Regularly Reassess Team Fit; Past Success Doesn't Guarantee Future Fit
Firing people is never fun, but you have to constantly reevaluate whether all of your team members are the best fit for not only your company but the role that they are in at this point in time. Often, people who were a great fit two years ago may no longer be.
One Year, 15 Posts, 1K Substack Subscribers
Sharing this openly. Maybe a bit corny, but I am proud that I finally got to 1K subscribers on Substack. And I'll be honest. It was harder than I thought. It took me one year. I wrote 15 posts. About 4-6...
Peer Mastermind Boosted Revenue 50% in One Month
Shawn Lemon was buried in operations. Running everything. Doing everything. Stuck in the weeds of his own business. The AI Business Lab® Mastermind gave him something no course or tool could: a room full of peers who pushed him to make...
VCs Should Fund Proven Small‑scale Entrepreneurs More
The job of an entrepreneur is to turn a small amount of money into a large amount of money. It gets harder to do this the larger the pot of money you are investing. It's a wonder VCs...
Hire Now: Stop Drowning, Start Delegating
The paradox of hiring is that you are drowning in work and need to hire, but you have no time to spend on hiring in order to alleviate some of that work. This is where I see too many entrepreneurs delay...
Shopify + MapKit Reveal API Limits for Local Brand Discovery
expecting a lot of creativity from consumer app founders building new discovery and personalized AI experiences on top of amazing APIs and global data collections like Shopify catalog API
Success Comes From Ignoring Excuses, Not Circumstances
Circumstances don't build businesses. People who stopped blaming them do. Bad timing. Wrong market. Didn't have the connections. Not enough capital. Too much competition. Every failed business has a list of reasons. Every successful one has a person who ignored the same...
Fintech’s Ramp Card Silently Reshapes Corporate Finance
In 2020, Ramp launched a corporate credit card. Banks didn't take it seriously. Another fintech trying to take on Amex. Five years later, 50,000 companies run their entire finances through Ramp. Nobody saw it coming:
Two Weeks Left, SpliceCraft 1.0 Near Completion
Exactly 14 days until I need to finish version 1.0 of SpliceCraft. Racing against my SnapGene annual bill; making gooood progress. 🤖🛠
Consistency Wins: Small Daily Tasks Fuel Long-Term Progress
Sunday night. Tomorrow is week 59 of building this thing in public. Tomorrow: Ship 1 thing. Reply to 5 comments. Write 5 posts. Don't try to make it bigger than that. The streak is the strategy. Talk soon.
Great Companies Grow by Training, Not Perfect Hires
One of the most common excuses in business: “We can’t grow because we can’t find good employees.” Most companies don’t have a hiring problem. They have a training problem. There’s no shortage of talented people. There’s a shortage of leaders...
LA Rewards Energy over Pedigree, Fostering Fresh Opportunities
Yes... and this is a good thing. When I got to Los Angeles (from Upstate NY, by way of London), I had effectively no network among people with capital. But I had energy and (eventually) good ideas, and, bc people here don't...
Early‑stage Angels Win by Backing Frontier Founders
to be a good angel investor you need to spot great founders building on the frontier as early as possible and take the risk to back them before anyone else. high risk, high reward. by series A (esp these days)...
EOS Drives Success: Right People, Real‑Time Scorecards
Seen EOS used by so many 7-, 8-, 9-figure holdco builders, including many former podcast guest. Finally started reading, 10 minutes in: 1. The right people in the right seats (are all of your people the right ones for their jobs?) 2....
Success and Failure Share Similar Daily Habits
Companies that fail often do almost the same things as companies that succeed. So… what can we really learn? Exploring: https://t.co/1UmYoktWzN
Growth Comes From People, Not Paid Ads
Most founders think growth = ads. But the best growth channel is other people. Affiliates, partners, creators.
Uncomfortable Truths, Not Harder Work, Earned My First $1M
Over the last 10 years, I've generated $1M+ across 7 different writing business models. The crazy part? None of it came from being smarter or working harder than everyone else. It came from learning 5 uncomfortable truths nobody tells you about making your...
