategy picking up steam with a few companies, it can be a good time to introduce the ideas to other companies that might benefit from the strategy. Learn more about how you can use Visible for Investors to better support your portfolio companies here. Make the most of it Setting up a system to collect data from your portfolio companies is no easy feat so you’ll want to make sure you are getting the most value out of the data as possible. Outside of helping your portfolio companies, you do have your own set of investors you need to report to. Having a strong system to collect portfolio data is a natural backbone to power your next LP report. Building strong rapport with your LPs is a surefire way to make sure your next fundraise goes smoothly. Using Visible, you can roll up your data and use Updates to report to your LPs. No exporting or additional data needed. Simply take the data from your portfolio, add in any necessary fund/investment data, and keep your LPs in the loop. Check out an example report here. Check out more LP update templates here. Learn more about using Visible for Investors to report with your LPs here. Stay engaged with your founders right from your pocket. Monitor your portfolio and be the value-add investor you want to be with Visible for Investors. Schedule a demo to learn more here.

On episode 7 of the Founders Forward Podcast, we welcome Kristian Andersen. Kristian is a founder and partner at High Alpha, a venture studio located in Indianapolis. About Kristian Before launching High Alpha, Kristian founded the prolific design agency, Studio Science. During his time at Studio Science, Kristian primarily served software companies which ultimately led to him being a founding partner at High Alpha. Between Kristian’s experience at Studio Science and his time at High Alpha helping launch 30+ companies, it is safe to say he knows a thing or 2 about design and storytelling. Kristian joins us to break down how design can be a competitive advantage, the importance of storytelling in business, the High Alpha Studio model, and much more. Our CEO, Mike Preuss, had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Kristian. You can give the full episode a listen below: What You Can Expect to Learn from Kristian: How the High Alpha Studio models work What kind of co-founders they look for at High Alpha How design can be a competitive advantage Why storytelling is important in business and fundraising Why Coco Chanel, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ralph Lauren are great storytellers What he likes to see in a cold email from a founder Related Resources: Kristian’s Twitter Kristian’s website Apply to become a High Alpha Co-founder High Alpha’s Visible Connect Profile

If you’re working in Venture Capital or are fundraising from VC’s, the odds that you’ve experienced a lack of diversity in race, gender, and as a result ideas, is very high. According to a survey by Richard Kerby at Equal Ventures, the VC industry is comprised of 58% white men, followed by 20% Asian men, 11% white women, 6% Asian women, 2% Black men, and 1% Black women, 1% Latinx men, and nearly 0% are Latinx women. And when you consider “who controls venture capital dollars”, in other words, “who gets the bulk of the carried interest, salary… and ultimate control over which startups get funded”, it’s 93% white males. (Source) Source: James L. Knight Foundation; data extrapolated from Figure 41 based on Preqin’s data set, which defines venture capital as a subset of private equityH VENTURE PARTNERS Meanwhile, a report by McKinsey and Company shows that diverse working environments financially outperform homogenous workforces by as much as 35 percent. The Venture Capital industry is missing out on diversity of people, ideas, ventures, and ultimately higher returns. If you’re interested in helping improve diversity at your VC fund, check out these resources to start taking actionable steps forward. 1) Increase Your Individual Knowledge about Diversity and Inclusion It’s important to remember to take ownership of your diversity and inclusion education process rather than burdening minority groups with the responsibility of teaching you or correcting you. You can start by checking out this curated list of relevant articles on diversity and inclusion for both founders and funders. The list also includes a list of organizations you can work with to help improve diversity and inclusion including Parity.org, NVCA VentureForward, and Project Include. These resources are curated by Founders for Change, a group of inspiring founders who are dedicated to diversity and inclusion within their companies, and desire greater diversity at the highest levels of VC firms. Learn more about Founders for Change here. 2) Encourage Your Fund to Take Part in the Diversity VC Standard Program & Certification The Diversity VC Standard program is a great way to strategically set diversity goals for your fund while also increasing the knowledge of D&I practices for your whole team. It was started in 2020 and pioneered by 15 leading funds across Europe and Canada. The certification sends signals to the rest of the ecosystem that your fund follows the best D&I practices. The program walks VC’s through three stages: Assessment – A guided run through of your fund’s current policies and practices Consultation – Curated advice and recommendations on next steps according to fund targets Certification – To Level 1 (setting a benchmark above industry average) or Level 2 (leading the way on changes to D&I policy) For more information about Diversity VC follow this link. 3) Broaden Sources of Dealflow Beyond Traditional Channels While cold outreach does sometimes work, most deals are funded through a warm introduction from someone in your network. For this reason, it’s a good idea to reflect on who comprises your network and decide if you need to branch out. Some advice from Sarah Millar, Principal at City Light VC and head of Diversity VC’s US Chapter — Be intentional about building relationships with funds that focus on diverse founders and leverage those to grow your own networks. Setting up regular catch-ups, co-investing in their deals, and sharing deals is always what works in VC – so being intentional about who you do it with and what their focus areas are is going to pay dividends. Harlem Capital has put together a thorough database of diverse investors that is a great starting point. You can also broaden your dealflow sources by checking out these resources: Crunchbase’s Diversity Spotlight, the Black Founder List, Latinx Founders Collective, Female Founded Club. 4) Guide Portfolio Companies on How to Build an Inclusive Culture As a VC, you’re oftentimes in a position to influence your portfolio companies as they grow. Get informed about what makes a diverse and inclusive culture so you can guide your portfolio companies as they build their teams. A great place to learn about inclusive cultures is by checking out the resources put together by Project Include. The non-profits mission is to give everyone a fair chance to succeed in tech by using data and advocacy to accelerate diversity and inclusion solutions. Project Include has even curated recommendations on each step in the process of building an inclusive culture, including how to lead as a VC. Leading the change to improve diversity at your VC fund may not be easy but we hope these resources serve as a source of motivation and encouragement. 5) Explore Diverse Networks when Making your next Fund Hire When looking to add talent to your VC firm, start by exploring organizations on a mission to increase diversity in Venture Capital. Vencapital is empowering the next generation of investors by providing training programs catered specifically towards women and minorities looking for entry-level roles in VC. Chicago:Blend is on a mission to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Chicago’s venture capital and startup community. They publish annual diversity data, help underrepresented and overlooked professionals break into VC, and deploy necessary DEI resources to the community. You may also like How to Hire for your First VC Platform Role. Do you have suggestions for other steps or resources you think we should include? Let us know!

