Jeff Cotton

spending my time in, that you can change on a dime, but your top level strategic objectives really need to be set.

And so we always had a customer goal that was all about customer satisfaction, loyalty, support metrics.

We had a number of metrics that we would look at under that underlying goal.

We always had a product goal.

One of the other struggles I had was

different teams fighting inside of the of the company and once again small company right we got down to 29 we grew to 100 before we exited but even those small groups were fighting over well you know i just sold this deal and product didn't deliver on time or product would say hey we didn't know that was coming you know we didn't incorporate it in the proper timeline uh of the roadmap so we published our roadmap and we would talk about it every single month

And we would highlight things in weekly fireside chats on how we were progressing on key roadmap items so that sales always knew what was coming when.

Our channel management team knew what they could talk about with partners.

And then also from a revenue perspective, we were always sort of keeping up with, okay, when do I think I'm probably going to be able to generate new revenue streams based on new product?

Channel was very... Us, what I would call number three for most of you here is demand gen model.

Make sure that you are highlighting to the whole company

how your demand gen model is progressing because this is going to be a key lever for are you going to keep hiring?

Are you not going to keep hiring?

And I would use this one when I would talk to the company at times to say, hey, gang, we just had a really bad 45 days in demand gen.

We're going to slow some things down until that demand gen model picks back up.

And then, of course, financial targets.

We were always keeping the company fully abreast on where we were with networking capital, cash in the bank, revenue, etc.,

Okay, so let's switch gears here and talk about the exit.

So one of the things that I think a lot of startup founders especially, but even as you start to take on VC and you spend time with the board, is how should I think about exit?

How often should I obsess about what is my exit path?