Services For Startup and
Early-Stage Companies

Early-stage companies are the most fragile, have the least resources and the biggest challenges ahead of them.  Developing a new business is one of the biggest challenges in life and generally requires experience in at least five key disciplines (product/service development, finance, sales, marketing and operations) to do well.   For a founder or entrepreneur and their team to be successful they must have not only industry domain experience but all these skills available to design the business at both the strategic and tactical levels (a vision).  Taking all these disciplines into account and then allocating resources appropriately for the specific situation among these areas requires much experience and entails many trade-offs and judgment calls.  Only experience can be our guide here.  Identifying and managing risks is also something only experience and knowledge can conquer. For very early-stage businesses hiring a full-time, experienced CEO is not usually practical until much later, and raising capital without one is nearly impossible today.  Often in an early-stage company there is not really full-time work to keep a CEO busy either.  So like everyone time gets filled up with tasks not worth the hourly rate of a CEO.  The fact of the matter is that like everyone 20% of their effort generates 80% of the results.  The logical conclusion is that if you can hire an experienced CEO for 10% or 20% of the time you can get 50% to 80% of the benefits of having a full-time CEO at a fraction of the cost.  Mr. Norton can provide CEO level services in one or more the following ways:

  1. Interim or part-time President or CEO (from a few hours to several days per week as needed)
  2. Behind the scenes advisor to founders and entrepreneurs on all aspects of business
  3. CEO mentor to help train a founder (see specific program pricing)
  4. On call advisor with infrequent or quarterly meetings to develop business plans, strategies, business models and to review company status and plans to make course corrections that are constantly needed in any early-stage venture
  5. Vision development and validation to reduce risk and costs of development and launch of any venture

Early-Stage Company Services

 

Virtually All Early-Stage Companies Need Help With These Things. Do You Know You Do?  
See The Definition of A "Prudent CEO"

  1. Get 40% to 80% of the benefits of an experienced, full-time CEO for 10% of the cost
  2. Instant availability instead of a long term search
  3. Increase your chances of success by a factor of 10 or more
  4. Reduce the risk of a costly bad hire due to chemistry, strategic direction and/or other unknown factors
  5. Cut your learning curve and save hundreds of thousands in actual costs and/or lost opportunities
  6. Gain access to a network of past contacts including investors, consultants and organizations that can help you
  7. Keep your burn rate low so you can get further by bootstrapping and with less equity dilution
  8. Get over the catch-22 of "No funding without a CEO, and no CEO without funding"
 

 
   
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