Food For Founders #46
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Founder Education
This section is meant to help you grow as a leader, manager, or entrepreneur.
A Step By Step System for Performance Reviews
I really enjoyed this article…selfishly because I believe managers should spend MUCH more time on performance reviews than they currently do.
When I was leading a team of five, my wife used to comment on how much time I spent just thinking through management stuff. Reading. Ideating. Coming up with new ideas that the company still uses to this day…it all came from spending 75% of my time thinking about how to get my team to be more productive.
With this article, Lenny Rachitsky (former product lead at AirBnB) literally lays out a blueprint of how to turn your employees into superstars with a more intentional performance review process. Icing on the cake - he even included templates with instructions on how to use them.
When you combine this one with the Mathilde Collin piece I included in this newsletter a few weeks ago (Food For Founders #35), you can see why I love First Round’s blog. It simply has more tactical advice for founder leadership growth than anywhere else.
My Favorite quote is -
"If you can’t find a dozen hours to focus on your report’s career throughout the year, that generally means you have too many reports — or that you shouldn’t be a manager."
Business Strategy
This section is designed to help you improve your skills as a strategist and tactician.
10 Ways to Save Money as a Startup
So this is a pretty straightforward article. I am including it in this newsletter because I just brought on 18 team members and there are so many operational situations where I have to be honest and tell them we have budgetary constraints. At first I felt embarrassed, but it has happened so many times since their start date two weeks ago, that I’m used to saying it 2-3x per day.
I enjoyed this article because they are really practical solutions from a founder who’s “been there”. I believe that if you are in the early stages or about to launch a company, this should be your blueprint for creating your early financial strategy.
Sometimes you don’t know what you can and cannot do until another person gives you permission.
My favorite quote was that they raised their seed round on a “$600 MVP” that they cobbled together using various free tools.
Mental Snacks
This section was created to introduce ideas that may not related to starting a company, yet is important to your success as a founder.
Use Failure as An Opportunity
I’m just going to leave this one. It’s a self-explanatory article that speaks about the concept of framing failure to propel you forward into your next opportunity.
Around The Startup Ecosystem
This section was built to update you on important events, opinions, or pieces happening in the world of startups.
Q2 2019 Diversity Funding Report
Startups led by women are still not getting anywhere near the investment dollars they should be.
At 6% (startups led by Black women have it worst, getting only .0006% of the $424B in venture funding raised since 2009) the shift we were promised with more diverse founders, with all of the partner promotions at top-tier firms, has not occurred.
While yes, more capital being committed to VC funding means you need the appropriate increase in women in partner roles. For example: if VC funding increases by 30% and the amount of female VC partners increases by 30%, an argument can be made that women-led startups will not have their fortunes improved…in fact they could reverse and turn negative.
Want to know how you can help? Prop them up. If you do not have the resources to fund or work with women-led companies, offer them free consulting time…share their startup on social media…ask them to be on your podcasts…feature them in your newsletters.
There are lots of ways that you can help spread equality in the startup space that have zero to do with the dollars in your bank account. We can change the game together.