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?