On episode 6, season 2 of the Founders Forward Podcast, we welcome Corinne Riley. Corinne is an investor at the prolific venture capital firm, Greylock, where she primarily invests in B2B companies. About Corinne Over the course of her career, Corinne has built a knack for helping companies build and develop a go-to-market motion. Corinne has extensive knowledge of community-led growth and helping companies grow at the earliest stages of their business. Corinne joins the show to break down community-led companies and the thought process behind her investment decision-making. Our CEO, Mike Preuss, had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Corinne. You can give the full episode a listen below: What You Can Expect to Learn from Corinne What a community-led company is How community-led growth can be a moat What the community commitment curve is What changes between a seed and series A pitch What data she would expect to see in a Series A company What she likes to see in a cold email from a founder Related Resources Corinne’s Twitter Common Room & Uncommon Corinne’s post on Community-Led Growth The Business of Belonging Greylocks’s Visible Connect Profile

You may be interested in better defining your VC Platform approach because you’re thinking about hiring for your first Platform role or you want to strategically determine where to allocate more resources to improve your post-investment support. Whatever the reason, it’s a worthy investment of your time because your VC Platform can help set you apart from other investors in a competitive deal flow environment. Despite the importance of the topic, not very many frameworks exist to help investment teams and Platform teams figure out how to improve the support they’re providing startups. This article highlights the TOPSCAN method and serves as a useful tool to take a wide lens view at the needs and resources that already exist within your portfolio today. What is the TOPSCAN Method for Startup Support? The TOPSCAN method for supporting startups is a hidden gem of a framework first outlined in 2013 in The Journal of Private Equity. It was designed to help investors improve their operational support of startups. The framework includes seven key management techniques as outlined below: Using this framework, and the exercise outlined below, you can strategically determine the areas of support that will deliver the most value to your companies and reap the most return for the investment of your VC Platform’s time and non-capital resources. Using TOPSCAN to Identify your VC Platform Positioning The objectives of VC Platforms are all about formalizing the post-investment support processes and making them repeatable and reliable. Therefore, you want to make sure you’re scaling your most impactful areas of support. To discover which areas of support are going to be the most valuable to scale from both your portfolio’s and your fund’s perspective, you should be thinking about where portfolio needs, available resources, and VC brand strategy align. To do this, consider using this VC Platform Positioning Exercise template as a guide. VC Platform Positioning Exercise Portfolio Needs To get started, navigate to the Portfolio Needs column on the VC Platform Positioning Exercise. Here you’ll begin to answer the question What is the most impactful support you could be providing your companies? The exercise starts with this column because it is absolutely critical to have a finger on the pulse of what is top of mind for your portfolio companies. Just as you would never advise one of your portfolio companies to build a product without first understanding their customer, you need to understand your portfolio companies (read: customers) before you start building out your VC Platform approach. To do this, you could consider: Sending out a survey; Using Visible.vc’s Request feature to streamline the collection of qualitative responses; Or Scheduling a check in call with your founders during which you ask ‘what is the most impactful way we can support you’* *If you don’t have strong relationships with companies already in place, start by setting up informal check in calls to build rapport instead of a survey. Document the trends you see emerging across the portfolio using the TOPSCAN categories of support which are included in the VC Platform Positioning Exercise. You’ll also want to assign a weight to each category according to the level of demand or need. Portfolio Needs Example: Available Resources Next, review and consider which resources for company support already exist at your firm. Your goal should be to answer the question What resources do we have internally and/or how could we source these externally? Start mapping out these resources by the TOPSCAN category they’re related to. Take into account which resources your VC Fund has internally versus where it could make sense to partner with a service provider. Assign a weight related to how available the resources already are within your firm. For example, your portfolio may need help with recruiting but you don’t have resources on staff to support this. In this case, you may consider whether there is a budget to adopt a software or form a partnership to provide this type of support to your companies. Available Resources Example: Brand Strategy And finally, it’s important to keep in mind your fund’s brand positioning to make sure the resources you’re allocating align with your brand. In this section you’re answering What do we want to be known for? As Jay Acunzo from NextView Ventures notes “platform only works when you’re known for something.” Brainstorm within your team until you’ve clarified what it is you want to be known for. Do you want to be known for data-driven decision making? Or maybe you want to be known for identifying and investing in diverse teams. Denote this in the ‘Brand Strategy’ section of the exercise and again assign a weight to each category as you fill them out. Brand Strategy Example: Once you’ve completed the VC Platform Positioning Exercise, begin looking for overlaps in portfolio needs, available resources, and brand strategy. The areas in which you identify the most alignment should form the basis of your VC Platform approach. And as Peter Drucker once said, “You cannot manage what you don’t measure”. Be sure to set up KPI’s for your newly defined VC Platform approach so you can measure, analyze, and iterate as needed to refine your approach overtime. And with building anything new, keep in close communication with your ‘customers’ so you’re confident you’re building something of value. Other VC Platform articles we love: Paths into Venture Capital – Decoding the Platform Role Director of Platform, what does that mean? Why VCs are investing in Platforms to Compete Are Newly Formed Roles In VC Firms Differentiators, Table Stakes Or Total BS?

On episode 5, season 2 of the Founders Forward Podcast, we welcome Ezra Galston. Ezra is the founder and partner at Starting Line, a consumer-focused VC fund located in Chicago. About Ezra As someone who has faced the ups and downs of being a founder (plus the stresses of fundraising), Ezra and the team at Starting Line has made mental health a focus. Every founder in the Starting Line portfolio receives a subsidy for “their first three sessions of therapy, executive coaching, or co-founder counseling (up to $200 each).” Ezra joins the Founders Forward to break down fundraising, founder health, and the consumer market/what excites the team at Starting Line. Our CEO, Mike Preuss, had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Ezra. You can give the full episode a listen below: What You Can Expect to Learn from Ezra How a founder and board’s focus changes from early stages to later stage How venture fundraising differs for the “haves” and “have nots” How Ezra’s experiencing raising capital has impacted how he views fundraising Why Starting Line has a focus on their portfolio founder’s mental health How Starting Line subsidizes mental health sessions Why fundraising is a relationship-based activity Why he likes plenty of context before a meeting with a founder Related Resources Ezra’s Twitter The Starting Line Operating Manual Starting Line’s Visible Connect Profile

What a Board of Directors Does Even with great executives, a great product, and a great team, the success of a new startup can be determined by its Board of Directors. Choosing a Board of Directors is a critical process. The Board of Directors for your venture are the strategic advisors or final votes in major decisions and changes. With the right Board in place, a company can accelerate and take the right strategic steps to a favorable exit or IPO. Building a Board of Directors is a crucial process and one that should be done deliberately and strategically. Decisions about the type of board your company needs, the types of board members and how they will strategically work together, and planning ahead for potential board obstacles and stumbling points are all aspects to consider when building a Board of Directors that will actually help your company grow. What a Board of Directors Does At the highest level, a Board of Directors provides some type of strategic advisory and decision making for a company. In some cases, and for some types of boards, this decision-making could be fiscal and provide the board members the electoral power to make changes above the company’s executives. In other cases, it can be purely strategic, with no formal and final power but rather to serve as a collective of experience and guidance as the company grows and evolves over time. In general, a Board of Directors serves as a voting or advisory body of appointed or elected leaders that help make decisions for a company. There are nuances and three primary types of Boards of Directors. The Different Types of Boards Board of Directors A Board of Directors is made up of appointed members typically representing from inside the company and outside the company. Board of Director members are experts in their field, fields relating to company leadership or aligned strategically with what a company does or what industry they serve. A Board of Directors may serve in an advisory role or a fiduciary role or both. These two types of boards are most common. Inside company representation may include leaders of the executive board and even the CEO of the company. Outside appointees vary depending on the type of Board of Directors. The type of board of directors can also influence how a specific board meeting is run. Check out our guide on How to Run a Board Meeting to learn more about the various meeting flows. Advisory Board The main differentiator of an advisory board is that its decisions are non-binding and more informal in nature. Just as the name suggests, Advisory Boards are composed of appointed experts that provide advice and help a company with forward-thinking decisions such as custom acquisition, go-to-market strategy, category tactics, pricing, or even acquisition decisions. Advisory Board cannot force a CEO or executive team to take any action. They are also not appointed to represent any specific interests, rather composed of folks that are experts in their field or have strong track records of scaling great businesses. Sometimes, in exchange for an Advisory Board seat and contributing their time and help to a company, the stock is given as part of the “payment” for serving in an Advisory Board role. This also ties the advisory board member to the company’s long-term success. In general, Advisory Boards do not assume any liability or responsibility legally from company decisions and outcomes. Fiduciary Board First and foremost, Fiduciary Boards are made up of an equal representation of all the shareholders, not just majority owners. Public companies are required to have Fiduciary Boards but Private companies are not. Fiduciary Boards are tasked with ensuring that the company is making decisions that are fiscally beneficial to its shareholders. Because of this heavy responsibility and oversight, Fiduciary Boards are given the voting rights to overrule the CEO’s decisions. Members of a Fiduciary Board are appointed by each party they represent. Often, when a big funding round takes place, the leading investor of that round will appoint a partner to sit on the Board of Directors at the company – earning a board seat as part of their investment