A league with 30 intense competitors requires a culture of finding new, better ways to solve repeating problems. In the short term, investing in that sort of innovation often doesn’t look like much progress, if any. Abraham Lincoln said “give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
I also think a lot about the old, iconic structures around the world that have stood the test of time and, in many cases, where we aren’t quite sure of all the details of how they were constructed. Marvels like the Colosseum, Roman aqueducts, or the Great Wall. Incredible architectural feats that were, by necessity, built to last and built slowly –... See more
It took 4.5 years and ~$1bn raised for OpenAI to launch GPT-3, which was their first PMF product.
That breaks every “rule” in the startup world, around mvp and being capital light pre-pmf.
Goes to show you that you have to define your own rules to get outsized success.
MuleSoft, acquired for $6.5B in 2018:
- Took 6 years to reach $10M revenue
- Revenue grew less than 100% every year except 1
- Burned $7M to go from $110M to $188M revenue
- Burned $4M to go from $188M to $297M revenue
Efficient growth is highly... See more