Startup Advice

Collapse the talent stack every chance you get . As I reflect on the teams I’ve led and hundreds of start-ups I’ve worked with, there is a consistent unfair competitive advantage i’ve witnessed when the talent stack was collapsed - when the lead designer was also the product leader, when the front-end engineer was also a designer, when the designer... See more

• How valuable is what I’m doing?


• What makes this hard for others to do?


• Could this get dramatically easier because of what others launch or how the industry evolves?


• If this does get easier, do I have a “Plan B” to create differentiated value?
  
  Note: An early version of this post appeared in my personal blog (still a work in progress). Decided to

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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

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We don't have enough experience with early versions of ambitious projects to know how to respond to them. We judge them based on where they are currently, not based on what they could become. The same is true for how we judge people.