Writing

As a VP I made many mistakes. Not knowing how to negotiate executive compensation, not taking big enough swings, etc. I wrote the following playbooks to help execs avoid these mistakes.

→ Senior Compensation Bible. Make a 7-figure difference in your senior comp package with advanced negotiation strategies.

→ HOW TO BE VP. Learn how to operate like a world-class VP with 80+ frameworks for hiring, communication, and team culture.

Armchair Consulting is a series of articles where I make marketing suggestions for businesses I love, purely for kicks and giggles.

→ If I Ran Content at 20VC, Here’s What I Would Do

→ MasterClass just raised $100 million and here’s how I would spend it

→ If I ran the NYT Crossword app during COVID-19, here’s what I’d do

→ Alec Baldwin has the best interview show in the world and more people should listen to it

Boardroom Confidential is a collection of wild-but-true stories from the careers of me and my friends.

→ The one where I have diarrhea during my own keynote

→ The one where Rick wakes up on Excalibur’s lawn in Vegas

→ The one where Sam closes a $17M deal at a bar in San Francisco

→ The one where we fire Ian for doing shrooms on the company camping trip

→ The one where Ed runs up a $2,700 dinner on his wife’s credit card

→ The one where the Italian CEO calls me “Fantozzi”

→ The one where the company loses $600M due to a bad review on Glassdoor

→ The one where Susan saves her job with Google Sheets

→ The one where we pull the plug on a $20M acquisition

→ The one where we accidentally order 20,000 fidget spinners

→ The one where Magnus goes skinnydipping at Del Coronado

I’ve written two novels — one supernatural thriller, one summer camp slasher story — under the pen name D. Melhoff. I also have a literary agent who’s shopping around my newer books to traditional publishers.

→ GRIMM WOODS

→ Come Little Children

Also under the pen name D. Melhoff, I have written four illustrated kids’ books, as well as a viral Dr. Seuss parody about COVID-19.

→ The Easter Witch

→ House Thirty-One

→ Turkeyton Town

→ The Toymaker

→ How COVID Stole Christmas!