| Dec 09 |
The best founders and companies have what I calll “escalating ambition”
Elon starts by trying to send a plant into space. Now spaceX is launching reusable rockets, starlink
Zuck started just trying to build a cool thing for colleges, now 1/3rd of all humans use his apps
Blake bringing supersonic flight back, and now power
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| Sep 25 |
some inside baseball here:
Nick bought a majority stake in Somewhere (~$52M price), but there was one problem.
The entire exec team was US based. They were good, but very expensive. Huge salary overhang.
He went in, re-built the exec team with only overseas talent (listen to them in the video).
since then - revenue is at all time highs, and profit margin strong because exec team expenses reduced 80%
huge win.
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| Sep 15 |
things I learned from this episode:
1. "Movement Marketing" --- instead of promoting your company, promote the movement your company helps make possible (eg. Vibe Coding instead of Replit)
2. How to get your company to show up in chatgpt answers (the new SEO)
3. his 3 rules of business:
- never own a restaurant
- never be a landlord
- never compete with Sam Altman
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| May 21 |
so the new bar in startups is $30M ARR in less than 5 months and the founders have to be 20yrs old ?
oh, ok. got it
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| May 12 |
any agency you hire - even if they start as an 9 outta 10, will degrade to a 3 outta 10 if you're not on their ass
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| Apr 30 |
Every book needs this.
“cold hard truth” sections
Well done @sweatystartup https://t.co/0VHRw3IFP7
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| Apr 21 |
I just talked to one of the best founders you’ve never heard of…
- built a multibillion dollar company off a simple deck of cards
- built a cult brand with ~$0 marketing budget
He’s one of my creative business heroes: Elan Lee https://t.co/moZITXUnEA
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| Apr 09 |
Anyone who’s ever negotiated anything should know: flaunting how great a deal you’re pulling off is stupid as hell.
(Especially when the deal isn’t done )
Great negotiators leave the table with the other party thinking they did well
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| Mar 30 |
unpopular opinion: if a startup is constantly launching new features its a red flag
strong PMF== one core behavior loop, then ruthless focus on reducing friction, fixing bugs, adding users, and firefighting as scale breaks things
the more features, the weaker the startup
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| Mar 17 |
this high school kid is doing $20M+ ARR.
fascinating https://t.co/GDuTCi3NZ6
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| Jan 21 |
ecom friends - if you're getting hit with bullsh*t ADA lawsuits nowadays - what are you doing?
a) Ignore
b) respond rejecting claims, don't settle (go to court?)
c) respond, settle
we settled one of these for ~10k-12k and made site changes last year.
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| Dec 17 |
cofounding a business with your wife is easy.
simply never talk work.
she does product. you do ads & finance
never, ever, attempt to collaborate.
only do meetings when you want to jointly shit talk low-performers over coffee and snacks.
keep it simple.
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| Oct 18 |
OK you’re going to like this.
A few months ago - I met the “Indian Warren Buffett”.
Not only was he fun to hangout with (and really nice), but he has banger stories. Here was one he shared:
I asked him how he built his $100M+ fortune, and he said “Two words…Shamelessly Cloning”.
I love that phrase - ‘Shamelessly Cloning’.
Here’s how he tells the story:
1/ Like all of us - when he’s young, he wants to be successful.
2/ One day, he reads a book by Tom Peters (a big management guru in the 80’s).
The book says: humans are surprisingly bad at copying successful ideas.
The book gives an example - the Story of Two Gas Stations .
Imagine two gas stations are across the street from each other.
Same concept: Gas station with snacks inside.
Owner A pays a guy $150 to make his signage look better, and gets brighter lights for the evening.
Owner B looks at that and says: “Psh, what a waste of money”.
Owner A’s traffic goes up a bit. Owner B shrugs it off.
Owner A walks outside every time he sees one of his regular customers, and does a complimentary window wash.
Owner B thinks: “What an idiot. That’s not sustainable, you can’t do it for everyone. And they’re not even paying for it!”
