Startup Systems
systems that power startups
Startup Systems
There are few companies that have successfully scaled taste better than MSCHF (pronounced “mischief”). Well, not exactly a company, as they explained to me when I visited their Brooklyn-based workshop set across the street from a skate park, but an “artist’s collective that happened to raise venture capital.” Or, according to their self-selected Li... See more
Evan Armstrong • The Art of Scaling Taste
Startups will have “we’re amazing” moments and they will also have “we’re crashing” moments. In order to weather those storms, you need high levels of trust.
Build Your Culture Like a Product — Lessons from Asana’s Head of People
Maximum leverage is the result of commitment, of daily persistence, of gradual and insane and apparently useless effort over time.
The moment of maximum leverage
Customer math for a new business
How much does it cost to get a new customer?
How much do you make from every interaction with that customer?
How long does the customer stick around?
How many new customers will existing customers bring you over time?
How much does it cost to get a new customer?
How much do you make from every interaction with that customer?
How long does the customer stick around?
How many new customers will existing customers bring you over time?
Customer math for a new business
- Level one: Nascent product-market fit. Likely a pre-seed or seed-stage company. The goal in this stage is to find three to five customers with a problem worth solving, engage with them, deliver a solution, and validate that solution. [examples: Vanta, L
Lenny Rachitsky • A framework for finding product-market fit | Todd Jackson (First Round Capital)
The teams are currently structured by function (product, R&D, design, business, etc.), and different teams think about different layers of the company and stack. But all energy is directed toward improving the core product. We design objectives that translate to common top-level metrics and improve the user experience holistically. For example,... See more
Lenny Rachitsky • How Perplexity builds product
Perplexity reporting
We try to be as rigorous and data-driven as possible in quarterly planning. All objectives are measurable, either in terms of quantifiable thresholds or Boolean “was X completed or not.” Our objectives are very aggressive, and often at the end of the quarter we only end up completing 70% in one direction or another. The remaining 30% helps identify... See more
Lenny Rachitsky • How Perplexity builds product
how Perplexity builds
- Trust : Does the product work the way your user is expecting it to? Do they have to second-guess their interactions? Or, considered another way, is it clear that you trust the user to be able to complete tasks without error?
- Purpose : Do your users know why they’re there? Are their behaviors clearly tied to customer, business, or their personal su