to represent their fiduciary interests. Inside the company members are present as well including the CEO and possibly another C-level executive. The Different Types of Board Members Not only are there different kinds of Boards of Directors, there are also a variety of different types of board members that make up said boards. Management Board Members Internal representatives on a Board of Directors from the company are referred to as management board members. Management board members are direct representatives from the day-to-day of the company, often the CEO, COO or another executive leader. They provide the frontline perspective into the discussions and decision-making for the board and are often responsible for running the agenda and managing the flow of information out to the rest of the board members. Investor Board Members Often, when a VC firm or PE firm makes an investment into a company’s funding round, they are granted representation with a board seat. Investors that join your board at different stages of a company’s growth may have different perspectives or rationale around upholding specific decisions or fiduciary responsibility. It’s critical that you spend the time onboarding not only the board seat holder, but your broader team of new investors after every round. Independent Directors Knowing that management members and investor members both have direct ties to the success of the company and are personally tied financially to the outcomes decided on by a board, independent directors provide an air of checks and balances to the table. Independent directors are qualified individuals that have no affiliation or tie to the company. They may be business leaders or industry experts and are there as a 3rd party, non-bias advisors to the business. How To Build a Strong Board of Directors Now knowing that there are various types of a Board of Directors and various members that make up those ranks, the decision-making process begins to form the perfect board for your company’s needs and future. Choosing a Board Type First and foremost, if your company is public, a fiduciary board is required. However, if your company is private, you have the option to build a board with just advisory duties or to grant them fiduciary power as well. It’s important to consider why each function exists. Choosing an advisory board is smart for any founder to make sure their company building does not exist in an echo chamber, and insight and advice is considered early and often as the company scales. The more external funding you take and the more shareholders are present, fiduciary responsibility may make the most sense to protect the overall interests of the company and spread out the risk and legal responsibility amongst shareholders, not just on the executive leadership at the company. Deciding on a Board Size There is no mandatory set number of Board Members, and most range from 3 to 31 employees. Typically a board is always composed of an odd number to prevent tied votes. Analysts suggest that the ideal Board of Directors size is 7 members. Deciding on your Board size is up to you as a founder. Perhaps a smaller board is good to start with expansions being made as more investors come to the table, earning more seats, or as new problems or growth opportunities arise at the company that requires new expertise to be brought in. Establishing a Board Structure In addition to Board of Directors Size and Type, the structure of the board is critical to the success of the board. Having a clear, and defined structure that is agreed upon by members as they join ensures that board meetings are run smoothly and the purpose and goals of the board are clearly achieved. Structural elements of a board to consider include setting clear bylaws that outline member responsibilities and expectations, defined roles, and duties such as who will take minutes, who will report out, and who will run the meeting flow at each board meeting. Term limits are also something to consider, especially for a fiduciary board, to keep decision-making ethical and tied to the best interests of the shareholders. Additionally, check if your specific industry or board type has any industry or corporate governance rules that are needed to be abided by. Fill Knowledge and Skills Gaps When appointing new board members, or even just as you appoint the first few board members, consider what skills they bring to the table and how they can best aid your company’s success. If there are gaps that the current management team or founders of the company have, a board of directors can help fill knowledge and skills gaps. For example, if the founders of a company are technical, they may want to build an advisory board of directors with go-to-market experts, revenue leaders, and financial advisors to ensure that the business decisions are made in conjunction with the great product evolution or development taking place. On the flip side, if a company is expanding into a new industry or adding a product line, an expert in that product field or industry may be a crucial knowledge gap to fill with a board seat. Prioritize Diverse Perspectives The best way to make sure your business actually grows from implementing a board and making forward-thinking decisions as a board is to avoid an echo chamber. An echo chamber refers to the same ideas or thoughts being “Echoed” back many times over. Often, it’s easy to be drawn to like-minded leaders or partners you’ve worked within the past when selecting board members. However, think more about the qualities and traits and perspectives the management members or already selected members bring to the table. Then try and find a completely opposite perspective or experience (that still helps your business). Avoiding an echo chamber will ensure all perspectives and sides of an idea are considered when making a decision and avoid obvious mistakes that might be made if everyone can only see one direction clearly. Onboard Your Directors Plain and simple, onboard your Board of Directors. Just as you would likely build out a comprehensive onboarding plan for your new employees so they have everything they need to do their job, the Board of Directors are no different. Provide a detailed, comprehensive, and repeatable path for onboarding for your Directors. This will ensure everyone is on the same page and has a clear understanding of the “why” that brings them to the table for your company each and every day. Regularly Evaluate Your Board If the board type and structure is set, all your Directors are onboarded, and you have your Board up and running, don’t stop thinking about what your Board’s ideal state looks like. Make quarterly and annual evaluations a habit with your Board to ensure that all members are continuously able (and willing) to serve in their Board role at full capacity. This ensures that your Board remains a valuable part of your business’s strategy and success. Potential Obstacles to Your Board’s Success (and Solutions) Despite taking all the steps to build a strong Board of Directors, be aware of potential obstacles to your board’s success. Too many like-Minded Members When building your board, especially early on, the board may be small. Between management members and investor or industry expert appointees, you always run the risk of having too many like minded members on the board, preventing any real change or growth to be done. The best solution to avoiding this potential obstacles is to be really intentional when building your board to diversity the perspectives represented and to set clear term limits for your board. That way, even if after working to select members with diverse perspectives, there is a second safety net in place to ensure that after a set number of time, board members will be interchanged to bring in even more perspectives and prevent a like-minded board from forming. Conflicts of Interest Another common obstacle many Boards of Directors face is a conflict of interest among board members. This could be due to too much management representation on the board or possibly too many friends and family represented on the board as shareholders. A solution on the management side is to ensure there is a cap on how many management members are represented at any one time on the board. This limit will prevent the management perspective from taking over. Similarly, term limits, or voting rules around stakeholder involvement can help ensure that decisions are made fairly and not just in the interest of the individual board member. Let Visible Help A Board of Directors can be game-changing for your business and completely shape the strategic direction to take a company public or through other favorable business outcomes. Once your Board is up and running, it’s important to ensure communications to the Board are seamless and clear. Learn more about keeping your investors updated with Visible here.

On episode 4, season 2 of the Founders Forward Podcast, we welcome Tyler Tringas. Tyler is the founder and General Partner at Calm Company Fund (formerly Earnest Capital). The Calm Company Fund invests in exactly what it sounds like — “profitable, sustainable, calm businesses.” About Tyler and Calm Company Fund Tyler offers a unique perspective as someone who invests in companies that may not be the huge companies that a traditional venture capitalist eyes. He joins us to break down what exactly a “calm” business is, the current market dynamics that are creating more need for funders like Calm Company Fund, and much more. Our CEO, Mike Preuss, had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Tyler. You can give the full episode a listen below: What You Can Expect to Learn from Tyler How companies in smaller markets can still be winners What a SEAL is and how Calm Fund uses them The market dynamics creating a need for more funding options like Calm Fund Why and how they raised crowdfunding How Calm Fund and Venture Capital can co-exist for startups How to best cold email investors Related Resources Tyler’s Twitter Calm Capital — What We Invest In Shared Earnings Agreement Our Original Sit Down with Tyler The Calm Fund Visible Connect Profile Bootstrapping 101: Pros & Cons of Bootstrapping Your Startup

Founding a company is no easy feat. From idea to execution, it can be almost impossible to get up and running as an actual, legitimate company and that’s just the beginning. Across all industries, 90% of startups fail and 10% of startups fail in the first year alone. The odds are stacked against you and only the bravest (and maybe craziest) folks choose the path of entrepreneurship and founding their own startup. Going this road is risky and daunting so often it makes sense to bring on additional support, a co-founder or multiple co-founders, to join in on the wild ride of launching and building a startup. However, it’s not always clear when bringing on a co-founder is right. Timing, needs, trajectory, bandwidth, and business outcomes should all be considered when thinking about what a co-founder could mean for your business’s success (or failure). So how do you know when you need a co-founder and how do you find the right one for your business? The Visible team has outlined 4 ways to find the perfect startup co-founder. How Do You Know if You Need a Co-Founder for Your Startup? There are no one-size-fits-all perfect way to run a startup. Some founders are successful on their own, hiring a great leadership team around them. Others make the choice to bring on a co-founder or group of co-founders early in the business. So how do you know if you need a co-founder for your startup? Consider two main categories, what stage your business is at and what your competencies are as a founder. Not every founder (or every business leader) is perfect at every task that a founder needs to learn. Some founders come to the table with a product and technical strength – the how and the possibility of what’s feasible with your new idea is clear in your mind. Other founders come to the table with business acumen – maybe they’ve founded a company before or lead a company in the c-suite through major milestones like fundraises, acquisitions, or even IPOs. Still, other founders excel in an area of expertise that their new tech startup fits into. For example, maybe a 20-year restaurant management vet wants to start a startup focused on restaurant tech. They bring industry knowledge and