Startup Systems

Secular-to-secular swaps create marketplaces like Airbnb and Amazon. Money is exchanged for goods and services.

Secular-to-sacred swaps are most prominent via self-expression—everything from cosmetics in Fortnite to luxury goods from LVMH. Money is exchanged for subjective levels of social signaling.

Sacred-to-sacred swaps describe most... See more

Eight marketing maxims

• Trust is worth more than attention.


• Helping people get to where they seek to go is more effective than hustling people to persuade them to go where you’re going.


• Choose your customers, choose your future.


• Tell ten people. If they don’t tell the others, make a better product.


• Creating the conditions for the word to spread is the

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Maximum leverage is the result of commitment, of daily persistence, of gradual and insane and apparently useless effort over time.

How to build a system of information-gathering to get an ROI on time spent

From the Forte Labs Newsletter:

How to read this newsletter:

You'll always find different topics and different content formats (e.g., video, blog posts) in this newsletter. That's intentional.

But for some, that can feel a bit overwhelming.

I want to assure sure: You absolutely

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The most exciting thing about professional project management is that it trades away excitement for systems thinking and intentional action. We make heroes out of people who show up with the last-minute save, but the real work is in not needing the last minute.

And it’s helpful to realize that it’s a skill, a choice, a set of tools to be learned,... See more

Joining an early-stage startup means that resources are scarce, process is non-existent, and goals shift by the day. And tried-and-true playbooks will only go so far, as what works in a big company doesn’t always easily port over to a small startup setting.

"I've noticed three main things holding people back from being more productive and achieving their goals.

They resist creating processes for themselves: This might be baggage from the past where processes were used to control and subjugate them. But processes chosen and designed by YOU can become liberating. ​

They resist making decisions: Most

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