Startup Advice

How can I maintain my creativity, optimism, intellectual vitality, and sense of agency in the face of the stress that comes from building a company and the endless forces luring towards conformity?

We start raw, then our hearts and minds get boiled by constraints, pressure, feedback, and challenges. How do we keep our head up and maintain our... See more

A simple rule of thumb for what makes an idea venture-scale is having a path to $100 million a year in revenue and hitting $1 billion+ valuation , in 10 years . Essentially, can you get big, fast? This is what VCs need to invest in in order to make their fund economics work. Very few ideas can hit this scale, and it’s important that you recognize... See more

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the companies that have a reputation for building the best products of this generation—Slack, Figma, Superhuman, Notion, and Linear—are basically new versions of successful predecessors. These companies didn’t distract themselves with four-step strategic maneuvers or clever wedges into a new category that they... See more