Darrell Heaps knows what it’s like to go global. Having expanded Q4 Inc. into Europe through acquisition of several startups, Darrell grew his team close to 200 people and raised over $28 million.
Today I am 30. Here Are a Few Lessons I Learned.
Four Months Dry – What Have I Learned?
I started July with a 30-day challenge to help me reduce stress. You can read my article on completing the challenge here. After the month was done I decided to just keep going. I have not had a drop of alcohol in the last three months and I want to give an update of where I am at.
Reduce Startup Risks 05 (Video): What Second-Time Founders Do Differently (Hussein Fazal)
If you could start your business all over again, what would you do differently? For our third RSR interview, I sat down with Hussein Fazal, founder and CEO of SnapTravel, and previously, AdParlor Inc. (acquired by AdKnowledge in 2011).
Startup Lesson 6: Growth is a Conscious Effort
I’ve always wondered how people seemingly become fully functioning, responsible adults overnight. But during my last 3 months of destressing I’ve come to realize that this is not the case. Even if success appears to be instantaneous, for yourself and others, a series of many conscious (and often not the most pleasant) choices are what get people there.
Reduce Startup Risks 04 (Video): Make Product Management Your Competitive Advantage (Adam Jarczyn)
Product managers and their teams are often at risk of being pulled in eighteen different directions at once. For our latest RSR interview, I sat down with Adam Jarczyn, SVP Operations and Product at #Paid to learn how to cut the distractions and make your product team part of your competitive advantage.
All Startups Are the Same
Reduce Startup Risks 03 (Video): Building Highly Effective Product Teams (Bohdan Zabawasky)
I sat down with Bohdan Zabawsky, serial CTO and founder of Fortay.co to unpack transitioning from a startup to a major organization, hiring for success, anticipating problems, and dealing with toxic employees while keeping strong employees motivated — specifically engineers, whether they are destined for leadership or not.
Reducing Stress: The 30-Day Challenge
Startup Lesson 4: Obsess Over Retention
Startup Lesson 3: Build Your Onboarding Program from Day One
When we started StackAdapt four years ago, our onboarding process was much like many other startups’: Bring your own laptop… Here is your desk… Please shadow this guy.” It wasn’t until a couple of years in that we realized we were doing it wrong. Of course, employee onboarding, like many things, is always work-in-progress, but here are some tips for avoiding the mistakes we made in the early days of welcoming and educating new staff.
Reduce Startup Risks 02 (Video): Product-Market Fit and Pivots (Ivan Tsarynny)
Finding product-market fit should be #1 priority for every startup. It's a race against time to find it before you run out of money. Pivots are an inevitable part of it, and as a founder, you should get comfortable with changing and moving very fast. Surprisingly, aside from Andreessen Horowitz, very few people talk about these topics. That's what makes this video so special.
A Guide to Getting Your First (or Sixth) Office
It all started four years ago in my kitchen. Fast forward five (five!) offices later and we occupy a 9,000 sq. ft. office in the heart of Toronto’s startup hub. And, believe it or not, we are moving into a 16,000 sq. ft. space in 3 months. What have I learned from moving offices six times? A lot. In the spirit of paying it forward, here is everything I’ve learned about business real estate.
Startup Lesson 2: Work from the Fundamentals
Some things change, some things stay the same. This simple idea can help you build your startup into something that will stick. At StackAdapt, two fundamental concepts help us uncover opportunities and decide our company’s direction. Differentiating between and acknowledging finite trends and universal truths will impact how you view your product, industry, and customers and help decided the direction of your business.
Startup Lesson 1: Vitamin vs. Painkiller
If you are anything like me, you probably have 5 tubs of vitamins hanging out in your cupboard, many of which expired years ago. No matter how often I am told that taking vitamins is good for my long term health, it is just too easy to forget to take them. Why? There are simply no immediate consequences for my not taking them.
On the other hand, if one is suffering from jetlag, the flu, a wild night… no one forgets to cure their splitting headache with an ibuprofen. Unlike vitamins, painkillers are more than “nice to have”, they are an urgent necessity.
Reduce Startup Risks 01 (Video): Talent and HR Strategies (Rajesh Uttamchandani)
Today, I wanted to share the first video interview with Rajesh Uttamchandani, Managing Director and CPO at Zafin. Overseeing an organisation of well over 500 people in size, he provided some amazing insights on what it means to run a company of this calibre and what startups can start doing today to scale their talent strategies.