On building of All Trades
There are different paths to success in the building of a startup, and it’s important to choose the one that aligns with your goals and values. Do you want to build the biggest business possible, or do you want to build a business you’re proud of and want to continue working at?
Lenny Rachitsky • Jason Fried challenges your thinking on fundraising, goals, growth, and more
There’s lots of well-intentioned advice out there about the risks if a business takes off and there isn’t a solid foundation to stand on. But at the same time, it's no surprise that startup leaders see words like "optimizing headcount through capacity planning models" and file it away as unnecessary bureaucracy that’s more befitting of the “BigCo” ... See more
How Talent Teams Can Better Weather Boom-and-Bust Cycles
Generally, teams think about switching costs as the amount of time and money needed to install one solution and remove another. But true switching costs are much more than that: they include the politics, emotions, career ambitions, esoteric business processes, competing priorities, and sheer laziness that all favor the existing solution. Those for... See more
Jake Fuentes • Lessons learned from a startup that didn’t make it
New approaches will never be embraced by everyone at first. If you need unanimous consent, you’re not going to move forward.
And it’s not convenient. If it were, someone would have done it already.
Finally, it’s not sure to work.
If you need any or all three of these things for your project to move forward, you probably should pick a different project... See more
And it’s not convenient. If it were, someone would have done it already.
Finally, it’s not sure to work.
If you need any or all three of these things for your project to move forward, you probably should pick a different project... See more
Three things about innovation
Education can be the biggest time investment for founders who are bringing something to the work that isn’t unanimously accepted, isn’t convenient, and is beautiful at scale (but not there yet).
Progress is not automatic or inevitable. It depends on choice and effort. It is up to us.
Progress is not automatically good. It must be steered. Progress always creates new problems, and they don’t get solved automatically. Solving them requires active focus and effort, and this is a part of progress, too.
Progress is not automatically good. It must be steered. Progress always creates new problems, and they don’t get solved automatically. Solving them requires active focus and effort, and this is a part of progress, too.
What is progress?
The arrogance of improvement
Who are you to make things better?
How dare you raise your hand to help, offer an idea, take responsibility...
Perhaps it might be helpful to reframe that feeling as the generosity of improvement instead.
If not you, who? If not now, when?
Who are you to make things better?
How dare you raise your hand to help, offer an idea, take responsibility...
Perhaps it might be helpful to reframe that feeling as the generosity of improvement instead.
If not you, who? If not now, when?
The arrogance of improvement
For the past decade, our idolatry of startups and innovation has meant the focus has been: What can we disrupt? How fast can we grow? How big can we get? How much can we raise?
Founders are taught to possess enough faith that they can build something very big very fast. This creates a pressure cooker of responsibility that distorts reality to the p... See more
Founders are taught to possess enough faith that they can build something very big very fast. This creates a pressure cooker of responsibility that distorts reality to the p... See more
sublimeinternet.substack.com • Can I Ramble for a Sec?
Founders need a new way of thinking, of building, of support that allows them to drive systematic, methodical and meaningful change.
I didn’t even announce the opening of the store until we opened—I declined the few press requests I received and didn’t really talk about it publicly. I can’t totally explain it, but I felt (feel?) protective of this little store like it was a person. It had to actually become something before I could say what it was. I wanted to let it cultivate a... See more