187. CEO Has Three Responsibilities feat. Eric Marcoullier Artwork

VC Minute

Quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better. Founders, do you feel like you're fundraising on an uneven playing field? You are. The VC minute is here to help you level up. Venture capitalists navigate pitches and negotiate investments every day. They know the ins and outs and are up-to-date on the current funding environment. But as a founder, it may be your first foray into fundraising, and no matter how much success you've had in other areas nothing truly prepares you for the fundraising journey. The VC Minute was created to help founders close this gap. While it may seem like securing an investment at the seed stage is mostly driven by luck, there are steps founders can take to increase the odds of successfully raising a round. And that's what we're going to cover on the VC Minute through a series of short episodes. I'm going to share with you insights to help navigate the seed stage financing dynamics. I'm Rich Maloy, Managing Partner at SpringTime Ventures with 25 years business experience a dozen years in the startup ecosystem. I've applied my experience from sales, finance, and venture investing, to help startup founders fundraise better.

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VC Minute

187. CEO Has Three Responsibilities feat. Eric Marcoullier

February 26, 2024 • Eric Marcoullier • Season 4 • Episode 187

0:00 | 3:47

Text your thoughts directly to Rich.

The CEO is responsible for three things: communicate the vision, hire great people, and don't run out of money. But it all boils down to just one thing.

About Eric Marcoullier
Eric coaches first- and second-time tech CEOs, keeping their companies alive long enough to get lucky, figure out their business, find product/market fit and replace his ass with someone who knows how to scale companies beyond $5M in ARR. His work primarily involves challenging business assumptions, providing frameworks for new situations and distilling complexity down to basic, actionable ideas. If you'd like to learn more about his coaching, visit www.marcoullier.com or www.linkedin.com/in/bpm140

About AVL Growth Partners
AVL Growth Partners, founded in 2009, is the leading fractional Finance and Accounting firm supporting organizations in pivoting from growth to scale. AVL brings an experienced team of CFOs, Controllers, and Accountants to your organization, delivering transparent, strategic actions for short and long-term success. Transform your financial approach affordably with AVL, supporting companies coast to coast - get to know AVL Growth Partners at avlgrowth.com. (Sponsored)

About SpringTime Ventures
SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech & insurtech, and logistics & supply chain. We look for founders with domain expertise, forging a path with a truly transformative technology. We only invest in software-based businesses in the USA. We bring a people-focused approach, work quickly, and reach conviction independently. Our initial check size is $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.

Rich 0:01

This is Rich Maloy with SpringTime Ventures, bringing you the VC Minute, quick advice to help startup founders fundraise better. This week our guest is Eric Marcoullier, and if you missed Eric's two episodes from last week on shutting down, you'd need to go back and listen to those. In addition, I wanted to be sure that you all got to benefit from Eric startup advice. Eric coaches first and second time. CEO's. According to Eric's website, he has founded at least nine companies. Three of which have sold, one of which IPO'd, and all the rest apparently have failed. And that's what I love about Eric. He's not hiding it, he's not sugarcoatin' it. Here's the stuff that went, right. Here's the shit that went wrong. And you know what? He has some great advice for us this week. I'm so excited for you to learn from him as I have. But first I want to thank AVL Growth Partners for supporting the VC minute. Outsourcing your finance and accounting function is a no brainer for startups. And you need to work with a firm that specializes in high growth companies. Founded in 2009. AVL has fueled the success of over 1200 early stage companies. Specializing in raising capital, M&A, financial modeling, scaling, and bringing financial transparency and a disciplined approach to the companies they work with. AVL works seamlessly as a member of your team and has the experience to support both VC-backed and bootstrapped companies. Head to AVLgrowth.com and explore how they can be pivotal to your growth. AVL Growth Partners. Your success. Their expertise.

Eric Marcoullier 1:40

My name is Eric Marcoulier and I, for the last several years, have been exclusively a startup coach. I started technology companies from 1995 when I dropped out of college to move to San Francisco and put a publishing company online, and I never looked back. Over the last nearly 30 years, I've started a couple of companies that did pretty good. I've started a ton of companies that have absolutely imploded. And frankly, I think that most everything that I know about starting companies isn't because of the successes that I've had. In most cases, somebody else took the company across the finish line and had the great success. I just know how to fuck companies up. And so I, through my coaching, look at the things that I generally did wrong and help people identify those things that they might be doing before it's too late. One of the things that I always go back to with my CEOs that I coach is the concept that the CEO has three responsibilities. And I didn't come up with this. I think I heard it from from Dave Cohen over Techstars. He probably heard it from somewhere else. The core idea, right, is the CEO is responsible for three things: communicate the vision, hire great people, and don't run out of money. And when you think about that when you are hiring great people, how do you do that as a CEO? Communicate the vision. You talk about the opportunity and the impact in the world. You're looking for missionaries and not mercenaries. And then when you're when you're managing those people, it stems from the vision. Same time when you're trying to not run out of money, right? That's 2 things: sales and fundraising. How do you raise capital, especially early days? Team and dream. You communicate the vision. How do you sell, especially in the early days to customers where you don't have a brand yet, you communicate the vision. The thing that I really think is hidden in in this aphorism is that the CEO doesn't have three jobs. The CEO has one job. And that is always to start with "why" and then build a cohesive story around that that inspires your team, your investors and your customers.

Rich Maloy

Host