1/ there is this sense when you are young that your accomplishments need to be a list of things that seem impressive to others. A list of several items you did. This isn't actually right, so here is another suggestion.
When I entered VC, I thought founders would want my help with: - algorithms - sw architecture - advice on leveraging data 😂 Here's what they usually want: - recruiting help - best practices/"what've you seen in this situation?" - someone who believes in them - emotional support
No one expects a tennis player to become the next Serena without coaching. Why would the next great CEO be any different? Get an executive coach.
This year has been a massive one for self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-improvement for me. I wrote out what I learned about myself in 2018 and thought I would share it here:
All of these brilliant people (@nntaleb @naval @nickkokonas) talk about the importance of doing things or investing in things with “asymmetric risk” (huge upside, limited downside). But I’ve never seen a list of what those things might be. Let’s create one. I’ll start...
Profit sharing is the new IPO.
One of my lessons for 2018 is that slide decks are many times more engaging than long-form essays. On average people spend 200-300% more time on a deck than an essay. Funny. Y’all are just daring me to exclusive create and publish content in slide deck format?
I’ve gotten asked a lot about YC interviews in the last week. Here are some tips:
The cheat codes for raising angel funding...
1/ Was at a dinner recently with five VCs. All great folks, smart, thoughtful investors. We got to talking about Halo Top and what drove its growth.
📖 Got about 15 chapters done for Refactoring UI so far, things are coming along awesome! Will be sending out another free preview this week to anyone subscribed for updates: https://t.co/KWmLPhiuhf https://t.co/CrFVvCRwz6
0/ Thread: 25 traits of the ideal early stage VC 🔥 My ideas of best practices based on what I’ve seen + read. Anything to add / argue? cc @andrewchen @ArlanWasHere @eriktorenberg @fdestin @cyantist @ryan_caldbeck @sknthla @garrytan @TZhongg @hunterwalk
1/ As a founder you should spend all of your time on the unique things you can do which no other human on the planet can do. Corollary: You should spend almost no time doing stuff which is already well understood by someone else.
Lambda School but for __________ instead of programming
💬 I often get Q’s like these: How did you get your first customers for WIP? How did you grow BetaList’s traffic? Etc. Makers are looking to reverse-engineer success. I see it everywhere. I don’t think it works that way and the answers to those questions are mostly useless. 💥
1/ What drives decisions for (bad) VCs. This is going to be fun.
@eriktorenberg @jrdngonen @dksf @CaseyNeistat @368 YC took off in part because of the lack of education and a playbook for starting a company and raising money. I’m not sure YC would be a fraction of what it is today if it started in 2018. So, which industries today have a simi…
@ItsHogg @levelsio @ProductHunt @sarah__jackson @jsfiddle Here is a slightly tweaked version of @levelsio that actually generates a downloadable gif 🎉 insert your emojis and then right click on the image 'save image as' 👍 https://jsfiddle. net/moritzkobrna/oxwjdc2m/
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