Building 0-1
The downside of lead generation businesses is that they can be a race to the bottom if they're in a crowded and competitive market. The barriers to entry are essentially aggregating supply (i.e. buyers of leads or businesses willing to pay for new customers) so there is little in the way of defensibility. The other downside is that they are very... See more
Marketplaces, Lead Generation, and Brokerages
Just as much as our job is to build something genuinely useful, something which really does make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive, our job is also to understand what people think they want and then translate the value of Slack into their terms.
One of our theories is to seek out opportunities where there’s a major change. Major dislocation in the way things are. Wherever there’s turmoil, there's indecision. And wherever there’s indecision, there’s opportunity. So we look for the confusion when the big companies are confused. When the other venture groups are confused. That’s the time to... See more
Rex Woodbury • Seed Investing: The State of the Union
The future is self-employed
New businesses formed in the US 🚀
2019: 3.5 million
2020: 4.4 million
2021: 5.4 million
2022: 5.1 million
Only about 1/3rd of the applications filed in 2021 are for businesses deemed likely... See more
KPtwitter.comA lot of advice I gave this batch was some version of noticing that one thing the company was doing was working, and encouraging them to prune everything else and focus on that one thing.
For example, it's reasonable to try 5 different ways to get users, but if one of them works best, you should probably pause the other... See more
Jared Friedmanx.comI think the mistake too many entrepreneurs make is they start companies assuming they have scale. We’ve seen no scale, we’ve seen hyperscale, and what we realized was what we have to do is we have to start with that utility and the best networks. I didn’t realize Chris wrote that post, but I should maybe in the back of my mind that’s what I was... See more
Ben Thompson • An Interview with Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger About Artifact
As you build newthing you will discover that building a newthing is a strange act where the harder you go about trying to do it, the harder it becomes. It will resist direct force and control. The more you relax and allow it to speak through you, however, the easier it will be.
You and your ragtag team of engineers likely won’t be able to create something that is competitive with any big incumbent product.
However, you can build features, seed content, and brand it in a way that is so obnoxiously relevant for a particular group of people that their only possible reaction is “Well, fuck. You... See more
Nikita Biertwitter.com