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

Reaching the frontier of a field, you will stumble upon something that hasn’t been solved yet, which will make all the difference. Society will reward you for offering something it wants but hasn’t been able to obtain so far.

The way to that point is through trial and error, iterating, and uncovering different truths.

There are plenty of clients who don’t actually want the cheapest choice. They want the best one, and a powerful estimate is the clue they use to choose.

Bill Gates on Microsoft's "hard-core detractors" December 4, 1993

if the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) gains traction, then the company will likely receive funding and a growth period will occur. Invariably, that means more people will join the team and the vision from the initial engineer needs to be shared.

Early on, when the team is small (2–15 people), typically processes are loose as the overhead in aligning... See more