Every week, I advise founders on how to hit $10k MRR. On Tuesdays, I share my consulting notes from those private sessions. Learn from their mistakes so you don't burn your own cash.
Your passion is a liability.
|
Hey Reader, A founder with deep domain expertise came to me this week. She was facing a choice that would define the next year of her life: Build the big, all-in-one system she was passionate about, or start with a tiny, single-feature product that could be built in a week. She wanted my opinion on which path was better. I told her my opinion is irrelevant. So is hers. When you face a strategic crossroads like this, your passion isn't an asset; it's a source of bias. It makes you fall in love with your solution before you've confirmed the market's problem. Your gut feeling is the most expensive way to make a multi-year decision. The only thing that matters is market evidence. Before you commit to a path, your first and only job is to design the cheapest, fastest, and lowest-code experiment possible to get that evidence. Let the market - not your conviction - decide whether you should build the comprehensive suite or the single-feature tool. At a critical juncture, you must subordinate your vision to objective market data. Speak soon, P.S. When you're facing a critical crossroads and need to design a fast, cheap experiment to get clear market evidence, that's what I do. Book a free 30-minute strategy call, and we'll build a plan to let the market guide your next move. |
Clarity Filter
Every week, I advise founders on how to hit $10k MRR. On Tuesdays, I share my consulting notes from those private sessions. Learn from their mistakes so you don't burn your own cash.
Hey Reader, Founders love to pitch an inevitable future. They see a clear shift in the market, build a product for that future, and launch. Then they get silent buyers and a dead pipeline. They assume the product is broken. Or the marketing is wrong. But the problem is usually much simpler: they are early. And in an early-stage startup, being ahead of your time is functionally indistinguishable from being wrong. A market can be directionally attractive and still be a terrible opportunity...
Hey Reader, In my last email, I broke down how Sam Altman’s relationship network literally purchased his first company's failure for millions. Most builders read that and thought: "Great, but I don't live in SF and I don't know any VCs." You are looking at networking all wrong. You don’t need billionaires. You need a net of adjacent peers who are 6 to 12 months ahead of you. If you want to know if your current network is there yet, here's a handy validator for ya: Look at your calendar for...
Hey Reader, Founders love the myth of the exceptional product. They believe Silicon Valley legends won because they built better software. Here is the reality. Sam Altman's first company, Loopt, had no real traction. It failed as a consumer product. It was acquired for millions anyway. Not because the tech was brilliant. Because Altman had well-connected VC relationships. When the app failed, his network caught him. The relationships were the infrastructure that literally purchased his...