Startup Advice

Sama: "I think I mostly got what I wanted by ignoring advice..."

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

The Levels of Delegation

An easy way to become a better delegator is to identify what will unlock more leverage for yourself. Jonathan broke it down into 5 levels, with one more that he’s building at Athena.

#1 — Novice: Delegation by Task

Jonathan has seen thousands of delegators start their journey and, without help from Athena’s delegation... See more

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.

Complicated problems have a solution, and the solution can often be found by breaking the complicated portions into smaller pieces.

And complicated problems often have an emotional component, because there are parts of the problem we don’t want to look at closely, or deal with personally.

If you’re lucky enough to be handed a complicated problem,... See more

Simply put, an ICP must be a single market segment :a group of people for whom the value of solving a problem is roughly the same, and who can be reached in roughly the same way. “People who use Excel” is not a market segment, because it says nothing about either the value of their problem or how to reach them. “Marketers who use Excel to build... See more