Startup Systems

If you allow your ICP to fray, you’ll lose

From the beginning, we knew we needed to define a good ideal customer profile (ICP). There are manyapproaches to defining a good ICP, but a quality we underestimated is specificity . 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... See more

There are two types of founders.

Those who do lots of research, validate ideas, test many prototypes, and iteratively get to a product. This is a more technical and user-focused approach.

The other is where the product vision emerges fully-formed in the founder’s eye before it is brought to existence. Here, the founder zeroes in on their self... See more

Founders are striving to do something more innovative, uncertain, and psychologically demanding than most of us ever try to do—many with potentially large impacts on the world—and yet their distinct psychological needs have gone largely unstudied and unaddressed. And despite the many headlines signaling a “mental health crisis in startups,” with... See more

From James Clear's 3-2-1 Email: The work required to be happy, and important lessons that aren't taught in school

Many people won't attempt something unless they can find an example of someone else who is already doing it. Rely on this type of thinking too much and you'll never do anything interesting.

Your path through life is unique. It is

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When talking to people, look for two things: pain and pull . Pain tells you there’s an opportunity to solve a problem. Pull tells you that you’re actually solving the problem.

Here’s what pain and pull look like in practice:

1. People pay you money: Several people start to (or offer to) pay for your early product, ideally people you don’t have a direct

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The result is a meta-market: because founders know what playbook their competition is running, they end up positioning themselves against moves their competitors will make in three years. Let’s say I run a newsletter software company, similar to Substack or Beehiiv. Since each company has a unique starting point, we’ll each have relative strengths.... See more