Most of what early-stage founders believe is wrong – the market they’re serving, the problem they're solving, the product they’re building, the resources they need.
I’m here to keep you alive so you can figure it out and build a company that matters, whether you measure that in dollars, impact or both.
WHY “OBVIOUS” STARTUP ADVICE?
Founders make dumb decisions because they don’t know better. Or, worse, they’re taught shitty strategies from influencers who suffer from survivorship bias and investors who take a portfolio approach.
Building a startup isn’t complicated, it’s just very different from what you’ve been told. I coach from a set of basic principles that you will use over and over again, in a wide variety of situations. What my clients say over and over is, “that makes so much sense – it seems obvious in retrospect.”
But remember – simple isn’t easy – so I’ll also bring some oft-needed accountability to the table. I’m your biggest cheerleader when things are hard (things are always hard). I kick your ass when it needs kicking. You will never wonder what I’m thinking.
WHO I COACH
I work with highly motivated startup CEOs. On occasion, I work with larger companies on new product development, but I have found that genuine humility and hunger are requirements for any successful client engagement and industry leaders often lack both.
My startup clients have usually raised capital (or are in the process of) and are developing or growing their first product or service.
My clients are smart, successful and ambitious. They are looking to grow their revenues and their own personal capabilities. They are open to outside feedback and ready to challenge their own beliefs. Over the years I have learned that this requires a combination of both humility and confidence.
I can and do fire clients who nod at the right places and then ignore all of my advice. I’m not always right — hell, I’m lucky to bat .300 — but you can, and should, ignore me for free. I commit to being your biggest advocate. You commit to busting your ass and building the best version of your company, and yourself.
“Eric is insanely experienced, despite how much he downplays it. He has become the single most important sounding board in our company, and forces me to genuinely understand the choices that we’re making.”
The easiest thing to do is check out my LinkedIn profile, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
I dropped out of college in 1995 and moved across the county to put some gaming magazines online. This was when there were only five videogame sites on the entire World Wide Web. In the following 25 years, I started numerous companies that you may have heard of, including IGN, MyBlogLog and Gnip.
More importantly, I started a bunch of companies you never heard of, because they were stupid and I should never have launched them. That is where I learned the most about startups, in the “oh god, oh god, please don’t do that because I’ve tried it four times and it never works.”
EXPERIENCE
Companies I’ve started have exited for nearly a billion dollars of value (one IPO, two meaningful exits, one turnaround). That said, most of my value comes from my many failed projects. I can’t tell you why my successes happened (so much of that is built on other people’s efforts and straight-up luck), but I can tell you what killed all of my failures.
I am not smarter than you, I just have more battle scars and more experiences to pattern match against. Basically, I’m you from the future.
SUCCESSES
IGN
I dropped out of college in 1995 to come up with a web strategy for publisher Imagine Media. Launched IGN, the web’s first videogame news network, a year later. IGN grew to a Top 50 web site, went public in 2000 and eventually sold to News Corp for $650M.
Gnip
Founding CEO of big data provider Gnip. Initially founded on the belief that social APIs were going to take over the web. Raised capital with a 12-page Powerpoint deck and a dream. Sold to Twitter for $150M. Straight up, smarter people than I made that acquisition happen.
MyBlogLog
Co-founding product guy. We started out as a blog stats company and pivoted into a distributed social media company at the suggestion of a random dude who cold-emailed us (we hired him as our CEO). Sold to Yahoo for $12M without ever taking funding.
Beatport
Provided strategic consulting on an e-commerce turnaround. Simply asked “hey, what are you doing with these 40 million fans who visit every year? Let’s tell a story about them.” Went from an $8M acquisition offer to $52M acquisition in 14 months.
FAILURES (abbreviated)
OneTrueFan
Co-founding Co-CEO. Tried to recapture the zeitgeist of MyBlogLog while failing to recognize that blogging had ceded the market to microblogging platforms. Also spent way too much time on a strategic partnership that failed to materialize. Lost $1.2M of investor money.
Zentact
My white whale. I still think this thing should exist, a software consiglieri that reads the news and helps you strengthen your network by suggesting opportunities to reach out to people you haven’t connected with in a while. As co-founder, I assembled the team and raised capital and lost $250k of investor money.
Minerva Software
Founding CEO of a videogame-based training platform back when “Serious Games” were a thing. Landed a multi-million dollar contract with Best Buy and was unable to raise capital because I could never land a second customer. Beware outliers. Put a second mortgage on my house to finance the company.
BuzzSite
Launched an entertainment aggregator in 2000 because 1) IGN had moved away from the network play and 2) I was pissed that I wasn’t given an executive role in IGN’s spin-out. Effectively my rebound/revenge girlfriend. You know how well those work out.
Atlas Consulting
Tried to launch a digital media agency back in 1994, selling to radio stations and publishing companies. We could have been Razorfish or Agency.com. Crowning moment was when I landed my first meeting and brought my desktop PC to their office to run a demo.
Additional Experience & Projects
Startup Coach
Yeah, what I’m doing now. I’ve worked with more than a hundred startup CEOs, learning from their experiences and helping them create world-changing businesses. This has given me X-ray vision :)
Thunderview CEO Dinners
I throw a monthly dinner specifically for Colorado-based startups CEOs who are looking for a community of other folk going through the same crazy journey. Check it out here.
Techstars Mentor
I was a mentor with the Techstars accelerator starting with their very first cohort in Boulder in 2007. Over the years I’ve work with many, many Techstars companies in Boulder, Denver, New York, Philadelphia and Seattle.
Cloudspace
I co-owned a software development shop for four years and worked with dozens of companies, from startups to tech darlings like SoundCloud to Fortune 50 companies like AIG. It doesn’t matter what size the company, people make the same mistakes.
Investment and Advising
Very occasionally I invest in a company. Slightly less occasionally I accept stock options for advising. I was the first advisor to Zynga. That was neat.
“I occasionally wanted to punch Eric in the face, and every time I realized he was pointing out how I’d been lying to myself and I needed to step up my game.”
CLIENT TESTIMONIALS
THE SPECIFICS
Regardless of how engagement model, we’re going to focus on a handful of things:
Strategic initiatives – we’ll determine the most important thing your company can do this month / quarter to level up your business and significantly grow revenue
Tactical support of the strategic – once we’ve decided on a direction, we’ll invest time in making it happen. This means planning, execution and accountability.
Ad-hoc tactical – things pop up when building a company: co-founder issues, client mishaps, employee challenges – bring them to our calls and we’ll keep them from becoming problems.
Founder therapy – starting a company is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. It’s easy to feel dumb, or exhausted, or defeated, and sometimes we’ll just trade stories for a while and you’ll realize it’s not just you.
FUNDED/PROFITABLE STARTUPS
Weekly one-on-one coaching sessions is the most direct path to product/market fit. At the early stage, your business is changing on a weekly basis and we should be chatting at a similar pace. If you aren’t learning enough to keep these conversations interesting, you aren’t learning fast enough.
Price: $4,000/mo or $2,500/mo + 1% equity vesting over 12 months
Pre-funded Startups
We have a monthly one-on-one coaching session where we exclusively discuss your number one priority and relevant tactical support strategies – there’s no time for fucking around. Additionally, I run a weekly group coaching call where we can discuss the ad hoc questions that come up and share best practices.
Price: $1,000/mo + 1% equity vesting over 12 months
FRACTIONAL CO-FOUNDING
Sometimes, a founder shows up with an idea and we work together to determine if there’s gold in them thar hills. If so, I’ll invest $25k and sign on to roll up my sleeves for two years, working five hours a week on the startup’s biggest needs.