Here is my list of seven recommended books: (1) The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company - Steve Blank and Bob Dorf (2) Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup by Bill Aulet (3) The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding t...
As a fellow workaholic, I can't possibly advise you. But there's an excellent podcast series by an acquaintance / former client of mine called Dadverb that's all about balancing work life with fatherhood. He interviews successful entrepreneurs about how they find the right work-life balance. Y...
What kind of Culture do you want your company to exemplify? Culture being the shared values - a sense of right and wrong - and principles - guidelines for taking action - of any collective group, what you actually would like to analyze more deeply is...yourself. In the startups I have mentored...
Form 5472 is a tax form that must be filed by certain foreign-owned corporations that are engaged in a reportable transaction with a related party. If you are a foreign founder of a C corporation and you engage in a reportable transaction with the corporation, you may be required to file Form 547...
Much like negotiating a salary or company valuation, your objective is not necessarily to assign the perfect value. Your objective is to add a highly motivated partner to your business, feel great about it, and get to work on the important stuff. You want to mitigate the possibility for resen...
First, congratulations on your recent funding/recruitment successes! This is an excellent question, and a transaction I have been directly or indirectly involved with numerous times before. Each circumstance can be unique, the two most important considerations to look at as a starting point wou...
I have been involved in many private companies from startups to large cash flowing enterprises. Lets start with what many companies find useful at the outset-negotiate and execute a shareholders agreement that establishes rights and responsibilities of the founders in case of events like this. S...
I originally answered this question in Quora. Here's my interpretation: Very tough to sleep most nights of the week. Weekends don't mean anything to you anymore. Closing a round of financing is not a relief. It means more people are depending on you to turn their investment into 20 times wha...
Hi First of all, well done for successfully developing a product/business and gaining market traction! There are various 'models' that you can use to estimate how many shares/percentages your new partner should get. These include (a) his/her investment in time and/or money, (b) the current + pot...
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer nor an accountant, and this is not "professional advice." I have, however, set up a few businesses and had partners. What you need to do is incorporate and then write up an Operating Agreement that lays out the terms of your partnership. Who owns what. How the ne...