This post will serve as an FAQ to go along with my previous posts on option grant sizing and co-founder stock equity splits. These are some of the questions I’ve heard — many directly from my past posts. To best understand this post you should read my earlier series, including…

As soon as your company is up and running, you’ll need to start hiring. Consultants, employees, contractors — as CEO you’ll always be on the lookout for good people. Hiring is one of the most important jobs as CEO. Getting people to say “Yes” is hard. And they’ll start asking…

Written by Josh Melick , 3x founder, 3 exits, acquired 2 companies, raised $40M in venture capital. This is the first post in a three part series on calculating equity amounts for co-founders, employees, and others like advisors and board members. Picking a co-founder is the first, and often hardest…

Written by Josh Melick. Founder of Broadly.com, ex-Salesforce, Intuit, AT&T, and Demandforce, three time startup founder, raised more than $40M in venture capital Early founders are often stuck figuring out how to get off the ground. That chicken-egg problem. Friends and random contacts show up offering help in every direction…

I talk a lot about sales topics. But, I also talk about product items and sometimes people are surprised that my background is in engineering, turned PM, and not sales. In fact I’ve never “directly” worked in sales (debatable, lol). So what gives? And why do you care? Once you’ve…

By Josh Melick — In business we often use references to sports or even references to war: the idea of going to battle, winning, beating the opponent, etc. These references are often overused, but there are certainly parallels. One simple concept I like to think about is offense vs. defense. In many sports you…

As entrepreneurs, we all remember those first few sales. The first time someone actually pays for your product or service is a distinct and exciting experience — enough to get you hooked. …