Startups

The 3 W's of Business: What - is the problem you are solving? Who - is the customer that needs this? Where - are they so you can market to them? That's it.

Before I decide to do something, my first question is: “What problem are we solving?” 9 times out of 10, answering that question shows me: 1) It’s not really a problem (so I can ignore it) 2) What I was planning on doing wasn’t the best way to solve... See more

I was at Amzn early '00s when we lost 95% of our market cap. Later at FB I negotiated a down-round in '09, and then in '12 our stock dropped 50% post-IPO. I was on the board of a public company that went bankrupt (Borders) and a start-up that went under (Hello). Some lessons: