founder's mentality
insights, articles, musings and resources to help founders and builders cultivate a healthy mindset and get unstuck
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founder's mentality
Founder mentality - I'm too busy to hire. I can figure this out.
CEO mentality - I need to find the right person to figure this out.
Transition is always hard.
Michael Karnjanaprakorntwitter.com
48 smart things Sam Walton wrote in his autobiography:
1. It never occurred to me that I might lose. It was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2. We just got after it and *stayed* after... See more
Absolutely excellent piece.
Throughout history, new technologies have opened new fields of expression and expanded what's possible. Every time a new technology came in, at least half were left behind loving the old craft or worrying about the future. Those who embrace the discomfort, understand how the tool can be wielded will continue to create novel ideas and change culture, With the printing press, those who mastered textual literacy created profound societal impact. In those early days, this literacy was an essential differentiator.
Just as the printing press democratized knowledge creation, AI is commoditizing access to intelligence and with it redefining technical execution. This is now widely accepted. AI can generate endless ‘perfect’ outputs, and its reasoning capabilities will only expand. Design’s tools will change but design’s essence remains distinctly human: creation guided by feeling & relationships rather than pure logic, and the judgment to know what’s worth creating.
Design literacy—combining curiosity, studied curation, personal conviction, and craft—will become as vital as verbal literacy.
This way of seeing and thinking becomes a new differentiator. It’s a new type of intelligence and design that will separate those who thrive from those who fade into the noise. I see this type of design everywhere in my work with founders, engineers, salespeople, and investors—they are all designers in their own right. It is innate—it just needs to be unlocked.
The best founders already understand this. In a world where anyone can build, they know what to build, who it’s for, and why it must exist.
Fast iteration can make up for a lot; it’s usually ok to be wrong if you iterate quickly. Plans should be measured in decades, execution should be measured in weeks.
Krispy Kreme, Crocs, and Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
Digital Nativedigitalnative.substack.com
a really nice write-up for (climate tech) founders who want to do a PR launch without breaking the bank
The best tech companies drive strategy through product. This is why founders and CEOs tend to be product leaders, and product / design / engineering is more important than ops / marketing / finance. Here’s what this looked like for me as a business leader at Amzn and Facebook:
nametwitter.comhighlights from Danny Meyer’s autobiography via David Senra:
1. I had an uncontainable drive to win.
2. The inception of Shake Shack actually began with a humble hot dog cart. Small as the project was, I took this cart quite seriously. I was asking myself, "Who ever wrote that rule that you can't push the envelopes of excellence and hospitality for
... See more