Mark Fishman

So many founders have a great idea but can’t figure out how to sell it. Second-time founders know that they shouldn’t even bother with an idea if it is not sell-able. Marketing risks force you to face the truth: Do you know enough about your market to know how to sell it and who will buy it?

Trust has to be earned, and it’s mostly earned through firsthand observation over time, when people watch you under a variety of circumstances. Even when you have a track record at other companies, trust is doled out in small doses when you’re a new face.

Raising awareness and pushing back or calling others out might be righteous at times, but it also means generating engagement for yourself or your cause and the thing you dislike. There’s a constant risk/reward calculus we’re asked to make before posting, and the problem is that the deck is stacked against us. We take the prompt, we play the role,... See more

Minimum Viable Testing involves identifying hypotheses you have about a market and creating tests that only focus on those hypotheses, not the long-term vision, the customer’s opinions, company or product building. This method forces you to be even more minimal in your initial tests, so that you can save time and have higher accuracy on your... See more

Zoom out more, and you’ll see that scarcity is also the story of the U.S. economy. After years of failing to invest in technology at our ports, we have a shipping-delay crisis. After years of a deliberate policy to reduce visa issuance for immigrants, we suddenly can’t find enough workers for our schools, factories, restaurants, or hotels. After... See more

If office occupancy never recovers, downtown areas will experience an extended ice age. Emptier offices will mean fewer lunches at downtown restaurants, fewer happy hours, fewer window shoppers, fewer subway and bus trips, and less work for cleaning, security, and maintenance services. This means weaker downtown economies and less taxable income... See more