Human Capital. Sourcing, sorting, winning and retaining great talent is at the top of every founder's to-do list,

We spent some time with @meghanared and @digmonster uncovering hard won lessons from @nerdwallet @zynga @loom @framer 1/ Mission matters - In the early stages, people are joining because they believe in the vision of the future that you are articulating; too often founders jump straight into recruiting/interview mode before the candidate has even opted-into a process

0/ Remote Onboarding Best practices: Recap of this week's #PeopleMatters discussion

1. Company Orientation (vision, values, how we work)
2. Team Orientation (how ACTUAL work works!)
3. Individual Orientation (laptop, passwords, folders) 1/ For the employer, we are
A)Trying to get people productive ASAP, and
B) How to we make people feel at home, esp without a workplace to bring them into, All hands, HH intros etc.

1/ Thanks #ProfMelanieMilovac for having me this am to judge the New Ventures Class @INSEAD

It was fun to see teams getting their creative juices going; quick advice for those preparing to pitch: 2/ Get your audience into the customer pain point quickly! Don't waste time upfront on the $10B TAM slide; get folks to internalize the problem you're trying to solve first. Use customer interviews, survey data, anything that gets you deeper than desk research.

1/ The most common early-stage hiring mistake: Poor job / role definition

🧵👇 2/ As an early-stage startup, no one knows who you are and folks are going to give you their attention. So if you want them to come work for you, you must be surgical in capturing their attention. There are two components to that: Your Employer Brand, and the Job Description

0/ Such a fun AMA w/ @IterativeVC 's first batch - thought some of the Q&A might be helpful to others: 1/
Q: What separates good founders from GREAT founders?
A: The pace of learning. Ultimately, the ceiling on any startup (all things being equal) is the collective capacity of the team. This can only increase when the team is able to grow themselves in multiple dimensions.

Listening into the @vietcetera webinar on market entry & opportunities in Vietnam - some quick snippets 1) "I've been so pleasantly surprised by the positive business attitude across the board, despite the global pandemic" Henry Bott, @swiregroup

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, who has been an inspiration and source of much support and delight. It seems apt that while I was looking for pics of us together all I could find were pics of her and my kids 2/ my mom is the hardest working person I know, even today, she is up before I am and crushing her to-Dos. She found a deal at my wedding! Stayed an extra week to do diligence after while I was off on my honeymoon! W

Thanks to @elisetanyl for inviting me to chat about fundraising during #covid19; the topic of valuation is an interesting one, particularly in the seed stage - some quick thoughts, aimed at the #SEA ecosystem 👇 1/ What's the right valuation for a company? How is it determined? Founders are understandably concerned about dilution, but the reality of the situation is that price is a function of supply and demand

1/ Some amazing @zoom_us experiences this weekend - constraints give birth to creativity and it's been cool to see what folks are doing in this weird time. It's also been this odd pause where you can reach out to folks you haven't spoken to in YEARS and they are excited to chat. 2/ Friday night, my monthly dinner group got together via Zoom - 13 attendees, 2 new to the group (had never met in person); we managed a conversation for 2+ hours that had everyone share ideas, enjoy jokes and test out both polling and breakout room functions. #wine was involved

1/ Quick notes from webinar with @iamvictortan
and @blibible on opportunities and challenges in SEA Tech given COVID-19 - thanks to #SingaporeGlobalNetwork and @techplus65 for organising 2/ Lockdowns forcing consumers and businesses into digital behaviours they may have previously resisted: Online education, virtual meetings, delivery order systems (see 160k member FB group #hawkersuniteddabao2020)

1/ Startup founders, let's talk about reforecasting - everyone's favorite topic! A short thread 2/ If you haven't re-forecasted your 2020 numbers, now is the time to do it. Take good hard look at your assumptions, and think through how they will be impacted by a global slow down

1/Did my first webinar yesterday on "What's really going on in an investor's brain when you pitch" If you don't get a chance to catch the webinar, here's a quick TLDR 2/ Think about the investor as the customer, and the context in which they need to return a specific level of returns to their OWN investors (limited partners); this sets the frame for how they think about your business and opportunity

1/ Chatting about scaling struggles with an old friend today; there’s a point where you transition from doing things, to managing people doing things, to aligning the people managing the people doing things. 2/ it can get lonely and tiring when you shift from execution to coordination; when there are multiple gaps in the Organization so you have neither the autonomy of an early stage biz, Nor the support and structure of a corporate

0/Fun convo with @avichal yesterday on what makes a good fintech investor; we ran through common pitfalls for fintech biz that I thought could be useful for others. Basic premise: Fintech is more Fin than Tech... 1/It is incredibly hard to cross-sell financial products. I see a lot of decks where the biz model is X-selling financial products. a) this is hard, and b) combined with high CAC in fin svcs to begin with, can be a fatal assumption if the 1st product is not high-margin to start

Always a delight to speak with ⁦@xenditco⁩ ‘s Moses and Tessa #scaling #TIAconference #SEA #tech @xenditco 1/ When do you start scaling? When you have Product Market Fit. What does PM Fit "feel" like? Imagine someone took 2 fingers, stuck them in your nostrils, and yanked hard, upwards. That's demand pull! HT @zealoustiger for this pic

Checking out #spotlightindo hosted by the @EDBSociety Why is Indo impt to SG? 1)Real focus on investing in Asia for Asia; 2)Indo is one of two physical neighbors ; $1T economy ; pre-existing relationships and investments - schooling , investing, defense

1/5 Fun to hang with @gibsonbiddle in #Singapore @sgSMU where he shared #WickedHardDecisions from his #ProductManagement journey @netflix Key Lessons: 2/5 Is it a High stakes or Low Stakes decision? Can we test? Is it reversible? E.g. should they fight a lawsuit around throttling DVDs, or settle fast?

1/6 Thank you @njcar for speaking to my @sgSMU #productmanagemen class tonight! t Key takeaways: 2/6 Are you solving a real problem for someone? ..."nirvana" or the "best level" is if someone knows they have a problem, they've tried to solve it before themselves and they failed. If you can find that and you can build anything that helps them, you've really figured it out.

1/ Thanks @PrestelandP for having me at the #familyofficeforum to chat about AI; 30 minutes felt too short! Great convo with @tobyruckert @Yipinggoh @ArnaudBonzom #robgarrett 2/ Definitions are an important place to start; too much sci-fi, not enough specificity on what use cases are well-suited/ not well-suited to AI; Broad vs Narrow

1/Volunteered at my very first Meet the People Session tonight; an opportunity to listen to citizen concerns and observe what grassroots volunteers can do to help in Kreta Ayer #onetheground 2/mostly edge cases, where policy was not designed to handle unusual or unplanned for consequences

1/ quick thoughts from the Amazing #comebackcities tour through charlotte, Columbia, Orangeburg and @CityofAtlanta 2/ catalyzing role of public-private partnership in more nascent ecosystems; good example of coordination and sustained investment by multiple entities