What can go wrong with your business growth?
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus So, your business has begun to take off. You’ve figured out your channels of distribution, pricing model and how to support your growing list [...]
Recognize your five critical business risks.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus If you could predict a crisis within your business before its occurrence, wouldn’t you move to prevent or reduce its impact? Making such predictions [...]
Premature scaling can kill your business.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Here’s a lesson from experience. Venture capitalists sometimes make an error in directing their portfolio company CEOs to push resources to the limit and scale [...]
Five ways to make and execute a great plan
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus It is all about execution. Waiting over a year to see results is too long, since your chance of mid-course correction is greatly reduced. To [...]
How big is your ocean? A lesson in TAM, SAM & SOM
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Is this a problem or an opportunity? This insight is like a Hans Christian Anderson parable, but aimed at you and your business… There are [...]
The four rules for motivating your employees with money.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus We’ve debated this one forever it seems. Should be overwhelm prospective employees with stock options and perks? Or concentrate our available resources on just [...]
VC investors: Don’t be greedy even if you can.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus First, the marginal exit event: Sometimes the end game or sale of the company is not a happy event for the early investors, including the [...]
Is there gold in your old intellectual property?
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Digging through your IP closet for gold… In past years, several times a month I’d have lunch with one of my CEOs, and each [...]
Budget from the top down or bottom up? A puzzle.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Here’s the argument: Many people believe that bottom-up budgeting leads to waste and misdirection. The advocates of top-down budgeting are strong in their belief [...]
Patent litigation can kill the small guy.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Here’s the bright side to patents. When you think of patents, you think of added value to the corporation in the form of protection [...]
Jeff Bezos asked a question that blew me away!
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus Here’s the question: This piece of wisdom came from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, during a board meeting for one of the companies where [...]
My hard-earned lessons from negative exits.
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus In my life as an early-stage investor, I’ve been closely involved with so many businesses, there were bound to be numerous stories of actual [...]
Why your investors may not respond when you need money
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman Emeritus When do most companies communicate? Early stage company investors as a group have a common gripe – almost universal. Information flows from the company [...]
Is your CFO a bookkeeper or a strategist?
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus Here’s one that most small company founders and CEO’s miss until it may be too late. What is the role of a chief financial [...]
Can you be an adaptive business leader?
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus The title of this insight happens to be the name of a CEO roundtable organization I belong to and have been a member since [...]
Will you BURN the next manager you hire?
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus It seems to be a rule, not an exception. Many senior managers and early entrepreneurs create their own mess with this one. The first [...]
Are the “FIVE WHY’S” in your arsenal?
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus This is a trick headline. There can be three “whys” or twenty, depending upon the issue and the responses. To make the point, the [...]
Ready, AIM, fire! Really?
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus You’ve surely heard the variations on this theme. “Ready, fire aim” was popular in the 1990’s, accredited to any of several authors. I used [...]
Should you include your sweat equity in a business plan?
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus Investors love it when entrepreneurs draw little or no money from their startups. It extends the cash available for research and other necessary fixed [...]
My dad said: “Never take on a business partner.”
by Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus My dad was a smart businessman, even if not formally trained. He occasionally gave me advice that turned out to be more than wise, [...]
What is your biggest error in company planning?
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus The biggest error in planning may not be spreadsheet calculation error. Or cost estimation. It is most often missed assumptions about the market, the [...]
Can you build a company, not just a product?
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus And sometimes that idea is just too small a slice of the big picture to be interesting to investors. There was a recent investor [...]
What’s your personal-business end game?
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus Remembering our original vision When we start a business, we are optimistic that we will succeed and dream of riches to follow when the [...]
What would happen to the business if you die, leave or are disabled?
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus Yes, we’re invincible when young When we are young and early in our business lives, we feel infallible to the degree that we do [...]
Selling your company for less than expected?
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus How about outside investors? Sometimes the end game or sale of the company is not a happy event. Especially when outside investors, venture capitalists, [...]