even some business acumen to the table, but are missing the technical and the startup funding knowledge that may be needed. Some founders choose to stay the course and work through the areas they aren’t experts in alone or with the guidance of trusted advisors. It is critical to go into your startup as a founder to understand your strengths and where you might be missing skills. Taking an assessment of personal strengths and areas of competency is a great way to decide if you need a co-founder. A co-founder with another set of skills or expertise can help round out your startup and increase your odds for succeeding right out of the gate. This can also be done with early hires, but there are some unique benefits that come with purposefully choosing someone to co-found a startup with you instead of just joining as an early team member. Check out why Yaw Aning, Founder of Malomo, believes it is important to find a co-founder below: Why You Should Consider a Co-Founder After you’ve identified that there are some core pieces of knowledge missing from your team as you move to found a startup, there are some key reasons why you should consider a co-founder to join the team instead of just making specifically skilled early hires. Commitment to the Vision With the ups and downs a startup can bring, commitment is critical for early team members. A co-founder is more bought into the vision of your startup than an early hire. They are tasked with helping to shape the vision, typically have the opportunity to grab major equity options, and have the responsibility of shouldering the success or failure. An early hire may be committed and you may even give them great stock options, but their ideas and direction aren’t shaping the business in the same foundational way. When things get tough, they can jump ship with a lot less hesitation. Understanding how startups go about splitting founder equity is important in understanding how committed a co-founder will be to your business. Move Fast Sharing the responsibility of the quick, high-stakes decisions that must be made while launching and growing a startup can help your team scale faster, saving time and money. Knowing you have a trusted partner to take ownership of parts of the business will allow more to get done simultaneously. For example, a technical founder can help lead the engineering and product decisions while a business-minded or CEO partner can focus on fundraising and scaling a GTM plan. It becomes much easier to move fast with multiple folks leading in lock-step. Get Unstuck As you move fast and scale your vision, roadblocks will pop up. A co-founder or multiple co-founders ensure that there are multiple folks with the same stake and commitment to the business ready to solve these challenges. Board members and investors (as you develop and bring on those partners) will have perspectives, advice, and even an ideal vision but a co-founder can help keep you focused and is a built-in, strong sounding board to move through the inevitable challenges that founders face. What to Look for In a Co-Founder Maybe you’ve thought about it and you do want to seek out a co-founder for your startup. But what exactly makes a good co-founder? Strong co-founders should have indispensable skills and experience, a complementary and collaborative mindset, and a clear vision and commitment to the company you’re planning to build. Skills and experience Reflecting back on identifying your own core competencies as a founder, whether you’re seeking out a co-founder with a very specific skill set or a complimentary one, looking for a co-founder with a background of skills and experience is key. In some cases, friends from college or young entrepreneurs are able to scale a successful business. But that is the exception, not the rule. In most cases, choosing a co-founder with skills and expertise in the competency area you are looking for, as a successful previous founder or business leader, or an impressive resume of wins and experience in the space your startup will play are good guidelines to follow in your search. Complementary and Collaborative Mindset Co-founders spend an unimaginable amount of time working together. Understand your working style and strengths and make sure you partner with a co-founder that you can work well with and who brings ideas and a drive to work together to the table. You might have the most skilled and experienced candidate on the table but if the energy between co-founders is off, the collaboration and execution just won’t get done or will be a very painful process to go through day after day. Commitment Is the person you’re considering bringing on as a co-founder a startup hopper? Are there weird gaps on their resume or unexplained reasons for exciting startups (outside of the reasons that startups fail 90% of the time)? Every founder is looking to be that 1 in 9. Best case, you take your startup all the way to a successful conclusion of acquisition or IPO. Looking for a co-founder with a track record and personality that can remain committed to the vision of your startup through all ups and downs is critical. Additionally, it’s important that any co-founder you take on has a passion and excitement for the problem you’re solving. The nitty-gritty will get stressful and even boring at times, but the commitment to growth and vision, what COULD be, will help any co-founder team preserve. 4 Ways to Find the Right Startup Co-Founder Take Advantage of Your Network Think about all the great networks and experiences you’ve been a part of in your career. From alumni networks at undergrad or business school to your LinkedIn connections, chances are someone in your circle knows someone looking to join the startup founder game too. Folks are always open to connecting with others so starting within the circles you feel comfortable with is a great place to start searching for a co-founder. Nobody knows you better than folks you’ve worked with or had personal experiences with. The perfect person may only be a degree or two connection away so put those feelers out in your network first. Network in Your Startups Industry Starting a company focused on the hospitality industry? Maybe the finance space? There are plenty of online groups on LinkedIn or on Slack as well as in-person associations and meetup groups that are industry-focused. Joining a few industry associations or networking calls can help you find a co-founder with the expertise and passion in your new industry space. Look for Advisors While it may not make sense to bring on a co-founder at the very beginning of your startup, start by bringing on a few trusted advisors and confidants to provide guidance and collaboration that a founder would. As you refine your work style and vision for the company, one of these advisors or collaborators could turn into a co-founder or after working with you, feel comfortable and excited referring to someone in their network to be considered for the partnership. Find Founder-Focused Communities In addition to networking in your personal circles and engaging with industry-focused events, there are many events specifically for founders. Some VCs and even top tech cities will host “founder speed dating” or “founder networking” events for current founders or past founders seeking to meet and build a network of collaborators and advisors or even as a place to meet others interested in founding a startup together. Conclusion All in all, outside of maybe how you choose to fund your startup, the decision to bring on a co-founder (or not!) is one of the most important decisions you will make in the early stage of a startup. It’s a decision that if executed correctly, can result in a great long-term partnership, allow for faster growth, and provide long-term success for your business. Start with our 4 ways to find the perfect startup founder and let us know how your startup journey goes. Happy founding!  Interested in learning more about the foundations of a startup and how to measure success from the very beginning? Chat with the Visible team here.

Developing and learning new skills can benefit individuals at all stages of their careers. Taking the time and initiative to focus on new skills can be pivotal when looking for a new role, a promotion, or taking on new responsibility within an existing role. For leaders, developing specific leadership skills is critical to succeeding in a leadership role. While some people are born with more natural leadership skills than others, dubbed “natural leaders”, many qualities of highly effective leaders can be learned and practiced. Leadership skills, unlike the hard skills that are needed within most job skills, extend beyond that. Leadership skills are soft skills that aren’t as easy to quantify and develop in a measurable way. Most career paths see folks that develop and consistently practice and refine their soft skills rise the ranks and jump into leadership roles. If leadership is something you aspire to or is something you’re stepping into now, focusing on developing leadership skills should become a part of your weekly routine and habits. At Visible, we work with a fair number of leaders in the startup and venture capital space. Based on our insights, we’ve compiled an overview of top resources to develop your leadership skills, and what those specific skills are as well as some key methods for developing them. Key Skills for Startup Leaders There is no shortage of ideas on what skills are critical for leaders to develop. Thinking about the specific leadership skills that are critical for startup leaders, a few come to mind. While many skills are important for startup leaders to develop, for this specific guide we’re going to focus on 5 specific skills that are key. The five areas of skills that are crucial for startup leaders to master include communication, open-mindedness, critical thinking, trust, and conflict resolution. Communication Skills Leadership communication spans both internal communications as well as external. Additionally, leadership communication is way beyond the verbal. The non-verbal signals from a leader can be almost more impactful than the verbal. At the core, leadership communication is a philosophy, a vision that leaders should use as a compass that guides their entire leadership style. Strong communication skills allow a leader to articulate new ideas, inspire their teams, share positive and negative information with broader teams, investors, and customers in a way that keeps things moving forward. Strong communication skills can make or break whether a leader inspires folks to action. A leader with bad communication skills can struggle to get anyone to actually follow. Master communication is a key leadership skill for startup founders to master early so they can continuously articulate their vision, inspire their teams, and share ideas in a way that grows the business up and to the right. Open-Mindedness As a leader, it’s almost natural to adopt the mindset that your decisions are the ones to be followed and guide the way. While you were put into a leadership position possibly to lead the way, the best leaders demonstrate the leadership skill of open-mindedness. Smart leaders hire even smarter people to join their teams. Developing a mindset to accept new ideas, create an open environment where ideas can be shared, and showcasing a desire to learn and change towards what’s best even if it means it wasn’t your idea are critical leadership skills. Open-mindedness in startups is especially critical because testing, ideation, and sprinting to new outcomes and test new ideas can make or break a business. YOu only have as much time as capital in the bank so a willingness to be open and pivot quickly, and foster an open-minded culture, is crucial. Critical Thinking In a startup, especially one where you are a founder along with holding an executive leadership role, emotions are running high. The funding time clock is ticking and you have a very limited runway to produce major results and keep the business alive. Due to these high-pressure circumstances, it is extremely important for startup leaders to develop the leadership skill of critical thinking. By informing your thinking with facts first, stepping back to analyze, and making a judgment and decisions from there, you will avoid making emotional decisions that may feel right in the short term, but in the long term aren’t smart business decisions. Thinking critically about your business and leadership decisions as they come allows you to base decisions in reality and in a way that makes sense to all involved instead of taking the emotional, passionate, and probably biased view you might have as a leader with a heavy stake in the success of the business. Trust All around, trust can build up or totally destroy a business, especially a startup. As a leadership skill, trust needs to be developed in a number of ways. Trust needs to be developed in a way so that your employees trust you as a leader. It also needs to be established in the way the organization runs, so peers and teams have trust in each other. That type of organizational development and trust starts with the leadership. As a leader, developing a leadership style that embodies trust and sets the standard of trust in your team to get things done will affect overall organizational success and functionality. Conflict Resolution In any organization, conflict arises. In startups, that conflict can sometimes feel magnified, especially when teams are small and there is pressure to move fast. As a leader, developing strong conflict resolution tactics and skills is absolutely essential. Learning to resolve conflicts in a way that embodies critical thinking and trust as well as understanding and empathy will push the outcomes of conflict in a positive direction and allow your team to build on and grow from conflicts together, rather than conflicts tearing the team apart. 