Turn Business Mistakes Into Paid “Mistake Dividends”
I can quickly name a handful of strategic mistakes I’ve made in the last year trying to scale my business: ...
Serve the Overlooked Customer, Earn Extraordinary Loyalty
Every market has a customer the dominant players have decided isn't worth the effort. When you actually serve that customer well, the loyalty is extraordinary. They've been waiting. They remember who showed up. The question isn't "who is the market?" It's...
Cerebras IPO: Massive AI Chip Firm Secures $20B Deal
This is an extraordinary journey. Ups and downs and almost IPOs and now a grand big IPO. Kudos to the founders, to @ericvishria and the team at @benchmark Extraordinary non-consensus thinking, grit and hard work.
Hobbyist Passion Keeps Founders Working Past Profit
It's an unimpressive-sounding word, but one of the most powerful motivations is the motivation of the hobbyist. That's what keeps successful founders working on their companies long past the point when they've made enough to quit. It's their beloved project.
AI Automates Real-World Merchandising From Map to Delivery
This is one of the wildest AI business systems I’ve seen. An OpenClaw agent scans Google Maps, finds local businesses with zero branded merch, generates photoreal product mockups with their logo, sends personalized offers, and auto-ships orders after payment. The entire business...
Inside Our Web Browser Build: Timeline, Tech, Challenges
Want to learn about the journey we went through for building a web browser? I've laid it all out in the most transparent way I can in my latest blog post – including the time it took, our tech stack, challenges,...
Reflect, Don’t Just Fail Fast, to Avoid Repeating Mistakes
"Fail fast" was about product iteration — kill bad ideas early. It became a philosophy that failure is inherently valuable. The research doesn't support that. Founders who fail and reflect systematically learn. Founders who move on quickly repeat the same mistakes...
Skills Compound Like Wealth: Early Struggles Lead to Snowball Success
Just like how wealth compounds, skills compound too. What people don't really talk about is how most first-time entrepreneurs are pretty horrible at everything in the beginning (myself included when I first started). Hiring, figuring things out is slow, learning...
Real Diligence Essential Amid Fundraising Shenanigans
the fud will really get you if you don’t do real diligence these days. more shenanigans in fundraising than I’ve ever seen. stay safe friends
Customers, Not Companies, Make Billionaires Through Value
the only people allowed to create billionaires are customers you create and organization that adds $10b in value to customers, you get to be a billionaire
Start Charging Now, Adjust Price Based on Feedback
Founders: Don't obsess over pricing too early. Start by charging something - even if modest. If prospects don't blink at your price, raise it next time. Keep pushing up until you see it impacting close rates. Better to capture less value early...
100 Years Experience Signals Aging Founders, Limited Future
When you see a slide that says the team has “100 years of experience,” it’s a signal that the founders don’t have much time left.
Real Conviction Means Persisting When All Funding Vanishes
I don’t ever give up. I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated.” In 2008, SpaceX was on the brink of bankruptcy after 3 failed launches. His childhood heroes, the men who inspired him to build rockets publicly told him he...
Limit Free Trials to Highlight Core Value
Founders: Free trials are fine, but they need clear value triggers. Like Yesware limiting free email tracking volume - when pros hit the cap, they're seeing enough value to pay. Don't give away your core value indefinitely. Gate it behind reasonable limits.
Async Infrastructure Paved Path to AI Agent Era
https://t.co/EAT6n7xgeL lets developers add AI agents to their products with a simple SDK, handling execution, long-running workflows, and reliability so they don't have to. Over 90% of their usage now comes from agent workflows, and they recently announced their $16M...
Boring, Small‑TAM Markets Deliver SaaS’s Biggest Returns
The markets that made me the most money looked terrible on paper. They were underserved. Relatively unattractive. The kind VCs pass on because the TAM looks too small. That's the point. Boring means: • Customers who actually need it • Real...
