Startup Advice

the power of imagination and optimism is an amazing and essential part of innovation. But over the years, we’ve become so enamored with the unicorn valuation as the goal, that we started valuing the wrong things and overlooking the fundamental physics of business.

With capital at zero cost, growth at all costs became the mantra. How fast can you... See more

Say you have 100,000 DAUs and a retention rate of 80%, and for every five users, one of them tells a friend each day to download your app (and they do it). You get 20k new users per day just from word of mouth. In this equation, Xn is the number of DAUs today and Xn+1 is the number of DAUs tomorrow:

X n+1 = (X n * 80%) + (X n * (1⁄5))

If you start... See more

“Everyone bifurcates the world into content and distribution,” Whaley told me. He has brown hair, is of average height, and was wearing a nondescript gray t-shirt and jeans when we talked. “From the beginning, we viewed those as the same thing. Each object gets better with more participation, and so does MSCHF. Scale is not the goal. Scale is a... See more

I’ve come to learn through first-hand experience that monopolies often serve as the ideal competitor to take on. There are four main reasons why:

1. Monopolies have already proven the industry is viable and lucrative


2. Monopolies refuse to cannibalize their own dominance


3. Monopolies have institutionalized their inefficiencies


4. Monopolies have the most to

... See more