After the Funding Checklist

Written on April 16, 2008 – 12:09 pm
Mark Schiefelbein, Product Management Consultant

Several people have asked me to turn the “After the Funding” posts into a document for offline reading. I thought this was a good idea and hope that the document will be a useful checklist for all startups having received funding recently and making plans for the next phase.

Here is a link to a PDF document that provides details on the following five crucial guidelines for recently funded startups:

Base Decision-Making on Long-Term Strategy instead of Short-Term Constraints
Set-up a Repeatable Sales Process First, Then Expand Sales Force
Align Business and Technology around a Product Roadmap
Establish a Product Heartbeat – a Continual Rapid-Fire Release Plan
Build a Team that is Smart and Gets Things Done

I will be back in May with more advice on how to unlock startup growth. In the meantime I would be quite curious to hear about what you consider the most significant challenges in the post-funding stage. Strategy? Sales expansion? Roadmap? Releases? Teams? What are the three challenges that keep you awake at night?

I hope you like that post!

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after the funding, startups

About the author: Mark is founder of agilician, an Amsterdam-based consultancy that unlocks startup growth. He has advised numerous startups on questions involving strategy, positioning, roadmap, process and team. He previously held management positions at startups across Europe including Backbase and Tridion.

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2 comments to “After the Funding Checklist”

By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Apr 16, 2008

Thanks Mark! I’m flying to San Francisco on Sunday so this will give me something to read on the plane. Look forward to it!

[Reply]
By Igor A on Apr 17, 2008

3 issues (which do not necessarily keep me awake, but still…)
• Having sufficient funds (taking care of burnrate and cashflow)
• Matching product to demand
• Sales (how to get people to ’swallow’ that great product)

[Reply]

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