Brian Laung Aoaeh, CFA’s Post

Photo Recap of #TSCSCM13 Podcast: Election Outcomes and the Impact on Supply Chains! Mike Bush, Allegra Roza & Rolina Camello, GLS came together for impactful discussion! Stay tuned! #politics #logisticscompany #supplychain #elections2024 #elections2025

My tech startup failed due to 3 mistaken assumptions—entrepreneurs take note! ✒️ It's been a decade since my startup folded. In writing my new book 𝑺𝒂𝒊𝒍 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒆 this past year, along with my co-authors Maria Fernandez Guajardo and Heather Jerrehian, I decided to sit down and deeply analyze the mistakes we made. And we made many! The underlying mistake in all of them was a reliance on assumptions. Read about my experience and why I believe the experience was still a success in this Fortune article! Thank you Fortune for publishing my thoughts! #techstartups #businessstrategies #failfast #PMF #hiring #sailtoscale  https://lnkd.in/dQAz3fRk

One thing I’ve had to get used to since I’m no longer investing is that I no longer have the management fees of a new fund to subsidize all the time I used to spend giving away free help to founders. Any particular founder *could be* the next great founder for me to fund, either now or down the line, so I could justify a lot of free time and advice. Now, I do a bit of paid startup consulting and I’ve had to say no to founders who need help more than I’ve ever had to. Here’s how I’ve gotten comfortable with it: 1. I still give away lots of free advice—both through writing (www.thisisgoingtobebig.com) and through the organizing of lots of events for nextNYC. It’s just the 1:1 time I’m now charging for. 2. I make myself available for *more* time. Normally, pitch meetings used to be 45 minutes. Now I do one-off fundraising/pitch workshops for 90 minutes. (At a way cheaper rate per minute than a lot of the very visible VCs you see on Intro.) 3. I provide a differentiated service—I don’t help people make their decks look better. I tell them how a VC is going to receive the message and explain why. Unless you’ve been an investor—and even if you’ve been a founder and have raised before—you’re really not going to be able to do this. You’ve never been in a partner meeting and heard the things VCs won’t tell you in their feedback. I still feel weird about it, but the reactions I’m getting from founders helps me feel like I’m on the right track to providing value at a high ROI.