founder's mentality
insights, articles, musings and resources to help founders and builders cultivate a healthy mindset and get unstuck
sari and
founder's mentality
The importance of getting your problem statement right
first time founders often conflate the macro problem with the micro problem
I see startups who say that their problem statements are;
- we would need six globes to cover our emissions
- under representation of... See more
Pontus Karlssontwitter.comThere is a filmmaker that worked for Pixar that put this beautifully, and he used the metaphor of doing anything difficult, but for your high purposes of building a company. He says, "If you're sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing?" You have to embrace that sailing means that you... See more
Patrick O'Shaughnessy • Passion & Pain
such clarity
the science of business is scaling, and the art of business is things that don’t scale
Scott Belsky • The Wild Future of Commerce & The Rise of Conformative Software
I was at Amzn early '00s when we lost 95% of our market cap. Later at FB I negotiated a down-round in '09, and then in '12 our stock dropped 50% post-IPO. I was on the board of a public company that went bankrupt (Borders) and a start-up that went under (Hello). Some lessons:
Dan Rosetwitter.comDon't focus on metrics. Just focus on making the best videos possible and the metrics will be taken care of.
Lex Fridman • MrBeast: Future of YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram | Lex Fridman Podcast #351
“Instead of finding the product through discovery and iteration the goal is to reverse engineer the vision,” he explains. “If you take an incremental, discovery-led approach, then you might find yourself with product-market fit in a local maximum, building a company that you don’t want to lead.”
Matt Walton • Case study: Sana's vision
work from the vision backwards
Don’t get fooled by the insane outliers. It’s a long, slow road. But if you can stomach the wait, the embarrassment, and the frustration, you just might make it.