Helge Seetzen – Page 2 – Helge Seetzen

Entrepreneurship , People

Is your Startup Ready for Titles?

In a startup things move constantly, roles change and within a few months people swing from one side of the spectrum to the other depending on their immediate needs. This works well when the team is small and people feel ownership of the whole project. I’ve had multiple roles...

December 11, 2012June 30, 2017

Entrepreneurship

When Co-Founder Asymmetry Works

I recently listed co-founder asymmetry as one of the key failure conditions for startups. While definitely a major cause of startup collapse, there is one scenario where co-founder asymmetry can work well enough: university spin-outs where you have student-professor partnership. Students don’t have the expertise and seniority of their...

October 30, 2012June 30, 2017

Entrepreneurship , People

Why Does Hiring Feel Like Dating?

You are managing a startup. It is growing quickly and you have personally become the entire human resources department. And admit it, you under estimated the time it takes to find the right person who will understand the business vision and fit in with your culture. Are you meeting...

October 23, 2012June 27, 2017

Entrepreneurship

Working Towards a Project Launch

When Kennedy said “By the end of this decade, we will land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth,” he should be: Concrete. Goal He could have said “We should aim to dominate the space race.” But what would that mean? Sending a monkey to...

August 21, 2012July 4, 2017

Venture Capital

5 Reasons “Dumb Money” is OK

There is a common view in the start-up investment world that “smart money” is worth a lot more to a company than “dumb money”: the latter being worth just its monetary value, while the former might warrant additional considerations (e.g. board seats, etc.). The use of a pejorative word...

August 15, 2012July 4, 2017

Technology

Three Core Tech Trends

There are, in my mind, three major technology trends in this decade’s consumer electronics world: narcissism, visual realism, and naturalism in interaction. 1) Narcissism Narcissism is less interesting to TandemLaunch, but has become a major driver of our economy. We all want to be famous, we all want to...

August 2, 2012July 4, 2017

Entrepreneurship

On Communication, Dentists, and Project Management

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a situation that we all fear and try to avoid as much as possible: I was lying in a chair while a complete stranger poked around in my mouth with instruments that seem to have their origin in a medieval...

July 24, 2012July 4, 2017

Entrepreneurship

How Incentive Models Skew Behaviour

I have been on a bit of a kick about employee incentive plans lately, and observed an interesting trend earlier this year while we were looking to hire a CFO here at TandemLaunch Technologies. Based on the limited sample of a few dozen finance executives who I interviewed, it...

July 19, 2012July 4, 2017

Entrepreneurship , People

Linearity and Employee Incentives Plans

In my last blog post I talked about the fundamentals of effective employee incentive plans: Proportionality, Transparency, Appropriateness, and Certainty. To my mind of thinking, creating linearity in your employee incentive plans is essential to achieve Transparency and Proportionality, and I’d like to elaborate on that a bit using the...

July 3, 2012July 4, 2017

Entrepreneurship

How to Create Meaningful Employee Incentives

The purpose of incentive plans is to do exactly what the name implies – incentivise the people in your company (both executives and employees) to contribute more than they normally would. In other words, you want them to work harder, move faster, take on more ownership, and generally make...

June 26, 2012July 4, 2017

Author: Helge Seetzen