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But Can You Run a Company Without Performance Reviews?

November 25, 2011

In my years in business I’ve seen performance reviews from several angles, good and bad. As my employee numbers grew past a handful to several dozen, the reviews seemed more necessary than they were when we were smaller. One of my earlier employees took the job offer only on the condition of two reviews per [...]

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Do You Understand the Power of Instant Rejection?

October 28, 2011

A friend referred me to Vinod Khosla’s Five-Second Rule at Forbes.com. It’s about the slide decks we use for presenting, and its wisdom is a lot like what you get in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink or thousands of blog posts about the importance of headlines. Here’s the Vinod’s test for slide decks: he puts a slide [...]

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Brace Yourself. Success Brings Detractors.

September 12, 2011

It’s funny — well, maybe annoying is a better word — how one of the so-called trappings of success is criticism. Get up in front of a crowd to speak, launch a website, develop and launch a product, start a business, and you’re in front of people. And that means you open yourself up to [...]

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Never Do a Contract When a Letter Will Do

September 6, 2011

I admit I probably shouldn’t be posting this because I’m not an attorney, so I don’t give legal advice. This is just anecdotal, based on what I’ve seen in my business experience. Consult your attorney. I worked for years with a smart, honest business lawyer who — well, let me get to that later in [...]

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