The idea for Notes on a Startup came about a year after I had left CloudSense, a software as a service (SaaS) company that I had co-founded as its CEO a decade earlier.

I was in my London office, working at my desk. It was early morning. The day stretched before me. I was the co-owner and CEO of CloudSense, a B2B tech start-up. My three co-founders and I had reached our one-year anniversary, which we’d celebrated in a local Lebanese restaurant one week earlier.

I spent years trying to second guess how a mature software product business should work. In the early days other software companies seemed more polished, and more deliberate.

Good product marketing needs both a product that solves a problem paying customers are craving, and the right positioning and messaging so that it resonates and connects with its audience.

Selling to new customers is an expensive process and ties up your most expensive resources before it delivers any contracts or cash. As a CEO, I was soon to learn that an ambitious start up is in for a bumpy ride if it’s not developing predictable ways of finding sufficient good leads and then nurturing them to create sales-ready opportunities

Enterprise Sales requires a ‘Sales Motion’ incorporating people and culture, process, a solid framework for coaching and improvement, good communications and regular measurement. Developing this takes time but it starts with understanding of what good looks like. This post will set you up with the right understanding of how to win.

In the mythology of entrepreneurship, venture capital (VC) funding has been enshrined as a rite of passage: Businesspeople have a brilliant idea, they secure an exciting investor at an amazing valuation, and the company Skyrockets.

It was the business trouble shooter Michael E. Gerber who championed the idea of creating a business as a system that should standardise, automate, and free you as its founder to grow your business. He said, “The entrepreneur falls in love with the business, not with the product. The technician who is in love with the product, cannot help you grow a successful business.”

Entrepreneurship and Talent could be the title of an entire book. My aim is to guide founders and with some of the headline lessons I learned, and as such this next section should provide pointers so you can map your people and talent priorities better. 

It’s common in today’s start-up scene that early-stage investors lead with the question, “Who’s your co-founder?”

I’ve written elsewhere about the lengthy time horizon for growing a B2B SaaS business. If you begin with the expectation that it will likely take a decade to build a company and realize its potential, you will hopefully be motivated to set down some roots to anchor you and your business over the long run. You may reach your goals sooner, and in my experience, you are more likely to do so if your business is designed to be sustainable for you from the start.

Founders often start businesses with two big aims.

They want to create and lead an organisation towards a chosen objective, and by doing this they want to create a life-changing amount of money.