Debt‑Free Lifestyle Enables Fully Self‑Funded Event
TBH, that my business partner and I were able to completely self fund an event for 100 people over three days without a single sponsorship dollar or debt of any kind... Makes me realize the ten years of building my...
Clean Finance Tools Empower Builders Over Admins
two years ago i started screenshotting @pontusab and @viktorhofte's work. two designers in stockholm. 14k github stars. no marketing team. midday looked cleaner than every finance tool i'd ever seen. their obsession: let builders to run their company, not the admin. agents...
ReSeed Hits $130M Deployments, Operator Closes $30M Deal
Regular readers know I started a company called ReSeed with an incredible group of co-founders ~3 yrs ago to identify, train, mentor and capitalize emerging real estate operators across the country. One of those operators, a husband-and-wife team in the Midwest,...
FDEs Boost LLM Competition, Spur Startup Innovation
FDEs are going to be coming in to commercialize the LLMs. This means startups will experience competition. Is this a bad thing? No, it means startups have to compete harder and smarter. Time to make better software, software an FDE...
Public Failures Accelerate Learning Faster than Private Perfection
You're going to launch things that flop. Offers that don't sell. Content that doesn't land. Products that don't convert. Campaigns that don't succeed. If you can embrace failing in public You'll learn faster than those "perfecting" in private.
Ditch Agency Model: Build $1T Software Services
The agency model is dead. If you want to build a $1T services as software company, here’s a starting point: - Reimagining the org chart (with examples) - Going from open loops to E2E workflows to closed loops - Forward deployed employees - and...
Essential First Three Tools Every Startup Buys
You just started your business - what was the first 3 pieces of software you purchased to get started?
Passion Over Money: The Key to Sustaining Ventures
Someone came up to me at this event in the video and asked me why they always quit ventures and ideas and businesses they start … It’s easy … they are JUST Chasing just the money 💰 ..when you chase it...
Isomorphic Labs Eyes $2B Raise, Biotech’s Second‑largest
Great scoop from @RebeccaTorrenc5 & @mhbergen on Isomorphic Labs in "advanced discussions to raise more than $2 billion in a new round of funding" led by Thrive Capital Would be second-largest VC raise ever in biotech, only behind $3B for...
Design Distribution, Don't Hope It Follows Great Product
A great product without a distribution channel is a tree falling in an empty forest. Distribution needs to be designed, not hoped for. Build something worth distributing. Then build the distribution. Don't assume one creates the other. @askdrbrown
Choose Needed Skills, Not Just Likability; Conflict Signals Health
The most common co-founder problem is choosing someone you like over someone you need. Liking someone and needing someone are different things. The overlap is smaller than founders assume. The absence of conflict in early founding teams is more often a...
Founder Shares Aren’t Passive Income, They're Business Building
The number of comments I read calling founder shares and ESS/ESOP "passive income" is enormously disturbing and shows how little many people understand building a business. #cgt #startupaus
Disrupting Maritime Publishing, yet Still Blocked by Entrenched Power
Yep. Started @gCaptain 20 years ago confident we could close down incumbents that charged ship captains insane subscriptions for paper products. One, @LloydsList, was the longest running publication in print and I thought, we are young, we are California bases, we...
VC Rounds Have Ballooned Tenfold in Just 18 Months
Not universally true by far, but a chunk of market has done an ~10x increase in the size of rounds in the last 12-18 months. $2m seeds are now $20m seeds. $20m large Series As are now $200m Series As....
Bold Ambition Drives Growth, Inspires Longevity Ventures
Bold ambition pays off, and it tends to lift everyone around it. Elon, have you ever thought about starting a longevity company down the road? If not, what’s holding you back? If so, what would it take to make it happen?
AI Accelerates Birth of Billion‑Dollar Startups Annually
AI will make it easier and easier to start a billion dollar business every year
CMBlu Secures €50M Series C for Organic Flow Batteries
Organic flow battery company CMBlu closes €50 million Series C #energysky -- via Energy Storage News: https://t.co/596pHjCFaJ