Most CPG innovators and founders are geeks of some sort. It doesn’t matter if the geekiness was professional or amateurish or a committee of both. The point is that you isolated a problem, a gap in your category, and you filled it. Or…you simply are
I often come across founders griping about attracting investors. Often, they haven’t spent much time networking at all. They’ve spent more time thinking about their working capital problem. But, more importantly, many founders simply don’t come off as investable. At all. This is because they don’t
On a webinar hosted by Gary Hirshberg in May, Wayne WU of VMG Partners pointed to a common problem before the pandemic. “[Brands chasing a pre-determined exit] are generally not the best brands to invest in because … they haven’t focused on surprising and delighting consumers.
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