On building of All Trades
Progress is not automatic or inevitable. It depends on choice and effort. It is up to us.
Progress is not automatically good. It must be steered. Progress always creates new problems, and they don’t get solved automatically. Solving them requires active focus and effort, and this is a part of progress, too.
Progress is not automatically good. It must be steered. Progress always creates new problems, and they don’t get solved automatically. Solving them requires active focus and effort, and this is a part of progress, too.
What is progress?
As an extension of this “don’t hire until it hurts” philosophy, Foster notes that Zapier was very hesitant in the early days to bring on anyone with management experience (even though the founding trio themselves didn’t have any). “Our first people managers were just me, my co-founders, and early employees that we promoted into those roles. We were... See more
The Not So Cookie-Cutter Approach to Company Building — 8 Lessons from Zapier
Early stages require both execution and strategy, the doers and the managers. Find both.
“If done well, from a perspective of making everyone feel safe to share, to give themselves permission to fail or to not be perfect, virtual can potentially even nudge out face-to-face
Joshua Davies of Knowmium makes workshops feel like augmented reality with mmhmm
There’s no competition for cookbooks on making food out of soccer balls and hockey pucks.
There’s no competition for software that charges you to find out the temperature on Mars.
There’s no competition for a service that counts how many pairs of shoes you own.
In fact, in every market that’s worth entering, there’s competition. That’s what you’re... See more
There’s no competition for software that charges you to find out the temperature on Mars.
There’s no competition for a service that counts how many pairs of shoes you own.
In fact, in every market that’s worth entering, there’s competition. That’s what you’re... See more
No competition
"Hi, would you rather work with a company that's owned by some private equity schmuck, or a company where some of the prosperity you helped me generate gets reinvested in you and your community?" It's a competitive advantage to do the right thing. So I feel like that we're going to have a new wave of founders who take that seriously, who are going... See more
Reflections on a movement | Eric Ries (creator of the Lean Startup methodology)
You can’t be a hoarder of power within an organization. Once you get to a point where you feel like something is ready for lots of scale, get comfortable with letting it go so you can move on to the next building challenge.
23 Tactical Company Building Lessons, Learned From Scaling Stripe & Notion
Founders that step away grow their startup; find a team to trust and then share the power to increase your scaling velocity.
Different backgrounds, different views, different experiences. The best teams are diverse. These are the ingredients that spark innovation.
Daniel Rizea • Top 5 Learnings After Mentoring 100 Startups
Diversity of backgrounds can also mean diversity of generalist vs. specialist skillsets. Generalists become multi-functional, bringing domain expertise from corners that you might least expect it.
At the end of the day, having an exciting vision (even one where illegibility is an asset) does not exempt us from building a product that people actually want.