Advice for CEOs

Stephen Covey once said, “Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.” Growth company CEOs should pay attention to this maxim. Mid-February is a perfect time to reflect on where your company stands in this regard, paying special attention to diversity within your board and among your senior executives and partners.

Every entrepreneur looking for investors would like to find backers who have ample cash to invest and who also bring industry knowledge, savvy and contacts. But most entrepreneurs would prefer that their investors be relatively hands off, not inclined to interfere unduly in their business management process. How realistic is it to find such investors?

Bootstrapping is the traditional way to grow a startup and early stage company. It keeps equity in the founders’ hands and avoids having investors to answer to. But there is another side of the coin: not having enough working capital for marketing and other priorities to grow the company. How do companies that you know deal with the downside of bootstrapping?

Note: Fred Fink, is the co-author of this blog. The business model of professional services firms—whether lawyers, accountants, doctors, architects, management consultants, or others who deploy specialized “white collar” expertise to serve clients, usually with some degree of fiduciary responsibility—is based on sharing of expertise between practitioners.

A basic Human Resources best practice is to perform regular employee performance reviews. Larger companies devote significant HR resources to gathering, synthesizing and reviewing feedback from managers and then presenting the results to employees. They try to ensure that feedback is objective and not discriminatory or offensive. They strive to rationalize how evaluations relate to decisions on employee compensation.

Angel, venture capital, and private equity funding have recently produced more startups and early stage companies than ever before. Which has led to a debate about whether we’re in a “startup bubble” that is likely to create havoc when it bursts. We asked our partners with experience in both startups and venture capital/private equity funding for their thoughts.