Governance : Startups and Marketing

Marketing budgets : It depends on the original plan. So budgeting is a valid lens.

Sometimes it is part of the plan to spend 100% on product development.

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There's a clear argument for not (having a marketing budget).

If you are doing a high-enough risk startup, your one job is to answer the question, does this idea deserve to go to market? The answer may be no. Here you do not have a marketing communications budget.

If you are doing a lower risk startup, then you are sure your product is already viable, then you have a marketing communications budget.

I make a distinction between marketing (very broad), and marketing communications (what 70% of people mean when they say marketing).

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I think people sometimes forget that running startups is like being cannonfodder in an army.

The industry has a job. Sometimes the individual company's job is to die.

If you don't understand this, you cannot command an army. Hehehe

( And more importantly, you can't command a startup, effectively, from a high-risk fund manager's point of view. ) 

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Sustainable entrepreneur : this is not what startups do.

It is not every startup's mandate to be sustainable.

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follow the money!

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The nature of all business, and relationships in general, is cute. And perverse.

No one actually has final knowledge of what is good or bad - everything is a gamble, even the selection of objectives/goals is a matter of gambling.

So commonly we see people who do not believe in the ethics, or even the success possibility, of certain goals ... the same people will work hard on chasing the goals, and they may even professionally sell these goals.

So the game goes on.