Tag Archives: Executive QA

Product Management Tips for Hardware Startups

Executive QA Product Management TipsFor software companies, product iteration is a game of speed: ship products quickly and iterate based on customer feedback.

For hardware companies, the game can be more complex.  Even marginal improvements to hardware might implicate a company’s cost structure, supply chain, and more.

We spoke with Mac Dougherty, CEO of Cognitive Electronics, to find out how his company thinks about product management. Cognitive Electronics is a big data hardware startup headquartered in Boston, MA.

 

500 Startups: Growth Case Study

Aircall is a 500 Startups portfolio company. They offer next-gen phone support solutions that integrate with Salesforce, Slack, Zendesk, and many other services.

In this case study, Aircall’s founder and CEO Olivier Pailhes talks about the company’s growth process, the One Metric That Matters, and the tactic that helped Aircall get 800 clients, including the likes of Uber.

Growth Case Study: Aircall on One Metric That Matters & Selling to Uber

Aircall is a 500 portfolio company that addresses this one single truth about growing a business and getting repeat customers: Phone calls still matter. The company offers next-gen phone support solutions that integrate your stuff with Slack, a Chrome app, Zendesk, and a bunch of other services, and they recently raised $2.75 million upon graduating from the 500 Accelerator’s .

Meet the Co-Founders of Futuristic Design Firm: Perception

ExecutiveQA_Perception

Perception is a creative design studio that provides futuristic UI and HUD design for feature films and global technology brands.  The firm has worked on major motion pictures, including Iron Man 2 and Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Enterprise clients include IBM, Samsung, and Microsoft.

Co-founders Jeremy Lasky and Danny Gonzalez share their experiences with ExecutiveQA.

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Acquisitions: Lessons from All Sides

Jeff Seibert is the Senior Director of Product at Twitter.  He joined the company in 2013 through the acquisition of his startup, Crashlytics.

In this video, Seibert reflects on the acquisition process from both sides of the table.  The talk includes Twitter’s approach to acquiring companies and specific advice for entrepreneurs contemplating a sale.

Jeff Seibert: Acquisitions: Lessons from All Sides [Entire Talk]

Jeff Seibert, senior director of product at Twitter, describes what went well and what didn’t during the acquisition of his earlier startups by big-name technology companies, stressing the importance of culture fit, maintaining your team’s trust throughout, and continued investment in growth after being acquired.

Raising a Seed Round: The Perfect Investor Deck

What goes into a typical seed round deck?  Alex Iskold, Managing Director of Techstars, shares three different outlines to help you get started.

The Perfect Investor Deck for Raising a Seed Round – Techstars

There are several ways to build an investor deck to get seed funding, but there is no perfect way, of course. The common thing between all successful decks is that they are short and clear. Be sure to read 9 seed funding gotchas and 8 things you need to know a about raising venture capital …

Bonobos CEO: E-Commerce is a Bear

In two decades of e-commerce in the United States, only two standalone e-commerce companies have achieved meaningful enterprise value: Amazon and eBay. One went public in 1997, the other in 1998.

In this video, Andy Dunn, co-founder and CEO of Bonobos, Inc., discusses the challenges of building a profitable, lasting e-commerce company.  He believes it is difficult to create a sustainable advantage selling third-party brands, but there are still opportunities for new firms to compete.

E-Commerce is a Bear

Andy Dunn, founder and CEO of Bonobos Inc., presents on the challenges of building a profitable, lasting e-commerce company. In two decades of e-commerce in the US, we have produced only two standalone e-commerce companies of meaningful enterprise value: Amazon and eBay. One went public in 1997, the other in 1998.

How Google Thinks About Hiring

Laszlo Bock is SVP of People Operations at Google.  In this video, he shares advice on how to interview, hire, and retain top talent.

Key Insights:  

  1. Google interviews and hires by committee.  The committee’s sole job is to maintain quality, and decision-making authority is never delegated to an individual hiring manager.
  2. Google believes in a wide distribution of compensation.  According to Bock, most pay systems are based on misguided notions of fairness (i.e. it is unfair to pay an employee too much or too little relative to other employees).  At Google, pay curves are exponential.

How Google Thinks About Hiring, Management and Culture

In this video from KPCB’s recent CEO Workshop, KPCB General Partner Beth Seidenberg chats with Laszlo Bock, SVP of People Operations at Google and author of “Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead.”

Entering New Markets: Q&A with Dinner Lab

In this preview post, we ask Zach Kupperman, COO and Co-Founder of Dinner Lab, about the company’s approach to rapid growth.

Dinner Lab

Company: Dinner Lab 
Headquarters: New Orleans, LA 
Description: Dinner Lab is a membership-based supper club that lets up-and-coming chefs test their recipes by preparing multi-course meals for a private audience.  Each of the company’s pop-up dinners are hosted at unique locations, such as art galleries, warehouses, and helipads.
Interviewee: Zach Kupperman, COO and Co-Founder

 

Want early access to this full interview?  Subscribe here.

Sales Resources from Peter Kazanjy: Co-Founder of TalentBin

TalentBin, a startup that helps recruiters discover and engage top talent, was acquired by Monster in 2014.  In this article, co-founder Peter Kazanjy shares sales templates, scripts, and tactics that his company used to achieve success.

Here are the Scripts for Sales Success – Emails, Calls and Demos That Close Deals

This article is by Peter Kazanjy , co-founder of , which was acquired by Monster last year. This article is excerpted from a chapter in his forthcoming book, Founding Sales , due out next year, which tackles everything founders and first-time sales staff need to know about acquiring early customers, building and scaling winning sales teams. Here, he shares the actual email, phone and demo scripts he’s seen work time and again.

Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan: Scale-Up Leadership Lessons

Hubspot was founded at MIT in 2006.  Today, the company employs more than 700 people as one of the largest marketing automation vendors in the world.  In the following post, CEO Brian Halligan shares various lessons he has learned over the past 9 years.

Scale-up Leadership Lessons I’ve Learned Over 9 Years as HubSpot’s CEO – ReadThink (by HubSpot)

Scale-up Leadership Lessons I’ve Learned Over 9 Years as HubSpot’s CEO HubSpot is 9 years old. I consider that we spent our first 6-7 years in “startup” mode, where we got through product/market fit and got our customer economics to work.