10 Resources to Develop Your Leadership Skills Now that we’ve outlined the key leadership skills we believe are most imperative for startup leaders to focus on right now, we wanted to pull together a few resources to get you started. You’ll notice there is a book recommendation in almost every category. Reading continues to be one of the most powerful ways leaders can sharpen their skills and develop their minds. Outside of our recommendations below, check out our post on The 23 Best Books for Founders. Communication Skills Visible’s 7 Leadership Communication Principles of Successful Startups Based on our observations working with VCs and startup founders, we put together a straightforward guide on leadership communication. These 7 principles are actionable and a good starting point for developing this specific soft skill. Radical Candor by Kim Scott This book outlines a possible leadership philosophy around communication, focused on caring personally while challenging directly. This approach is a good one to learn and adapt in your organization, playing into the authenticity of good communication while still learning to deliver the information, feedback, and decisions in a way that is clear and to the point as a leader should. Practicing Radical Candor at your startup from the beginning is a great way to develop strong communications skills. Open-Mindedness Sigma Assessment Systems Guide to Open-Mindedness in Leaders SIGMA is a consulting, leadership development, and talent assessment group. Their guide to open-mindedness for leaders provides a number of practical articles, techniques, and tangible steps that one can take to move towards developing a more open mind as a leader. Specific plays such as learning to practice gratitude and ask for feedback are explored. Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just 5 Days Developing an open-minded approach to new ideas is critical in a startup. However, time is money, so testing new ideas is important to do before executing and this testing should be done quickly. Sprint provides an easy framework to solve problems and run new ideas through a testing structure to determine if they are worth spending more time on. Implementing Sprint methodology into your organization can help build a culture of open-mindedness and testing and show that you as a leader are open to new ideas and visions. Critical Thinking Entrepreneur’s 16 Characteristics of Critical Thinkers Critical Thinking has its own soft and hard skills that need work to build up the ultimate skill of critical thinking. In this list, explore some of the characteristics that serve as building blocks to developing a critical thinking muscle. Think Big, Act Small by Jason Jennings A great read for general best-practices when building a business, this book dives into the type of soft-skills that go into big thinking but the fact-based, analytical mind needed to process that big thinking and make small, sustainable changes for the business. Trust The Predictive Index Assessment Building trust in an organization and developing a muscle for trust as a leader starts with understanding what makes a good team and who you are hiring to do great work. Taking the PI assessment or even working it into your interview process is a great way to build trust in the hires your making early, take a step back to understand your own strengths and others strengths, and pair folks to roles and tasks that best suit them, knowing the best people are in place to get the job done. It can also be a way to understand the why behind your own decisions as well as your teams, breaking down misconceptions and building up trust too. Visible’s Guide to Building Organizational Alignment Plain and simple, trust affects alignment in an organization. A lack of trust can completely change the alignment and cohesiveness across an organization. We put together our own guide to help with building organizational alignment, critical for building trust. Conflict Resolution The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle Diving into some of the largest, most well-known organizations like Pixar and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six, Coyle breaks down what makes these organizations tick and how leaders pushed through to resolve these issues. Learning from success stories is a great way to develop conflict resolution skills in your own organization. Cornell Online’s Conflict Resolution Certificate To really master something as crucial as conflict resolution, investing in a more formal educational approach could be a route to take. Cornell offers a certificate in the art and science of conflict resolution that can be done entirely online. Visible for Leadership Interested in learning more about how Visible can improve your team’s communication around updates and tracking, foster trust in your organization, and help you capture data to make critical decisions? Learn more here. Related Resource: Startup Mentoring: The Benefits of a Mentor and How to Find One

What does Leadership Communication really mean? Communication is critical for success in any organization. More important than just blanket, inter-organizational, and peer-to-peer communication is leadership communication. Top-down communication from the executives within a company can make or break an organization. One of the most defining characteristics of a great leader is their communication. In today’s digital-heavy world, strong leadership communication must span multiple channels that are rapidly changing and expanding. Mastering leadership communication, across all viable channels, is critical for the success of your team and your business, especially as a new startup. At the core, leadership communication is a philosophy, a vision that leaders should use as a compass that guides their entire leadership style. But what does that really mean? Leadership communication is really any verbal or non-verbal message that a person in authority at your company shares with the team or representing the organization. Leadership communication spans both internal communications as well as external. Additionally, leadership communication is way beyond the verbal. The non-verbal signals from a leader can be almost more impactful than the verbal. In a breakdown from Psychology Today, non-verbal body language contributed to 55% of the total interpretation of interpersonal communication. Additionally, 38% was attributed to voice and tone leaving only 7% to the words actually spoken – meaning for leaders especially, it’s less about what you say but rather how you deliver that message. Another element of the non-verbal part of communication that can make or break a leader’s communication is listening. How a leader reacts to and adapts their communication after listening to feedback or ideas from their team plays into how their communication messages are delivered. An active listener, meaning someone who is genuinely engaged while hearing what another has to say, and someone who adjusts their message based on listening to feedback or shares their openness to new ideas with their tone and body language is going to exude stronger leadership skills than someone who is closed off and doesn’t’ truly listen to their team. Leadership communication is truly a philosophy that each leader develops because it guides the way that they are viewed by those in their organization and the way that their companies’ messaging and growth evolves. For startups, understanding what good leadership communication can look like and do from your business from the very beginning is crucial. Why Leadership Communication is so important in 2021 There are a lot of indicators that 2021 will be a much better year collectively than 2020, but many of the changes to work-life and organizational operation and communication that occurred in 2020 are still very much prevalent in 2021 and here to stay. Many organizations and leaders have completely reorganized the way they do work and the way they communicate all across their organization. The Remote Work Shift While remote work has been fairly common in the software industry, for many organizations remote work was unheard of prior to the pandemic. However, more organizations than ever are embracing it. First out of necessity, but now many organizations are offering at least some option of work from home or remote-first work options to employers indefinitely. It is now more common to hear of employees starting new jobs totally remote, working 9+ months in a new role without ever meeting any co-workers or managers in person. This shift to remote-first work is not going away. While offices will reopen and some companies will op to go back into their spaces in-person at least part of the time, large tech leaders like Slack building a virtual office or Twitter allowing employees to work from home forever are paving the way for a continued digital-first future of work. For startups founded in 2020 and 2021 so far, more than likely you have been completely remote from inception to launch. There are benefits of the shift to remote work, especially for startups. Big savings on rental costs for office space are a big plus. Additionally, startups’ access to top talent isn’t geographically limited with a remote-first approach. However, with everything being remote-first in a startup environment where everything is so new and evolving so fast, effective leadership communication is harder than ever yet more important for startups to make it into the 5% success rate. Communication Channels and Asynchronous Work In 2021, many companies have been founded completely remote or now possess a large portion of their workforce only familiar with a digital experience of their company values, culture, peers, and leaders. That being said, leadership communication channels are more important than ever. With a spread-out, sometimes global workforce. Most work in startups is happening asynchronously now. That means that your important leadership message may not reach everyone at the same time. Choosing to utilize different communication channels for different types of communication is key for leaders to successfully execute positive leadership communication. Three common communication channels: Zoom, Slack, and email. Knowing how to best leverage these primary channels to reach out to your employees across multiple time zones or working different schedules is critical. Reserving company-wide announcements for Zoom all-hands calls or company-wide emails can get specific messages across clearer than quick notes in Slack. Knowing when and where to say what is key. Without the ability to turn to the person next to you, raise hands and ask a question real-time, or schedule a meeting in-person with management after big news is shared – leaders need to take into account the why behind the messages they are delivering