Strategic Insights

Practical insights and strategies for founders and CEOs navigating growth challenges.

Built to Scale: The Engines of Chaos and Order

A lack of solid foundations and adaptive structures are often the major bottlenecks that hold back organisations from performing at their full potential. Internal instability can render organisations so ineffective that they become literally paralysed, losing sight of their core purpose and the battles they should be fighting in competitive markets.

High Performance by Design: Incentive Engineering for Startups and Scaleups

Ever seen a company at war with itself? Ever seen Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success working against each other, instead of working together? Sales closing deals at any cost, while Customer Success is left to pick up the pieces? Product and Engineering building features no one asked for? Leadership, HR and Finance working against all of them? If this sounds all too familiar to you, then you are not alone.

Rethinking Growth: Your Sales Problems Cannot Be Solved by Hiring Alone

Hiring the right people and building the right sales team can be a make-or-break project for a company. Yet, many founders and executives are still stuck in outdated hiring and management practices that are costing them dearly. On top of that, “we need more reps” is not always the right answer.

Competing Agendas: Founder-VC-Employee Misalignment and Its Consequences

A startup can be toxic stew of competing interests, misaligned incentives, and unrealistic expectations. Startup employees find themselves often deeply disillusioned and confused by the decisions of a top management that does not seem to prioritize quality, sound business practices and customer value creation, but instead short-term results, headlines, and vanity metrics.

Selling Without Selling Your Soul: The True Test of a Salesperson

Everybody knows about the sleazy, fast-talking salespeople who will cheat, lie, and say anything to close a deal. They make grandiose promises they cannot keep, manipulate you, gaslight you, and pressure you until you sign the contract. The pressure to hit high targets, the hope for big commissions, and the fear of losing out to the competition in their teams – these three factors alone can tempt even the most principled salesperson to cross the line into shady territorities.

The Curse of the High Performer: When Winning Feels Like Losing

Leaders love them. Peers resent them. High Performers. Everybody wants them on their team, but rarely anyone knows what to do with them once they are there, how to manage them and what their impact, both positive and negative, can be. If you are leading high performers or think of yourself as the odd person out who always has higher standards of quality & excellence than others, then this is for you.

Founder Mode: The 'Hire and Hope' Trap Crushing Startups

“Hire good people and let them do their jobs.” When I read Paul Graham’s take on this, I nodded along… until I didn’t. “Letting them do their jobs” as a stand-alone advice is of course not helpful at all. It means different things to different people and even “good people” still need guidance and context.

The Rise of AI in Sales: Syncing Sales Skills and Machine Intelligence

“The first job to be replaced by the robots should be cold calling and phone sales!” A common sentiment, shared by me, after endless hours of high-volume cold calling and even more endless hours of CRM updating, that felt like a terrible waste of life time… Sales can be tough.

Scaling Smart: How Series-A Startups Achieve Outsized Growth Despite the Odds

The transition from a seed-stage to a Series A can make or break a startup. Shortly after raising Series A, many startups are still not really seen as companies yet. Investors might look at them as experiments, hypotheses, bets on a future that may or may not come to pass.

Yes-Men? No Thanks: The End of Obedience Culture

Obedience cultures thrive on control, micromanagement, and a deep mistrust of employees’ capabilities. Leaders in these environments dictate every move, treating their teams like children who need constant supervision. This infantilizing approach assumes employees are incapable of independent thought or action.

Flawless Code, Empty Cart: When Brilliance Doesn't Pay

You’ve poured your heart and soul into building the perfect product. Every line of code is a masterpiece, every feature a stroke of genius. But your technical brilliance might end up being your biggest liability. Nearly half of all startup failures can be attributed to building something that customers simply don’t want or need.

The Corporate Mafia: When 'Family' Culture Becomes Destructive

Some companies try to mold their workplaces into family utopias. Compared to cold-blooded corporate bureaucracies, a ‘family-like’ culture seems to be the pinnacle of modern organizational development. But more often than not, it turns into a breeding ground for dysfunction and inequity. What was initially intended to be a supportive environment, can turn into a playground for favoritism and echo chambers over time.