Growth Stage Series

Why I’m Writing a Series for Growth Stage Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs starting companies need and deserve a lot of support.  Creating something from nothing is clearly not for the faint of heart.  There are roadblocks in nearly every direction, but founders find ways to surmount even the most daunting obstacles.  While the job of starting and building a start-up is incredibly challenging, the good news is that there is a lot of useful information and tools now available to entrepreneurs to help them on the early-stage journey.

While succeeding as an early stage company is a monumentally difficult task, those who get to the start-up finish line realize that new and similarly vexing challenges await in the growth stage.  Early stage leaders need to ace their formative product development, product/market fit, initial team build out and early customer acquisition. The prize for those who succeed are new, growth-stage hurdles such as scaling out sales and marketing, perfecting and hardening a business model, erecting a financial model and team that fits the business, international expansion, and orchestrating a winning IPO and life as a public company.  As leaders forge deeper into the growth stage, the bets get bigger and the stakes get higher, amplifying the need for sound guidance and tools to help make good decisions.

This is a series geared for founders and company leaders who are in the growth stage or preparing to enter the growth stage with a desire to go long and build a really big company.  In my 16 years as a growth-stage focused VC, I’ve found there can be lots of confusing noise out there.  Leaning heavily on my own experiences, I’ll try to lay out some simple frameworks and game plans to help filter out the noise and allow for focus on more meaningful signals.

I’ve been blessed to have worked with a great group of company leaders over the past 16 years from whom I’ve gleaned all of what I’ll share in this series, but I don’t view the work as complete.  I hope to foster a participatory dialog and I want to hear your comments and feedback.  The richer the interaction, the more useful this content will be for the next set of growth stage entrepreneurs who want to go long.

The Growth Stage Recipe – Ingredients Required to Build a Big Winner

As contributed to Fortune Term Sheet For the few shining examples of enduringly successful high growth tech companies, there are far more that don’t make it.  Some of the most talented entrepreneurs fail to get their companies up and running,Read More…

The Long March – Transitioning from a Start-up to a Growth Stage Company with Big Ambition

As featured on Fortune Term Sheet Congratulations Ms. Entrepreneur. After years of toiling and challenging insurmountable odds, you’ve finally moved through the gates of start-up hell. You’ve established product/ market fit, you’re 10x better that your competition and you’ve begunRead More…

Are You IPO Ready?

As featured on Fortune Term Sheet As a junior banker at Goldman Sachs in the early ‘90s I was weaned on the conventional wisdom that growth companies were ready to go public when they reached $100M in annualized revenue (ie,Read More…

Top 10 Steps to IPO Preparation

As featured on Fortune Term Sheet These days, for the typical ventured-backed tech company, the duration from founding to IPO is a full 8-10 years.  There are no overnight success stories.  It’s a serious accomplishment representing a ton of workRead More…

Five Traits of Great Growth Stage CEOs

As featured in Fortune Term Sheet Founders are the best start-up CEOs.  The same passion, focus and audacity required to get a company off the ground enables founders to be successful start-up leaders. After all, when a start-up company isRead More…

Now What? How to Handle an Acquisition Offer for Your Company

As featured in Fortune Term Sheet. As a growth stage entrepreneur committed to going long and building a big company, your focus should always be on moving forward, looking down the field and thinking long term. That said, most successfulRead More…

Do’s and Dont’s For Newly Public Tech Companies

As featured in Fortune Term Sheet. Life for newly public and soon-to-be public venture-backed tech companies Marin Software, Marketo and Tableau is about to get much tougher. When these companies go public, their shareholder base will begin to shift fromRead More…

Reflections on Going Long – Lessons Learned

As featured in Fortune Term Sheet. Over the past 4 months I’ve written 8 posts in the “Going Long” series.  As those of you who’ve been reading this material on GoingLongBlog.com and/or Fortune Term Sheet know, I’ve focused on advice forRead More…