Startups

Things you underappreciate if you join a project that has passed the zero-to-one stage: Leverage Distribution Marketing

Throughout my career, I’ve had consistent success getting jobs at other companies, both small and large. I bring unique ideas and perspectives to the table. I can build and lead small teams. I can communicate clearly and effectively, endure pain, adapt, and I have the hard skills to learn and execute. I also have well-known weaknesses (impatience, aversion to meetings, self-criticism), but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about my weakest muscles: finding PMF, getting my first real customer, and taking a product from zero to one. ...

Ever since Paul Graham’s Founder Mode came out, I’ve been trying to find a definition for another term I’ve been thinking about: Founder Aura. Yesterday, I was speaking with a friend of mine. I’ll keep names and companies vague to maintain anonymity. He’s a high-caliber researcher at one of the world’s leading companies. A well-known engineering founder, leader and executive joined the meeting. My friend felt the need to mention it. He felt the need to say that the executive appreciated his thoughts and ideas. He felt the need to say that the executive was “just like us.” ...

In 2014, Alan Kay was a guest lecturer in my programming languages class at the University of Toronto. I thought it was cool, but I definitely did not appreciate it as much as I should have. To this day, one of his infamous quotes still resonates with me: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” A Pattern I Can’t Ignore With the new year, I’ve been reflecting on my career up until this point. ...

Peter Thiel is well known for his infamous book, Zero to One. In reality, most startups fail, so it probably should have been called Zero or One. The skill set required to go from one to ten, to one hundred, and beyond is broad, iterative, heavily experience-driven, and requires a lot of people serving different functions. But, the jump from zero to one really is a jump. And it isn’t just a skill set. It’s a mindset.

A great 2-minute post by Ross Lazerowitz, CEO at https://www.miragesecurity.ai/ The playbook for enterprise software is: Cold outreach Design Partners First Cohort Love it. But, he calls out that desperation != urgency. Being able to sell and raise doesn’t mean success. It means you might get stuck in a local minima. User need to line up for your product. His key takeaway is: Go slow to go fast. Don’t spin up marketing and a sales team until you feel that pull. If you can’t close $1M without marketing spend and 10 AEs, you might be building something middling. Don’t get distracted by desperation if you can’t find urgency. ...

Founders create problems. Operators solve them. I’ve met a lot of executives and CTOs who resonate with two things: They like to solve puzzles. They like to be given an end goal and just make it happen. The job of a founder is to identify opportunities (i.e. problems), set a vision for what a solution looks like, and build a team that’s enabled to get there. That idea, of course, comes with plenty of qualifiers and caveats. It simply defines a founder’s end goal, not their day-to-day. ...