Startup Advice
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Startup Advice
Sam Altman on why you shouldn’t track absolute user growth in the early days of a startup
“Nothing but a great product will save you; you can get everything else right and it still won’t work.”
He points out that almost all startup founders get the following... See more
“The only way to be a painter is to make paintings. That means not doing other stuff.”
Kieran O‘Hare • Following the ‘White-hot Fire Inside of You’
most founders tend to remain high-level when the topic of culture comes up. For starters, there are tons of reads on why culture matters, but strikingly few on how to actually architect it. “We all understand what it means to some extent, but it's rarely defined or broken down. There are frameworks for product/market fit or founder-led sales, but... See more
Run This Diagnostic to Thoughtfully Build Company Culture
On building “Flavored” startups
Enterprise software is (mostly) not flavor-based. Sure, there are enterprise fads like the metaverse, but generally speaking, large companies only sign contracts when it feels like there is an obvious commercial advantage to doing so.
Networks are (mostly) not flavor-based. If you’re using an app because of the content created by its other users, it’s not necessarily a guarantee for success, but at least if it fails it probably won’t be because it hit a flavor-based asymptote. For instance, BeReal leveraged a unique flavor of photo sharing to build a network, but people are still using it because they like the way it helps them stay in touch with their friends. If it were just a single-player utility, it would not have scaled in the same way. Another historical example is Instagram versus Hipstamatic. Both had a cool new flavor called “photo filters,” but one had a network and the other did not. Here’s a more recent example: the network is what sets Substack stands apart from its flavor-based competition.
Tech-enabled services are not flavor-based. If you act like a tech company but really do grocery delivery, banking, education, housing, healthcare, or any other real-world service, your competition is mostly not flavor-based because starting this type of business involves a lot of cost and complexity. (Also, some, like ride hailing and delivery, are networks.) The downside is that your cost structure is probably not as great as pure tech companies, but the upside is that you have less competition.
All of these types of products can involve some flavoring to help them get off the ground. The point is not that flavoring is bad. It’s good! But it has a very specific role. Flavor provides an initial product wedge. It’s helpful for standing out initially but doesn’t provide long-term differentiation or durable advantage.
Jason Fried on Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast
Have been lucky to meet with or study hundreds of companies in 2021.
Here's an ongoing list of company attributes that I find interesting...
Patrick OShaughnessytwitter.comBuilding the initial team for seed stage startups at andrewchen
andrewchen.com