Startup Systems
systems that power startups
Startup Systems
from nfx.com The AI Spectrum for Founders
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
Evan Armstrong • Every Software Business Has the Same Playbook
Certainty - Making your customers feel secure about the quality and longevity of your product reduces the fear of disappointment or the need to frequently replace the item.
Variety - Owning items that introduce a sense of novelty to a person's life satisfies their need for variety and can make them feel more excited.
Significance - Owning something... See more
Variety - Owning items that introduce a sense of novelty to a person's life satisfies their need for variety and can make them feel more excited.
Significance - Owning something... See more
Superhuman
On purchasing higher end products
Angles that spread usually check the following boxes:
- Surprising — presents unexpected new information or theories
- True — we actually believe it
- Important — has an impact on our behavior
- Relevant — related to domains we care about
- Cool — we think we’ll look impressive for sharing it
Nathan Baschez • How to Write Essays That Spread
Startups will have “we’re amazing” moments and they will also have “we’re crashing” moments. In order to weather those storms, you need high levels of trust.
Build Your Culture Like a Product — Lessons from Asana’s Head of People
The demands of a startup are dizzying. To anchor yourself, you must schedule time to write things down.
The 100 Best Bits of Advice From 10 Years of First Round Review
It’s hard to get a company to do a new thing, and the bigger the organization, the harder it is to change. Companies that are trying to change tend to require an equal and opposite force to overcome the inertia. Large enterprise sales teams are built around signing a single customer, while on the small business end of the market all you need is a few quick calls around an otherwise self-serve solution. When an executive wants their company to change, they often hire expensive, high-status consultants like McKinsey to make a plan that gets everyone on board.
If organizational inertia is one form of resistance that you might want to overcome, what are the business equivalents of simple machines that create mechanical advantage and multiply your input force into a much larger output force? And if they exist, do they have an equivalent trade-off of physical machines where you have to apply the force over a longer distance to gain leverage?
Maybe! Startups often hyper-focus on a small number of customers that share specific traits. This compresses all of the startup’s energy and force into a small space. It’s the opposite of being “spread thin.” The advantage of this approach is that you’re more likely to solve a problem, overcome inertia, and gain adoption by the customers you focus on. The trade-off is that it might be questionable how many more customers you’ll be able to find. I call this a market wedge, where you sacrifice scale for power.
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:
Here’s what pain and pull look like in practice:
- People pay you money: Several people start to (or offer to) pay for your early product, ideally people you don’t have a direct