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Most managers suck at being managers — not because they are bad performers, but because they don't really know what a good manager is.

In startups, this is a particular problem because, unlike established companies, tons of us become managers for the first time, not because we're entirely qualified or experienced, but because no one else was available.

As such, we're rarely told what makes a good manager, so we assume that if we get our updates, if people say nice things about us, and the business is doing well, we must be doing a good job. But the fact is, there's a massive difference between being a good manager and just being an adequate babysitter.

Babysitting is Not Managing

Most managers get by simply by being a good babysitter. They ...

The Solution Slide in an investor deck explains exactly how our startup company will solve the issue we set up in our Problem Slide. We'll walk you through the formula of the best decks in a single slide you can easily replicate.

Why does the Solution Slide Matter?

The Solution Slide takes our entire business model and distills it down to 1 or 2 sentences in our pitch presentation. If we did a good job to convince investors in the Problem Slide that we're tackling a big market of potential customers with severe consequences, then our Solution Slide will make us sound like a hero.

A Good Solution Slide is Focused

We want the investor to be crystal clear on this explanation of the business. We don't want them to go in multiple directions, so we'r...

“I remember the first time I got my own CRM system, nearly 10 years ago” recounts author and sales coach Adam Metz. “It cost a few hundred dollars all in and it was actually a desktop app that synced to the cloud once a day for backup. It now seems kind of quaint, but, it helped me start my book of business that today has over 10,000 contacts in it. I can say that I’ve had a personal conversation with almost every single one of them. And that’s thanks for the most part, to good data management.”

There are two main reasons CRM adoption fails for sales teams trying to increase their performance. But first let me get the basics out of the way to get everyone up to speed on the terminology and what a CRM is.

Download the checklist of the key f...

Most Founders get rich without ever exiting their business. Yes, you read that right. We don't have to build a rocket ship that takes on gobs of funding for an IPO in order to have everything we want.

We just need to keep making money (and not even that much!)

While to most people this may sound obvious, in the startup world we tend to forget how this simple fact works. We keep thinking in terms of this big liquidity event where we get handed a giant check like we just won the Powerball. We picture ringing the bell on NASDAQ wearing the only nice outfit we own shaking hands with bankers and smiling for the camera.

And in the end, we picture having enough money to just do whatever the eff we want.

The Stacking Effect

I spend a ridiculous amo...

I don't remember going to college. I know I went, but I don't remember anything about my college experience, because unlike everyone else, I was too busy working on my startup.

I remember rollerblading (1990s!) across the quad to class on a beautifully sunny day and watching a bunch of my friends playing volleyball and having an amazing time. I wanted to play so badly, but I didn't. I had to get through class so I could skate back to the office for an all-night coding session on a new client project.

This isn't a story about how that effort paid off (it did), this is a story of how badly I regret never having played that day. It's a story of how so many of my life experiences were mortgaged for the sake of building my startup, and how looki...

What happens to funded startups that can't raise any more funding?

We enter the funding "No Man's Land" where startups go to linger and eventually die a very long, unceremonious death. No one talks about it — certainly not the Founders who are left with the breathing corpse that was their once-hot startup. Certainly not the investors who have written off their investment long before anyone else.

Yet everyone knows we're digesting in the Sarlacc pit for a thousand years without any idea what to do about it.

Having been in this fiery wasteland more times than I care to admit, I learned that at some point Founders have pretty much three options to escape, and "we'll just hold out for funding" isn't one of them.

Buy it Back

Let's start with per...

Don’t miss out! Check out the previous chapters here:

–Chapter One
–Chapter Two

CHAPTER THREE: Appear Super Responsive All The Time

In This Chapter:

• Write stock templates for frequent scenarios
• Tips to master the art of deflection
• Create an auto-responder to deploy for specific filters

Have you ever had one of those days where you wish there were two of you? You could finally unglue your fingers from your iPhone and maybe grab lunch with a friend? Or, go on a long run without feeling like things are falling through the cracks?

Well, what if I told you that we have the technology? We can clone you!

You get to be “fun clone”. The other clone—The other clone is “robot clone”.

While you’re out having fun, robot clone is going to do all of...

When you’re a startup founder, there are certain materials you’re going to work with again and again. Balance sheets, term sheets, customer journey maps – get comfortable with these. You’re going to be seeing a lot of them.

Another startup stalwart you’ll definitely want to have down cold: the landing page.

Landing pages are the ultimate utility players of startup marketing. Want to validate an idea? You need a landing page. Need to build an email list? You need a landing page. Got a new product you need to tell people about? Seems like maybe you should think about creating a landing page.

You get the picture: if you’re starting a company, you’re going to need a landing page at some point, if you haven’t already. So you might as well pop th...

If starting a company is a race (and it is – it really, really is) then launch day is the starting line.

Everything you do before your product launch is the warm-up. (The very essential, very unskippable warmup). Everything that comes after? It’s the frantic, mad dash to the finish line, whatever and wherever that might be.

Your product launch is the inflection point. It’s the point to which everything before it leads up, and everything that comes after comes out of. And a successful product launch starts with a successful product launch strategy.

We all want our product to start out of the gate strong. But what exactly goes into a successful product launch? Stuart Brent, Co-Founder of MapPlug, has an idea or two on the subject. Not only h...

Today I’m ridiculously excited to tell you about a product I’ve been personally waiting on for a very, very long time – Startups Live!

Startups Live is a moderated, members-only Slack community where we’re pulling together the smartest Founders (and their teams) into a single discussion for one hour every day.

Real Time, Moderated, Focused

None of us have time for another forum or Slack community of random chatter. We’re not interested in sifting through trolls or hoping someone comes up with a topic that might be interesting in a chat room somewhere.

That’s why we’re keeping it short – 1 hour, every day – at 11a EST / 8a PST.

Each day we’ll be moderating the discussion to keep it fresh with new topics and adding in special guests and exp...