Last week, Business Insider allowed me the opportunity to warn newbies that BigCo is absolutely scanning startup land continuously for ideas they can easily copy, even reverse engineer at a low technical expense. Technical expense? Say what? Ah, that’s the point I’m trying to make. BigCo is
It sounds a bit too dramatic to be accurate, but it is. Since these are the brands I tend to work with the most, I have a robust set of case files. And here’s what it has taught me. If you were a Skate Ramp brand
You might think saying ‘no’ is simply a luxury of an established business who has the privilege to turn down an opportunity that isn’t absolutely dead-on perfect. But you’d be wrong. Saying ‘no’ is one of the fundamental business skills never taught in school, especially in business
If you missed my Friday webinar, here’s the big take-away. You really should accept that there is enough uncertainty left in the epidemiology to make two scenarios plausible for 2022. I’ll walk you through them briefly here. They’re based on the new ‘fact’ that CPG sales
This guy looks so uncomfortable. He's either trying too hard to work on vacation or not trying hard enough to blend in at the beach. It's weird. Not offensive per se. Just weird. Anomalous. Even silly. Judging these kinds of behaviors is what humans do.
Part two of my interview w/Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School is now live. In this part, we discuss a bunch of more advanced topics. One that stuck with me is the challenge in staffing up rapidly when the founders are hiring for functions they
I launched my current business in 2017 with a series of LinkedIn videos, including why you need a strategic plan. Keeping you and your team accountable is the most important reason to write a straightforward plan consisting of three things: your revenue targets for 2-3 years maxyour 1-line competitive
For the world of early-stage consumer brands selling in retail, I fervently hope that 2021 will be the decade of scanner-led growth. I don’t want anyone to enslave themselves to data, but fast-growing companies need to get smarter earlier about growth. And part of this is
Some of you may have already caught June's 1st episode of Startup Confidential. For the rest of you, here's an excerpt from my recent interview with Prof. Tom Eisenmenn, author of Why Startups Fail. ME: “ One of the sources of False Starts you talk
The vast majority of CPG startups operate as B2B businesses. They don’t interact with their consumers. They aren’t curious about how they receive and use their products. As long as case volumes grow, they’re happy. As long as their wholesale price can float operations and