Why VCs Used to Fire Us

Larry Chiang’s bestselling book, “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School”, has an entire chapter devoted to “Failing Forward”. As EIR at Stanford University, he helps founders get fired less often by VCs. His work in credit receivables risk, coupled with getting college consumers get a FICO over 750, helps him mitigate entrepreneur risk. Post Harvard Law School keynote, Harvard Business wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“. This post is about, “Why VCs Fire Founders”.

https://bit.ly/buster14512w

By Larry Chiang

Problem: VCs fire us founders.

I have notoriously been anti VC. ReverseVC was where I made VCs pay to pitch. But perhaps VCs should fire some founders who can’t get sales.

Plot spoiler: if you outsource selling and / or hire a vp of sales to sell for you, the likelihood of YOU getting fired TRIPLES. Both me and Steve Blank pattern recognize the fact that technical co-founders get fired because they refuse to sell or/and can’t sell…

	Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
5/3/15, 12:35 PM VCs fire us bc the vp sales ain’t working out. It’s the “Startup Death Spiral” as per bit.ly/sblank713 #CTCFTR pic.twitter.com/nkCvaZOHgt

Professor Steve Blank wrote about “Customer Development Manifesto” based on his book ‘4 Steps to the Epiphany’

https://bit.ly/sblank710

bit.ly/sblank711

https://bit.ly/sblank712

bit.ly/sblank713

https://bit.ly/vc0311b

	Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
5/3/15, 1:07 PM Go do ‘cust dev cycle’ is like saying to 1776 infantry @front lines: “Volunteer, meet your rifle for 1st time.” pic.twitter.com/5LeNXq04MU

SOLUTION:

Instead, as CS major co-founders, pop your deal and sales cherry by doing customer development cycle in region #2 (where the mainstream market is)

Yes, you’re going to have to sell.

This area is where you focus on a vertical in an existing market.

Let’s get a foothold in the market

Solution is “Part V” aka the Fifth Epiphany https://bit.ly/vc0311b

SOLUTION IS:

	Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
5/3/15, 10:55 PM Part 5 (Part V) part 3 = startup death spiral in ‘Customer Dev Manifesto’ #csMajorCRO pic.twitter.com/9FF7JGwivJ

Solution to female founders like Sandy Lerner not getting fired by Sequoia is…

	Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
5/3/15, 11:04 PM Part V = #csMajorCRO (part 1 of 5 = ‘Customer Dev Manifesto’ bit.ly/sblank711) pic.twitter.com/D5zDmYhnU7

Engineering 145 had a segment on sales. See video https://bit.ly/buster14512v

	Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
5/3/15, 12:45 PM In short, you’re sending founders to a premie startup death (VCs firing us). Instead do an #LCMCC! cc #CTCFTR pic.twitter.com/5FxajaJad7

This is a screen shot of LCMCC as it pertains to Why VCs fired us from the engr 145 video https://bit.ly/buster14512w

	Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
5/3/15, 12:41 PM How did @billclerico, YC 09, “do things that don’t scale”!? He unconscious competently did #WTDoTYASES (aka #cs183s!) pic.twitter.com/Ykxbq1wjJn

 

CS 183s is when I forked CS 183b. CS 183s is where I curate things that are under the business subroutine: “Do things that don’t scale”

https://bit.ly/buster14512v