and think through all the outcomes of their delivery. Focusing on clear messaging and leveraging the right channels to make it most effective is crucial. Setting up the right channels for feedback and response is also important so that as leadership communications go out, every employee has an easy and equitable way to respond and react. How to Improve Leadership Communication in 2021 Knowing leadership communication is more important than ever in 2021. It’s critical for overall organizational alignment. There are a few quick ways you can improve your startup’s leadership communication right away. Channel Selection Standardize the way your entire organization is communicating. It may seem like overkill, but starting with clear guidelines and purpose for each communication channel in your org is critical to keep good leadership communication (and general communication) going as you scale. Do an internal audit of your current communication tools. If there are duplicates in your stack, work with managers to figure out what the critical channels are. From there, identify and document the purpose of each channel. For example, slack for quick questions and timely updates or real-time conversations, email for big announcements or questions that take more than 5 minutes to formulate a response, and zoom for company-wide news, team brainstorming, and feedback on new ideas. A Additionally, it can be helpful to document best practices for each channel such as threads in slack or the use of team-wide email aliases, and share this documentation as part of your onboarding process, standardizing communication expectations at all levels from day-1. Team-Wide Learning While standardizing the communication channels and best practices are critical boundaries to set, your team members will still all fundamentally have different communication styles and practices. Investing in a self-assessment like the Predictive Index test can be helpful in understanding how each team member prefers to give and receive feedback, their ideal work style, and more. Vowing to invest in this type of learning as a leader and then encouraging managers to adjust their leadership communication style to what best fits their team members’ strengths can be a great way to improve not only leadership communication but general company communication as well. Ask for Feedback As simple as this sounds, it’s rare that organizations are asking for feedback as often as they could. Depending on the size and culture of your company, hosting a forum on the company and specifically leadership communication either within a team meeting or through anonymous surveys can be a great first step in improving leadership communication. Knowing what specifically your employees like and dislike about the way they are currently being communicated to is a great first step to point the needle in the right direction. 7 Principles for Effective Leadership Communication While there is a lot that can be done tactically for leaders to improve their leadership communication, at the end of the day effective leadership communication is a constant, ever-evolving idea. Focusing on a few guiding principles to use as the process and idea of leadership communication evolves for you and your organization is a great way to ground your leadership communication in a fundamental philosophy and vision. We’ve put together 10 principles we believe can help guide effective leadership communication. Be Authentic Fakeness is easy to spot. Being your true, authentic self as a leader will make your communication better overall. Sharing moments that are tough for you or moments of pure joy for the company with the entire company are easy ways to showcase your authentic self, building more trust in you across your team. Knowing that your investment in the startup is human and has variety will allow your team to fully buy into the vision and bring their full selves to work every day, improving culture, communication, and teamwork. Get Out of Your Silo It’s easy to stay heads-down in your own company and executive team. Get out of the silo of your own org and learn from others. Spending time with fellow startup founders or reading about various leadership and communication styles are easy ways to continuously assess and evolve your own leadership communication based on industry best practices or other successful organizations and leaders. Consider the Timing Timing is everything. Considering the timing of each and every message or communication you share with your team (or externally representing your company) is critical. A poorly timed announcement or press release can make or break the success of a big announcement or confuse the team internally. Taking timing into consideration even for the seeming simplest messages is a big game-changer for leadership communication. Think about Equality and Equity Along with timing, understanding if your leadership communication is both equal and equitable is important. If the timing or format of your communication is more accessible for certain groups of your company, rethink how you can change your channel or delivery to better reach all folks equally and when all have a fair opportunity to digest and respond. Beyond timing, equality and equity can come in with communication channel and what’s most accessible to different roles in your company, as well as expectations for response as some folks may have outside priorities like parenting that keep them to strict workloads and deadlines. Stop and Listen Even if you feel as though you’ve mastered the art of leadership communication, always take time to stop and listen. Ask for feedback, get a pulse on what your company is feeling about your leadership communication style. Pause and give yourself time to digest feedback or company talk and learn from there. Take Communication Seriously If your company is doing well, it can be easy to get rather lax in your communication style or forget why good leadership communication is so important. However, it’s critical to always take communication seriously as a leader. When a crisis or big change does arise, you’ll be ready to communicate about it effectively if you consistently take your leadership communication seriously. Invest in Yourself Don’t forget that as a leader, you cannot effectively communicate and make positive decisions for your team if you aren’t investing in and taking care of yourself outside of the 9-5. Sleep is a simple, yet critical part of self-care that is often the first to be neglected by leaders, even though it’s proven to make you a better one. Setting boundaries for yourself and taking breaks will allow you to come back into your work with a clearer head and guide you to make the best possible decisions and communication possible. Poor Leadership Communication Can Hurt It’s absolutely crucial to master strong, positive leadership communication because poor leadership communication can be detrimental to your organization. According to Forbes, poor communication can affect businesses by derailing focus, misaligning the team on the true purpose of the org, prompt a lack of motivation and inspiration, and dropping overall company morale. For leaders specifically, poor leadership communication can diminish credibility. Implementing our practical actions, as well as the 7 guiding principles for leadership communication, are great steps to implementing excellent leadership communication at your startup from day 1. Visible for Leadership Communication Interested in learning more about how Visible can improve your team’s communication around updates and tracking? Check out how we can support your startup as your investor relationship hub.

Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform. Try Visible free for 14 days. Team-building is a common activity in elementary school, college orientation, and summer camps…and oh yeah, startups! Not just for kids or young adults, startups greatly benefit and thrive when their teams participate in team-building activities. At its core, team building seems easy enough – an activity aimed at bringing a group of co-workers together to align around a common goal, strength, or activity resulting in a closer bond. However, in practice, it can be a lot harder to achieve this desired outcome well. Startup team-building activities, whether more team bonding focused or more team learning focused, are critical for team members to build camaraderie and company culture as well as inspire more creative thinking and long-term business success. Beyond building company culture and inspiring long-term positive business effects like more creative thinking, team building is a great reason to bring the entire team to get together. According to Forbes, team building is often the most important investment successful companies make for their business. It builds trust, alleviates conflict, encourages communication, and increases collaboration. Finding opportunities to consistently bake team building into your startup’s culture is critical for building a positive, happy work environment. Providing team building too infrequently or one-off, and without leadership buy-in, can come off corny or fake and the impact won’t occur. Ultimately, team building at a growing startup is an investment. It takes time, which often can be seen as the most precious commodity when hitting increasingly large and daunting revenue goals and product launches. It also might take financial resources. However, when done correctly and consistently, the price of onboarding is much less than the price of poor company culture, uninspired team, and turnover. Happiness and Learning are extremely connected. Trying new things with your co-workers (via team building) is a great way to promote positive energy among employees. Pushing your team outside of their comfort zones in a fun way is a great way to get your team connected. The team at Visible has been 100% remote since day one, however, we’ve always found time for team building. Now that the majority of startups are experiencing remote-work life or even founding from the ground up in this totally remote world, we’ve curated a list of startup team building activities for teams to leverage the benefits of team building remote or in-person. Why remote team building is important The most successful and impactful team-building events are those that don’t feel “corporate” or like a workday in the office at all. Activities that focus on incorporating leadership lessons or practical takeaways are less powerful. Spending time together, sharing an experience or working towards a common goal allows bonding to happen more organically and far more effectively. Team building can come in many shapes and forms. Building camaraderie is beyond icebreakers and scavenger hunts. Team building, especially for remote teams, can come in many different forms and categories. Team building exercises are important to incorporate for employee engagement, onboarding, company strategic growth, and company culture. Related Reading: How To Manage Remote Teams: 16 Tips From a Remote Startup Employee Engagement The key to ensuring strong retention and a lasting positive environment for teams is investing in strong employee engagement team building. Having engaged, sharing, involved employees is critical for retention. Every company wants to attract and keep the top talent, but in today’s working world, especially in the fast-paced startup landscape, most employees quickly get bored or stagnant with their work, lose inspiration and start hunting for something new right around the 2-year mark. Quick turnover like this, especially when it’s wide-spread and commonplace at your startup, drains companies financially and creatively, and culturally. On average, employee turnover can cost a company 6-9 months of that role’s salary, all the way up to 200%+ salary for top executives in the c-suite. Because of the literal cost of bad retention, employee engagement is critical for a number of reasons. HR professionals believe team building can be incorporated into a company’s culture for employee engagement in a variety of ways to make it easy for employees to love coming to work and continuously focus on enjoyable work. Employee engagement can be inspired by providing more ways for your team to have fun. Outside of team-building activities, investing in an employee experience platform to track the