A lighthouse is a great metaphor, symbolizing safe passage ahead. Throughout my career, I've associated it with really important customers because they're the ones that help safely navigate small startups into
Alchemist Blog
Alchemist Press
Alchemist Blog
Alchemist Press
What’s HQ (Hustle Quotient) And Do You Have Enough Of It?
Hustle isn’t just the difference between good and great: for start-ups, it’s the difference between existence and non-existence, between “good enough” and “gone”. Companies in an industry will experience...
Demo Day Advice - From a VC Turned Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs - congratulations on approaching Demo Day! You'll soon be surrounded by interesting people, inundated by emails, and distracted by countless potential conversations that you'll need...
Customer Advisor Board: Early-Stage Hack to Getting Your First Customers
As a founder and former CEO, I'm delighted to see so many Alchemist Accelerator portfolio startups executing highly engaged Advisor Councils (AdCos) when acquiring their first 10 paying customers....
The Key to More Sales: Focus on Your State
It's not the product. It's not the timing. It's your body language and tonality. Both have more to do with sales success than other factors because at the core, sales is result-driven communication.
Funding Basics: Fundraising 101
If you’re unfamiliar with how venture capital funding works, it can seem akin to playing the lottery. Anyone can try, but only a few lucky entrepreneurs actually win. Fortunately, fundraising isn’t as random...
How One Hour of Customer Development Saves Five Hours of Coding
The greatest expert on your customer is: your customer. I consider that rule number one on any customer development journey.
Do Pivots Matter?
In late 2013 Cowboy Ventures did an analysis of U.S.-based tech companies started in the last 10 years, now valued at $1 billion. They found 39 of these companies. They called them the “Unicorn Club.”...