I recently wound down as CEO of a company I founded 13 years ago. It was successful by any measure.

But leading it was no longer my passion.

My goal was to leave that role and help others starting their #FounderJourney.

Here is what I’m learning …
👉🏽 Opportunities are everywhere and the bar to enter has never been lower.

Focus is needed more than ever.

👉🏽 Twitter provides the greatest entrepreneurial education in the 🌎.

Use it. Build your community of founders and rest on each other when it get hard. It will get hard.
👉🏽 Experimentation is easier than ever. Embrace the failure that will inevitably (and temporarily) come.

The rise of no code, etc can have you in prototype or beta in hours or days.

Try. Learn. Iterate.

👉🏽 Culture is now your brand. It’s “why you are” instead of “what you are”.

Define and nurture from day 1. Even when your solo.

👉🏽 Stand out by getting your positioning right (or at least thought through).

With so much noise, a founder’s ability to tell the story has never been more important.

👉🏽 The “war for talent” is over hyped and clichéd .

Great talent is everywhere IF you’re thinking remote/global. Constant recruiting starts on day 1 of your startup.

Everyday on my own founders journey I’m learning. I’ll keep updating the list as those lessons become clear.

But these are just mine. Would ❤️ if you would share yours in this post as well.
For more like this on #startups and the #FoundersJourney, please follow me @EvergreenMEP.

Please retweet from the 1st tweet so the whole thread can be found.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Greg Moran 🇺🇦 Evergreen Mountain Equity Partners

Greg Moran 🇺🇦 Evergreen Mountain Equity Partners Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @EvergreenMEP

Mar 3
Options are limitless to start the entrepreneurial journey. It can be a struggle to decide where to start.

Here is a way to start taking action and getting clarity.

Take one idea and do a 30 day test.

Read the 🧵 to get started ..
First, set a few simple milestones. Examples:

1.) Build prototype or wire frames,

2.) Talk to X # of customers,

3.) Launch a landing page and land X number of inbound leads, etc.

Make the milestones as tangible as possible. Not just getting random opinions.
Next, execute on those milestones for 30 days and hit them.

The key is to execute like this is your permanent commitment.

Focus is important to get a personal feel for the business.

If you’re still working full time, calibrate the milestones to what can be achieved.
Read 6 tweets
Mar 3
You brought in new capital, have the team, released a strong initial product and … not much happens.

You’re in the startup J Curve. And it can take you out.

What is it and how to manage through.
First, why should you care?

Because this common startup cycle can drain your cash.

So you need to care. Now, let’s make it easy to understand.
The J Curve is an initial dip that exists after 🚀.

Happens to almost all startups for a simple reason: You got something wrong.

- wrong pricing model
- Wrong feature set
- Wrong target market
- Poor positioning
- Something else
Read 11 tweets
Mar 2
Startup boards can be transformational if built and managed properly. They can be destructive and a massive time and energy suck if not.

Here’s a 🧵 on how to build and manage a board for maximum leverage and benefit. 👇🏽
Understand their role.
There are usually two types of boards that a startup may have: Fiduciary or Advisory. If you have taken outside capital, your board is fiduciary.

(This thread largely deals with funded startup boards.)
A board has three overriding responsibilities:

✅ Hire the CEO (and maybe CFO)

✅Corporate governance (budgets, capital investments, equity grants, etc)

✅ Change the CEO if it becomes necessary
Read 22 tweets
Feb 27
Startups <10m ARR rarely do M&A.

At $2m ARR we bought a competitor 4x our size. We became a full scale software company overnight.

It wasn’t easy but it was possible. Here’s how.

It started when we were the acquisition target.
I set up quarterly check-ins with competitor CEO’s. And I openly shared data.

You have to give to get. So give your information and ask for advice.

My intent with these calls was to get acquired, not be the buyer.

That’s where the story gets interesting.
I built a good relationship with the CEO of the target company. And he expressed interest in acquiring us.

My plan was working!

But, we were growing 100%+ and they were barely growing.

That’s a problem.
Read 17 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(