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Oct

30

Doerr’s 10 Tips for Start-ups

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Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ own VC, John Doerr, presented his 10 Tips for Start-Ups at VentureBeat’s four-hour, roundtable conference at the Stanford Park Hotel, Palo Alto, CA, on 10/29/08. Intended to provide context and advice for start-up CEOs and founders facing the recession , its panel of nine included names such as PayPal co-founder, Max Levchin, and early Google VC, Ram Shriram.

Condensed, Doerr’s tips included:

  1. Act now!
  2. Protect the vital core of your business. Use a scalpel instead of an ax.
  3. Get 18 mos or more of cash in the biz against a conservative revenue broadcast.
  4. Defer any facilities expansions and be frugal in captial expenditures.
    – instead of buying more PCs and software, use web-based technologies
    – reprioritize all
  5. Negotiate with vendors / others.
  6. Everyone in organization should be selling.
  7. Offer equity instead of cash when dealing with bonuses.
  8. Pay attention to where your cash is.
    – put it in most secure instruments
    – consider treasuries
  9. For revenue planning, use leading indicators.
  10. Over-communicate.

Watch the full 4m 12s video, made available by BoomTown, below:

(note… audio adjustment required after BoomTown intro to hear fully.)