An economics lesson for growing companies
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus Catching up from past insights Growing companies usually require more working capital during their periods of rapid growth. In past insights we have calculated [...]
How to make the most useful dashboard
By Dave Berkus, TCA Chairman emeritus The need for real time information From sports car to aircraft to super tanker, successful operation depends upon the pilot’s understanding and urgent timely [...]
Could you be your company’s bottleneck?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels So many tasks; so little time As a manager, you have a number of critical tasks that are general to your position [...]
Do you even know what questions to ask?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Great executives and managers seem to intuitively know what they don’t know. But it is not at all uncommon to not even [...]
Reduce five risks: Increase your valuation
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Why five risks? In the creation of a young company, there are five principal risks to be addressed by the entrepreneur. Professional [...]
Does your company have a “dirty cap table?”
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels How it happens When you seek professional investors, whether organized angels or venture capitalists, one of the early questions you are asked [...]
Three questions to answer about your COVID response
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Most of us are affected by this current crisis. Many businesses threatened with closure forever. Small businesses are the most vulnerable, even [...]
Cash control during these strange times
by Dave Berkus, , Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels And these are indeed strange times, especially if you haven’t lived through 2000-2002 and 2007-2008 recessions and difficulty in finding money from [...]
What’s the minimum information to give your fellow investors?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Every investor wants regular information from companies taking their money. And most of us investors are frustrated by the lack of regular [...]
Should a leader support constant change?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels The worrying that always precedes a change When a new CEO or manager is hired into a company, for a while lots [...]
How much of a business should go to investors?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Financial History and Projections Let’s start with the basics. If you are investing in a going business with a track record of [...]
Can you name the two most powerful words for business?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Here’s a puzzle where the answer come first. “Help me.” Over the years I have heard many stories from entrepreneurs, students, news [...]
Could the company have created a “dirty cap table?”
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Oh, I know. When an entrepreneur started the business, s/he took investments from friends and family in small amounts just to get [...]
Do you take those loyal, key customers for granted?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels OK. We know that an executive’s job is not easy. Nor is there much time in a typical day for outreach of [...]
Think ahead when raising early investment rounds
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Some businesses just can’t fit within the angel capital or friends and family model for raising funds. Sooner or later you may [...]
Hire for your core. Partner for the rest.
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels A trend for businesses large and small There is a major trend shaping up that is worldwide, already identified by hundreds of [...]
Would you sign a personal guarantee if you have investors?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels It’s a fact of life that a banker, lender or lessor will ask for a personal guarantee from the founder or entrepreneur [...]
Could you have created a “dirty cap table?”
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Oh, I know. When you started the business, you took investments from friends and family in small amounts just to get you [...]
Oh, go ahead and ask for a five-million-dollar investment in your startup.
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels I cannot tell you how many times I have seen executive summaries of business plans in which the entrepreneur seeks $5,000,000 to [...]
Will your company’s sale be celebration or silence?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels First, there are at least three types of exits I’ve been involved with well over twenty successful exits and four initial public [...]
Investors, the board, and you: Who controls strategy?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels You’re building a company from your vision and a passion, and lots of people are going to tell you that you have [...]
How would you like a great advisory board?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Have you ever thought of creating an advisory board? As you can guess, that would be an informal group with no legal [...]
How do you pay an early stage board?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Give one percent equity to each outside board member vesting over four years of service. Many early stage CEOs and board members [...]
What’s a company board good for, anyway?
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels Some of you have gotten along forever without a board of directors, or used your spouse as the “other” board member from [...]
Timing is everything in a sale.
By Dave Berkus, Chairman Emeritus, Tech Coast Angels
Almost anyone who has sold a company has a story to tell about their good deal, the 
problems with the buyer, a last-minute change of terms, or more.
I have saved this next story until now because it is one of my favorites, and certainly illustrates the point about timing being a combination of luck and skill as well as anything I could devise from fiction.… Read the rest