Startup Advice

“All the talent in the world is meaningless without an atomic work ethic.”

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 gr... See more

Steve Jobs: The more dependent Google is on Apple, the better October 10, 2008

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

Job descriptions are never exhaustive, even from the beginning. They represent a set of needs for a specific context and time, which after a few months no longer reflects reality. Yet companies hire people based on their ability to match that fixed job description. They hire for the short-term.

Why start from something so specific? Instead, find peo... See more

Move faster. Slowness anywhere justifies slowness everywhere. 2021 instead of 2022. This week instead of next week. Today instead of tomorrow. Moving fast compounds so much more than people realize.

The result of this garage-centered approach to entrepreneurship was a business paradigm that looks liked this:

In the above model, notice how the product is at the center of the company, and all the work and effort of building the actual business is focused on marketing the product.