As time goes on, Owner A continues to make small improvements to his service. Eventually he’s making 2-3x more per week than the station across the street.
Most people want to study what the smart owner does. But I think the more interesting question is: “why the heck is owner B not doing what he sees is working??”
Is it ego? Ignorance? It’s obvious he should copy what’s working, but he doesn’t.
Tom Peters argues that this is common. You can go to your direct competitors, and tell them all your trade secrets. Everything you’ve learned. They will listen to you but there will be no change in behavior.
Mohnish thought this was ridiculous & made a promise to himself that he would become a great copier of great ideas.
Picasso said: “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal”.
Don’t get me wrong. There IS a bad way to copy. Don’t copy people’s art. I’d say the gas station owner shouldn’t copy the exact signage, but the idea of “I should make my business look more approachable too” and put his own twist on it.
And in many areas of life, copying is positive-sum. For example:
- Religion is people copying the morals/beliefs of others. They want you to copy them.
- CrossFit is people copying the exercise habits of fit people.
- Grandma’s delicious spaghetti recipe is a copy of someone else’s spaghetti recipe.
You may not be the smart gas station owner who figures everything out. But you can choose to not be the idiot owner across the street.
- Uncle Shaan
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| Sep 28 |
OK - here’s a short story that will make you a better leader/CEO.
I just hired a new CEO for one of my companies. On Day 1 - he started doing what most CEO’s would do:
- Meet & greet the team
- Get access/permission to our tools
- Start coming up with a Big Picture plan/vision to present to the team.
I pulled him aside and told him about a different way that I learned from @natfriedman.
Nat was named CEO of Github, and what he did on Day 1 was amazing.
[8 am: everyone in the company gets on a call].
Instead of sharing the vision & multi-year plan. Nat screen-shared and displayed a giant list of 100+ issues & complaints from customers.
He said: “Today, we’re going to find one item on here, and fix it”
“And tomorrow, we’re going to pick another one, and fix that”
“And the next day.. And the next.. Until we’ve nailed 20+ of these”
This did 3 big things:
1) Shock Therapy. The team used to “think in quarters and years”. Suddenly the timeline shrinks to “ship something today”.
2) Taught Him The Business, Bottoms Up. Where are the problems? Where’s the tech debt? Which teams are good at getting shit done?
3) Action Speaks Louder. Customers were worried when Microsoft bought GitHub. Will they ruin it? Should we leave? But immediately seeing the product improve built faith that things will be OK.
I call this the ‘Broken Shelf Approach’.
Every home has broken shelves. The people living in the house have learned to ignore it, and just live with it.
If you want to make an impression when you move in. Find the broken shelves, and fix them first.
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| Sep 20 |
having a high 'first draft speed' in business is such an advantage.
I wish I could measure this, like athletes running the 40 at the combine.
Going from "we need to figure out X" to "ok here's a rough prototype/doc" in < 1 hour changes the entire clock speed of the company
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| Sep 07 |
what makes a great cofounder?
they need to be ‘Down’ https://t.co/dXKe5tOMYl
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| Aug 28 |
An engineer who can “build anything” is worth $1M
An engineer who can figure out “what to build” is worth 100X that
In business, the GPS creates more value than the engine.
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| Aug 20 |
I've got $5m funding ready for anyone at facebook who wants to spin this out as a general co
one of my favorite business blueprints = exporting internal tools
eg. Launchdarkly -- exported fb feature flag tool
Statsig -- exported fb testing tool
Sift -- exported fb fraud tool
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| Jul 23 |
Most business books are bad, this one is really good. I chewed it up in 3 days https://t.co/EV6GN3YW3O
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| Jul 09 |
A prototype is worth a thousand meetings.
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| May 29 |
Just realized the small reason I love @paulg essay style:
I feel like i'm reading a mathematical proof, but instead of numbers it's founder life advice.
It starts with a question (an unsolved equation) then you watch him think it through, solving it like a proof
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