metrics behind employee engagement. Setting up tools for easy peer-to-peer praise is also a great way for teams to build each other up internally (and even remotely). Finally, another good way to make sure employees are engaged and don’t get bored in their roles is to make promotion paths for growth extremely clear and publicly available. Employee Onboarding Team-building can be incorporated starting on day one. Team building to promote employee engagement and company culture starts during the recruitment and interview process but employee onboarding can make or break a candidate’s experience of the company culture because it sets the bar and expectation. Onboarding can sometimes feel overwhelming and dry for employees. There is a very school-like feel with all the information that must be presented to employees as part of the onboarding process. It’s important to balance the necessary information that needs to be shared at onboarding with a fun, relaxed, and inclusive onboarding environment. Providing new employees with an immersive onboarding experience not only gives them the critical knowledge they need in a short period of time, but also creates a bonding experience with other new hires. An onboarding experience focused on team bonding can also help ease and speed up the transition from candidates to colleagues, and provide new team members with a head start as they begin to work alongside existing employees. Ultimately, team-building-centric employee onboarding can build camaraderie and company culture. Company Strategic Growth As mentioned before, team bonding comes at a cost to the company. A cost of time and money for employees. But, as stated, the cost of poor company culture and employee turnover, can be financially damaging to a company and worse-so, culturally damning for a company as well. Team building is critical for unlocking the characteristics needed to successfully scale a fast-growing startup. When team members are bonded, they have a higher level of trust. Trust is key to a space of sharing and honesty for new ideas and constructive feedback for growth. Some other benefits of team building for startups’ strategic growth include inspiring more creativity, creating an environment of approachability, identifying new and upcoming leaders, and uncovering new strengths across the team. Team building can break the monotony of the typical grind and day-to-day for startup teams. A break in routine and pushing employees to use their brains in a different way with their teammates can leave them feeling refreshed and ready to bring new ideas to the table and be more creative in their day-to-day. Along with the trust foraged by team building, somewhat goofy or non-typical team building activities where leaders and management show vulnerability and participation can make the entire team dynamic and leadership more approachable, a positive aspect of strong startup culture. Many team-building activities require one or more participants to take the lead or volunteer to try something new first. Team building is a fresh way to identify future leadership potential across the company by providing new outlets for folks at all levels to shine and share their strengths. By pushing everyone outside of their comfort zone in more fun, creative team-building environment, you may unlock new strengths that will ultimately help the team in future work-centric projects and decisions. By allowing folks to showcase their strengths outside of their typical 9-5 tasks, you may inspire managers to re-delegate work or reconsider how they manage certain folks on the team, ultimately leading to more inclusive and positive company culture. Startup Company Culture Active and consistent employee engagement, a positive and interactive employee onboarding experience, and positive strategic company growth are all components that makeup company culture. Ultimately, company culture comes down to how enjoyable, safe, and inclusive a company environment is for all employees. A hostile, back-stabbing, gossipy, or over-worked culture is going to negatively impact the other three categories listed above – and will result in a less successful company than what could be by focusing on building positive company culture through investment in team building. As more and more companies make the decision to stay remote-first or continue allowing a large portion of their workforce to stay remote-first in the future, company culture is more important than ever. A major aspect of company-culture that can be lost while folks are remote-first and primarily working over tools like Slack and Zoom is the chance to mix and mingle with other departments and teams. According to a study shared by the people-management software company Lattice, a 2017 Harvard Business Review study revealed that remote workers often left out, and the study’s authors stressed the importance of taking “extra measures to build trust and connection with colleagues” in a remote work environment. Team building is a great way to solve this problem by providing fun, low-stress options for teams to collaborate and get to know folks virtually that they would normally meet in the kitchen or at happy hour. So what’s next? As a company that has always existed remote-first, we want to provide you with a comprehensive list of team-building ideas that fall into these 4 buckets. We present to you: 34 Remote Teambuilding Activities Icebreakers Scavenger Hunt A scavenger hunt around your office or a local area. When doing this remote you can also make it for individuals to find things in their own home or office. Company Cribs Host a happy hour where folks can optionally show off their homes to the team and answer questions about hobbies or cool art on display. Pet Party Invite dogs to the office one day a month or to a zoom happy hour – nothing breaks the ice like a cute puppy! Custom Emojis Encourage employees to create custom emojis in Slack and fill out their profiles with fun information and stories. The Donut App Donut is a Slack App this randomly pairs folks across teams for coffee chats every week. Employee Engagement Activities #Praise Channel Create a #Praise channel in Slack to encourage folks to shoutout their teammates. Swag Rewards Provide company-wide swag rewards for hitting OKRs. Rituals Create rituals for activities such as closed deals (a bell ring) or new product launches. (champagne anyone?) Interest Slack Channels Slack channels for everything – interest groups, gratitude and positive vibes, even music or funny videos. ERGs Establish employee interest groups so all employees have a safe space at work. This might include a women’s ERG, an LGBTQ+ ERG, or a black employee’s ERG. Weekly Thanks Similar to the #Praise channel, use “Weekly Thanks” on a team call to allow employees to shout out a fellow team member that went above and beyond the previous week. Employee Onboarding Activities LinkedIn Scavenger Hunt Have new hires find the employee that matches with a list of fun facts or past experiences as a way to get to know folks across the company. #Welcome Channel Slack Introductions in a #Welcome Channel that includes a unique fun fact! Lunch with the Founders This is a great way for new higher classes to understand and feel passionate about the mission of your startup from the get-go. Onboarding Trivia Make those boring security and employee handbook meetings more interesting and interactive! New Hire Buddy’s Pair a veteran on a team with a new hire for the first 2 weeks and give the veteran employee specific questions and prompts to check-in and provide advice and help as the new employee ramps. Leadership and Strategic Growth Activities Personality Test Have teams take a personality test such as Insights, Predictive Index, or Meyers Briggs and bring in a facilitator to discuss the results and showcase how everyone’s personalities align on the team. Diversity and Inclusion Presentations Bring in relevant speakers for monthly deep-dives or encourage internal leadership to present on important cultural topics for the team. Ask Me Anything Allow employees and teams to have time with executives and leaders to ask them anything. This can cover things outside of work too! MasterClass Sessions Allow teammembers to present master classes to their peers. These can be things they learned at work or a hobby outside of work. At Visible, we use “Show and Tells” every Thursday to let a teammember share something they’ve recently learned. Lego “Team Building” Send everyone a custom lego kit and let folks tinker with it while listening to an all-hands or long company call, allows them to do something with their hands and still stay engaged with the content. Sales Team Building Pitch Competition Newbies and veterans get the opportunity to practice new pitches for fun prizes. Pitch your own product or have them come up with something entirely new! “BDR for a Day” An opportunity for Sr. sales leaders and AEs to come together and work with the BDRs to book outbound meetings for an afternoon. Meme Competition Everyone presents a meme that describes something relatable to sellers, everyone votes on the best. Marketing Team Building Customer Q&A Bring a top customer on for a panel with your team to better understand your customers and tailor your message. Team Hack Encourage each team member to bring 4 problems they are working through to the table and collaborate together with breakout discussions. Events Send a team to a virtual or IRL conference and have them present to the company a quick overview of what they learned. Tweet Writing Competition Challenge marketers to creatively pitch a new product, campaign or initiative in *280 characters or less. Emojis encouraged. Company Culture Activities Zoom Games There are countless games that can be played over Zoom. A few of our favorites at Visible are JackboxTV, Draw Battle, and Codenames. “Chopped” Competition Pick 3 office snacks and have teams compete with the best recipes. Tik Tok Competition Pick a famous Tik Tok and see what team members can do it best. Let the entry-level Gen Z kids show everyone how it’s done. Virtual Cocktail Class Many local distilleries and brands have started offering virtual cocktail classes. Can also be done as a mocktail class. Cooking class Same as the cocktail class, just as delicious. Virtual Magic Show So bad it’s good! Zoom Concerts Live-stream a band or singer and have them take requests via the chat. Or step it up and have a band live stream a concert using Mandolin. Themed Team Meetings Quick ideas include beach, safari, sports, and throwback Thursday! Movie Night Utilize an app like Netflix party to stream and chat about a new documentary and host a “book club” style discussion about the film the next day. Company Activity Challenge Encourage folks to download an app like MoveSpring and set up a team step challenge, leaders across the company or different offices win prizes! The best part about this list? It’s growing every day. Have a great team-building idea that worked for your growing startup? Share it here: matt@visible.vc or @VisibleVC on Twitter. Team Building Resources We tapped into these awesome resources to build out this list. Along with ideas, feel free to reach out with helpful resources or research that backs up the benefits of team building for growing startup teams. Team Building Research Forbes: Why Team Building is the Most Important Investment You Will Make SHRM: Understanding and Developing Organizational Culture Harvard Business Review: A Study of 1100 Employees Found Remote Workers Feel Shunned and Left Out Small Business Chronicle: Benefits of Team Building in a Corporate Setting Job Monkey: 19 Important Benefits of Team Building at Work Company Culture Forbes: Why Corporate Culture is Becoming Even More Important Indeed: 8 Reasons Why Organizational Culture is Important LinkedIn: Why Company Culture is So Important to Business Success Team Building Ideas Snack Nation: Employee Engagement Ideas Lever: 7 Essentials of Successful Onboarding Team Activities HR Morning: Team Building Activities Lattice: 5 Creative Ways to Appreciate Employees Using Technology Lattice: 10 Creative Team Building Activities for Remote Teams Airbnb Experiences – Hub of virtual classes and experiences from around the world! To learn more about scaling and hiring top talent at your startup, check out our ultimate guide to startup culture here.

