On building of All Trades
There are different paths to success in the building of a startup, and it’s important to choose the one that aligns with your goals and values. Do you want to build the biggest business possible, or do you want to build a business you’re proud of and want to continue working at?
Lenny Rachitsky • Jason Fried challenges your thinking on fundraising, goals, growth, and more
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.
sari azout • 2023 End of Year Letter
Self-discovery is all about diving deep and uncovering who you are and what you truly want from life. It’s about finding the principles, passions, and goals that are uniquely rewarding and fulfilling to you.
The aim is not to change into someone else, but to become more of who you already are. To chart a course that is genuinely yours, that brings
... See more"Today’s “best practices” lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried."
Peter Thiel • Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Learning to thrive in a resilient culture is essential. Being indoctrinated into a rigid and fragile mindset is not.
Manipulation, indoctrination and addiction
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.
So much of building something new is showing others that their problem deserves to be solved, that they should be seen for who they are and what they want to be. Generalists deserve better.
It’s easy to be excited about what the company seems to do... to choose our path based on the public’s perception of the output. But once the company has more than one person in it, most of our day is about satisfying the customer, meeting supplier requirements and dancing with the tension of doing our jobs.
Often, we use the product we make as a... See more
Often, we use the product we make as a... See more
Product and Process
Once you choose a project, you are confined to a relatively narrow band of impact (
Figure 1
B); barring an unexpected surprise, the solution to a mediocre problem will have incremental impact, whereas solving an important problem will have greater impact. Even if you execute well, it is hard to make the solution to a middling problem interesting. In... See more
Figure 1
B); barring an unexpected surprise, the solution to a mediocre problem will have incremental impact, whereas solving an important problem will have greater impact. Even if you execute well, it is hard to make the solution to a middling problem interesting. In... See more