founder's mentality
insights, articles, musings and resources to help founders and builders cultivate a healthy mindset and get unstuck
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founder's mentality
“Instead of finding the product through discovery and iteration the goal is to reverse engineer the vision,” he explains. “If you take an incremental, discovery-led approach, then you might find yourself with product-market fit in a local maximum, building a company that you don’t want to lead.”
Matt Walton • Case study: Sana's vision
work from the vision backwards
“Companies exist at room temperature. It’s a founder’s job to inject heat.”
–Tobi Lütke
Build the game you can win . The corollary to the above is that to succeed; you must build a game that you are singularly suited to play.
Mario Gabriele • 52 Tiny Venture Lessons
"I see our customers as partners in a big project, not as crops to be harvested. You can’t have a sustainable long-term relationship when you treat your customers as crops.”
-Tobi Lutke
I look at product as an act of, how does this get communicated through the distribution channel we need to use. Said another way: if this product doesn't make a pretty compelling social ad -> we ain't doing it.
Reggie James • Distribution Determined Design
So but how do we build software that can be anything without falling into the Zombocom trap? I believe that Bezos interview shows us exactly how.
- You start from a systems-level insight ( the internet is growing rapidly )
- Then work backwards to a first best customer who has a burning need ( can’t find book ) that is related to your superpower ( intern
Gordon Brander • The Zombocom Problem
Our tagline is Founders are artists, not assets. If I had to summarize my core belief, it’s that the best founders, especially in the early days, look more like artists creating a fundamentally new, creative project. They don’t resemble business executives chasing an arbitrage opportunity.
Elan Miller • In the Asylum with Nick Chirls
Get customers to talk about their problems, not your product.