Being a startup founder and CEO is difficult. CEOs of large corporations are oftentimes groomed over the course of years for the position. There is no playbook for startup founders. Most first-time founders are learning on the fly and are responsible for making just about every decision for their company. As a startup founder, there is no one better to learn from than the person who has been there before. Luckily, there are thousands of founders, investors, and operators who have been there before to share their learnings. Related Reading: Business Startup Advice: 15 Helpful Tips for Startup Growth 23 Books For Startup Founders Check out our favorite books for startup founders below (broken down by subject). Operations When it comes to operating a startup, there is no better person to learn from than a founder or operator who has been there before. Check out our favorite books for operating and scaling a startup below: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Before writing The Lean Startup, Eric co-founder IMVU where they efficiently built a minimum viable product in 6 months. “The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.” The Startup Playbook by Rajat Bhargava & Will Herman Rajat Bhargave and Will Herman both have careers founding and leading startups. As the authors put it, “The Startup Playbook is full of our advice, guidance, do’s, and don’ts from our years of experience as founders many times. We want to share our hard-earned knowledge with you to make success easier for you to achieve.” Zero to One by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal, Palantir, and Founders Fund. It is safe to say that he knows what it takes to innovate and invent. “Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.” Check out why Su Sanni, Founder of Dollaride, has found Zero to One to be the book that has helped him most during his time as a founder below: Measure What Matters by John Doerr John Doerr has been a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins since the 1980s. He has invested in companies like Compaq, Amazon, and Google. “In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations.” Leadership & Management Startups are in constant competition for 2 resources: capital and talent. A founder or CEOs ability to lead and manage their team is vital to a startup’s ability to attract and retain top talent. Check out our favorite books to help founders improve their leadership skills below: Startup CEO by Matt Blumberg Matt Blumberg is the CEO of Bolster (and former CEO of ReturnPath). Being a startup CEO, especially for the first time, is difficult. There is no playbook or training to become a startup CEO like there is for large corporations. In Startup CEO, Matt draws on his own experience to cover what he has learned in everything from hiring to company strategy. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Ben Horowitz started his career as a founder but is most famous for his role at Andreessen Horowitz. In The Hard Things About Hard Things, Ben is honest about the difficulties that come with founding and running a successful company. He shares “the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies.” The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Stephen Covey has a successful career as a business and self-help author. Stephen studies highly successful people and lays out the 7 habits that help individuals move from dependence to independence. The 7 habits are: Be proactive Begin with the end in mind First things first Think win-win Seek first to understand, then to be understood Synergize Sharpen the Saw; Growth The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho As put by in the infamous book’s reviews, “Paulo Coelho’s masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.” Check out why Aishetu Dozie, Founder of Bossy Beauty, has leaned on The Alchemist for both business and life below: Company Culture Building a strong culture oftentimes starts with the founders and leaders. The books below offer advice to founders looking to create and maintain a culture that will attract top talent. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle Daniel Coyle is a NY Times Bestselling author. “In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world’s most successful organizations—including Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six—and reveals what makes them tick.” Radical Candor by Kim Scott Kim Scott has spent her career as a CEO coach at some of the most storied startups of today (before that she spent time at Apple, YouTube, and Google). Kim shares her three principles that she believes make up a great boss. “Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author’s experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.” Do Better Work by Max Yoder Max Yoder is the CEO and Founder of Lessonly. As we wrote in a separate blog post, “Do Better Work is a rare book that falls in both categories. In it, author Max Yoder weaves the philosophical and the practical together, seamlessly and to great effect. The result is a leadership book that is not only helpful, but delightful and surprising to read—one where step-by-step instructions for, say, sharing work before you’re ready or achieving clarity, fit neatly alongside the lessons we can learn from philosopher J. Krishnamurti or the vulnerability of superheroes.” Venture Capital & Fundraising Raising venture capital is a difficult job for a startup founder. At Visible, we like to compare fundraising to a process that oftentimes mimics a traditional B2B sales process. To learn more about the process and thought process behind a venture fundraise, check out the books below: Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor Scott Kuport is the Managing Director of Andresseen Horowitz, the infamous venture fund. In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Scott breaks down the fundamentals of venture capital to help explain how they make decisions. Founders can use this information to better their odds of raising capital and better their relationships with venture capitalists. (You can read more about Secrets of Sand Hill Road in our post, “Understanding Power Law Curves to Better Your Chances of Raising Venture Capital”) Venture Deals by Brad Feld Brad Feld is the Managing Director of Foundry Group (and Co-founder of Techstars). During his career it is safe to say that Brad Feld has seen the intricacies of a venture fundraise. “Venture Deals shows fledgling entrepreneurs the inner-workings of the VC process, from the venture capital term sheet and effective negotiating strategies to the initial seed and the later stages of development.” Crack the Funding Code by Judy Robinett Judy Robinett has a career full of leading private and public companies and working with venture firms. “Crack the Funding Code will show readers how to find the money, create pitches that attract investors, and then structure fair, ethical deals that will bring them new sources of outside capital and invaluable professional advice.” Sales & Marketing Being able to market and sell a product is essential to startup success. To help founders sharpen their selling skills, we’ve shared our favorite books below: Start with Why by Simon Sinek The infamous TED Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action, by Simon Sinek discusses why leaders need to “start with why.” Since the original TED Talk, Simon has expanded on the idea and turned it into a bestselling book. Start with Why “shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way.” Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross Aaron was responsible for creating an outbound sales process that helped Salesforce add $100M in recurring revenue in the early 2000s. After his time at Salesforce, Aaron published Predictable Revenue to help leaders build a “sales machine.” As described by Aaron, “This is NOT another book about how to cold call or close deals. This is an entirely new kind of sales bible for CEOs, entrepreneurs and sales VPs to help you build a sales machine. What does it take for your sales team to generate as many highly-qualified new leads as you want, create predictable revenue, and meet your financial goals without your constant focus and attention? ” Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff Oren Kleff is the Managing Director of Intersection Capital. Pitch Anything draws on Oren’s experience raising capital and pitching teams during his career. “According to Klaff, creating and presenting a great pitch isn’t an art it’s a simple science. Applying the latest findings in the field of neuroeconomics, while sharing eye opening stories of his method in action, Klaff describes how the brain makes decisions and responds to pitches. With this information, you’ll remain in complete control of every stage of the pitch process.” Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki Guy Kawasaki is best known for marketing the original Macintosh at Apple in 1984 and coining “evangelism marketing.” “Reality Check is Kawasaki’s all-in-one guide for starting and operating great organizations-ones that stand the test of time and ignore any passing fads in business theory. This indispensable volume collects, updates, and expands the best entries from his popular blog and features his inimitable take on everything from effective e-mailing to sucking up to preventing bozo explosions.” Ask by Ryan Levesque Ryan Levesque is the founder and CEO of The Ask Method. Ryan has staked his career on The Ask Method. As the team at Fusion Results puts it, At its simplest level, the ASK Method is asking an audience what their challenges are, or what their desired results are and then segmenting those responses into something Ryan refers to as segment” or “buckets.” Product Development Being able to build, iterate, and ship product quickly can be a true differentiator for an early-stage startup. Luckily for founders, many operators and product managers have shared their tips and tricks behind product development below: Hooked by Nir Eyal Nir Eyal is an expert in all things behavioral engineering. His expertise and schooling brought him to write, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. “Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder—not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.” Shape Up by Ryan Singer Ryan Singer is the Head of Strategy at Basecamp. In Shape Up Ryan uncovers the product development process at Basecamp. Ryan shares how the team uses 6 week cycles to ship more work. As Ryan puts it himself, “Shape Up is for product development teams who struggle to ship. If you’ve thought to yourself “Why can’t we ship like we used to?” or “I never have enough time to think about strategy,” then this book can help. You’ll learn language and techniques to define focused projects, address unknowns, and increase collaboration and engagement within your team.” The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank Steve Blank has founded 8 companies and has been a staple in Silicon Valley since the 1970s. The Four Steps to the Epiphany breaks down his four-step customer development process (that launched The Lean Startup movement). As Steve puts it, “The book offers the practical and proven four-step Customer Development process for search and offers insight into what makes some startups successful and leaves others selling off their furniture. Rather than blindly execute a plan, The Four Steps helps uncover flaws in product and business plans and correct them before they become costly. Rapid iteration, customer feedback, testing your assumptions are all explained in this book.” Product Management by Intercom Intercom is one of the most successful modern day startups. They have become synonymous with a strong product. The Product Management book is their framework to help startups build and ship more products. As they put it, “You’ll learn: How to evaluate your current product and spot areas for improvement. Why “no” is the most important word in a product manager’s vocabulary. How to roll out new features and actually get them used by customers.” The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen Regarded as one of the most important business books of all time, “Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. No matter the industry, he says, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know how and when to abandon traditional business practices.” Learn why Renjit Philip, Founder of Explain.Care, loves it below: Summary As Seth Godin puts it, “It’s unlikely that you’re going to outsmart the experienced folks who have seen it all before… When you have to walk into one of these events, it pays to hire a local guide. Someone who knows as much as the other folks do, but who works for you instead.” Learning from the founder, investor, or operator that has been there before can be transformational for a startup founder.