Rob's Blog

Some of us have a hard time making decisions. Period. We like to analyze options until we’ve backed ourselves into a corner and all of them have expired.

I’ll never forget the day it sunk in. I was on the road doing deliveries, on a conference call with my co-founders who were also out doing deliveries when one of them said the sentence we all needed to hear.

After the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 — attributed to a lack of up-to-date information — President Kennedy ordered the creation of the Situation Room in the basement of the White House. Its sole purpose was to bring together the right people and information at the right time, mostly during a crisis, to make the most right decision available.

How much patience should you have with employees in an early stage startup?

Adult Mayflies live for 2 days. They spend a year as larvae, burst onto the scene with the sole purpose of mating and then, 2 days later, dead.

The all-too-common knock against venture capitalists is that they never make up their mind. They lead founders on, always asking for more proof points only to disappear or finally say no months too late.

Early days in startup life feels like David Allen’s GTD on amphetamines.

This happens all too often in early stage companies.

The answer will be no.

I love the simplicity of this statement: Earn your views. Views can mean something different to everyone but it’s the “earn” part that hits for me.

Remember that old adage that to assume makes an ass out of you and me? That’s cute but in startups, assumptions derail initiatives and kill momentum. Nothing cute about that.

When I started my first real company — a web development company called Thunder Rd — I was broke.

This is a question that not enough founders ask. The simple answer is right now.

This is a quick reminder of the simple principles that govern startup business life.

Most of the challenges of building a business are a direct result of ignoring the “because”.

Nobody explains resilience better than Rocky.

There is no part of a startup that is easy.

Sometimes it’s not doing too little that hurts a startup. It’s doing too much at the same time.

It still haunts me.

For a long time I didn’t really understand what hard work is. Most young people don’t but it’s really not their fault.

Running a start up is full-frontal. Things come at you from everywhere.

It nearly broke us.

Being a leader doesn’t mean you make all the decisions.

Business is self-serving and this is the problem.

Complex pricing nearly killed our business.