101 Things I've Learned About Startups

What have I been up to? For the last 6 months, I’ve been working to figure out the answer to the question: “Can I help early-stage founders stay more focused on sales and product by stepping in and taking over their operations?”

So far - the answer is yes! I’ve been figuring this out as I build my company Dalmatian Ops, where I’m working with early-stage startup founders as a fractional COO - or really, an all-in-one fractional operations team that both advises and executes.

I’ve been lucky to work with several pre-seed and seed stage startups as my clients, and I have been getting very positive feedback about our work together. So my new question will be: “How can I help more early-stage companies?"

Along the way, I’ve been deepening my knowledge on all things in the startup world, which has involved several interesting detours and rabbit holes.

As I come across these interesting topics, I plan to write about them here! Some of my sharing will be in service of that new question above, so that I can help more founders than just the ones I work with directly. Some of what I write about will be more rooted in intellectual curiosity around the startup world, and I will seek to explain why a problem exists or why we do things they way that we do.

Some of the things I’m planning to write about include:

• How PowerPoint became the lingua franca of business

• Why the IRS makes it so dang hard for startups to offer 401(k) plans

• Why Delaware C-Corps are the only type of company VCs will invest in

• Favorite lessons from favorite startup reads like The Mom Test and The Hard Thing About Hard Things

If any of that sounds interesting to you, stick around!

-Ann Marie