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In The Media

Avoiding Startup Bankruptcy

by Larry Chiang on May 20, 2015

Larry Chiang’s book, What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School, has an entire chapter devoted to “Entrepreneurship #Ch9 and Sales via Lead Generation #Ch6”. As CEO of Duck9, he helps institutions make credit receivables less risky and plays the other side to by getting college students a “FICO” credit score over “748.6”. After a Harvard Law School keynote, Harvard Business wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School


NY Fashion Week has supermodels getting a high FICO credit score because I supermodel on-the-side
By Larry Chiang
I have a bankruptcy mentor. His name is Marty Pichison.
If there were a Stanford engineering or Stanford business final exam on startup bankruptcy, I’d rank on the right side of the bell curve. The bell curve is a grading system that hands out A to “F”. Not like ‘A’ to “B-“. I guess there needs to be a class on this street smart practice of avoiding bankruptcy
Let’s duck startup bankruptcy
Number one, leading cause: Failure. To. Get. Distribution.
Failure to get distribution is key and is, by definition, a startup not distributing.

Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
When you hear, “it just takes the right vp of sales in that startup”, read @sgblank‘s startup articles triumvirate. T-H-E-N #csMajorCRO

Steve Blank outlines “startup death spiral” is a five article series. Plot spoiler: “You’re going to have to be VP of sales as co-founder”.

image.jpeg
Get the book.
Leading Cause of Startup Death
Customer Development Manifesto
Customer Development Manifesto (part 2)
Startup Death Spiral
Paul Graham heaps on and agrees with Steve Blank when he mentors “Do things that don’t scale”
And “Startups are growth”
Customer Development Manifesto
PG implies “do vp sales work” and hints but doesn’t expressly say it Re Lec 3, #CS183B
Sales is what PG wants founders to do. Other YC partners agree
Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
Distribution. It’s the most thought about issue that VCs fire founders over #DuckCh9Bk duck9.com/blog/venture-c…

What is on your slidedeck? Re Distribution

#1 method to avoid startup bankruptcy is to be the vp of sales as the co-founder.
Hiring out for it, does not work.
Let me repeat, hiring out for VP sales doesn’t work.
This happens so often and causes so much startup death, that I created a hashtag that solves startup bankruptcy, “#CSmajorCRO”
This solves startup bankruptcy and cures death. Someone give me an effen Pulitzer.
CS major Chief Revenue Officer =
=
All 3 co-Founders
+
VP sales skills
To repeat, “You can’t just hire a vp of sales because ‘startup death spiral’ happens. https://bit.ly/sblank713
 
To install sales skills inside a tech co-founder is what that #CSmajorCRO hashtag on twitter is meant to do. 
https://bit.ly/buster14512c

Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
VCs-who-blog @a16z, reveal your base sales practice to @dylan20. 1st up: Why other firms fire founders when growth stalls
Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang)
Duck “startup bankruptcy” #DuckCh9Bk by growing growth so VCs won’t fire us @dylan20 duck9.com/blog/stanford-…
(Yup I said ‘growth’ 3x 🙂
ENGR145’s two anchor videos move you to the right on the entrepreneur bell curve (there are sales skills interwoven)

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