Startups

Startup COO job boils down to this: 1. Pick a problem area, and build 0 to 1 yourself. First principles get you pretty far! 2. After it gets going, start recruiting for an experienced leader for the area. 3. Onboard the leader well, nuke yourself out and attack next problem.

Two thoughts: The best startups are masters of asymmetric warfare -- they don't fight on the battlefield the incumbent selects. And, users often understand their problems well but are horrible at suggesting features to solve these problems.

Here are (some) steps founders can take to get reporters to write about their companies (a thread). (Caveat: this thread is not exhaustive and really applies only to me)

I was at Amzn early '00s when we lost 95% of our market cap. Later at FB I negotiated a down-round in '09, and then in '12 our stock dropped 50% post-IPO. I was on the board of a public company that went bankrupt (Borders) and a start-up that went under (Hello). Some lessons: