Everything is dumb right now

A lot of really DUMB stuff is happening in politics and business right now.

Profoundly dumb.

Worse is all the dumb people pretending they're smart trying to explain it away like they understand some super complex counterintuitive game theory that the rest of us don’t get.

This has been getting worse and worse for about two decades.

We’re in a negative doom loop.

We can only hope that - by some miracle - the loop can be broken and we reset back to some semblance of normalcy.

However, getting out of doom loops is near impossible and may require some kind of catastrophic failure before it ends.

Just remember. There are words and there are actions. There is stated intent, and there are outcomes. There are accusations and then there are court decisions. There are principled people and then there are those that change their stance based on prevailing winds.

Always pay attention to the latter.

Repeat, repeat, repeat

When it comes to stakeholder alignment, there's no substitute for concise, compelling and effective repetition.

Same info (in the same packaging!), over and over.

Generating revenue is a BAD idea

Trying to use revenue to extend runway (much less break even) is a fantastic way to break your early stage disruptive venture scale startup before it even begins.

Founders trying to do “one and done” or boostrapped startups are going to get their lunch eaten by Silicon Valley startups with the right number (and size) of funding rounds to win their category.

In early stage startups, revenue might be useful as a signal of PMF/traction, but only if it doesn’t create real friction toward scale and/or a disruptive business model down the road.

If it leads them to take big enterprise deals with bespoke, ill-timed or distracting requirements - then it’s insta-fail.

TAM, Growth and S-Curves

If you're thirsty, then you don't need the whole ocean, you just need a glass of water.

If you're chasing traction and growth, you don't need to go after the BIGGEST market, just the Minimum Viable Market for your Minimum Viable Problem so you can build, ship, and grow your Minimum Viable Product.

Then, it's a matter of S curves. As you begin to top out on one, you move into adjacency after adjacency.

If you have plenty of capital, maybe you can do 2 or 3 of these at the same time.

Short-term wins vs. Long-term growth - A false dichotomy.

There's always this perceived tension between short-term wins vs. long-term growth.

I generally find it to be either...

a) A false dichotomy - because if you figure out the right long-term plan, you can take quick incremental steps in the given strategic direction to drive short-term outcomes while building towards sustainable and meaningful long-term innovation.

b) A bad tradeoff - Even if there's a juicy (hard to pass up!) short-term win that isn't aligned to a long-term strategy, it's generally a lousy tradeoff that both costs more than you'd expect and returns much less than you'd hope. Thrash, distraction, and tech/business/ops debt combined with lackluster outcomes all conspire to just make it a shit deal.

Instead, do the work.

a) Take the time to develop a strategy
b) Articulate a clear vision for the ideal future state
c) Develop a roadmap of thin slices that get you from here to there
d) Ship each slice, one by one

This drive short-term growth on the way to long-term sustainable and disruptive change.

Have you wet your pants?

For an early-stage disruptive startup, using a big partnership to build something or go to market is a lot like wetting your pants. It might feel warm and fuzzy at first, but then you realize you've made a bad decision.

B2C companies will win in the end

Pretty much all winning software is B2C in the sense that individual human beings have to love using it and succeed.

The most user-centric product will always win in the end, even if the business model is ostensibly B2B.

Further, the user-centric B2B product that goes beyond the business user and helps the end-user the most will defeat those that don't (I.e. Some B2B2C features).

And in the fullness of time, B2C products will disrupt many of the incumbents and their crappy B2B Software.

Consumer App Pillars

When it comes to building a successful consumer app, there are 3 pivotal things you have to get right.

- A new or novel behavior that makes users feel something or achieve something.

- An elevated design that makes the experience feel delightful.

- An unfair distribution advantage and growth engine with continuous monitoring and improvement.

This does not guarantee success, but it makes it much more likely.

Keep grinding until you figure out all three!

Reusable documents

You don't need to work so hard to help your colleagues.

Often, when a colleague asks you to answer a question about your strategy, project, department, or other area of work, your first instinct can be to craft a bespoke answer to the question. This can often involve making a new document, diagram, or even a whole slide deck!

Stop.

You can avoid doing so much work.

Instead, consider how you might develop an evergreen canonical document, slide deck, or diagram that would answer the question (and probably many other questions) that you can use over and over each time someone asks the same or similar question.

The wonderful advantage of this approach is not just saving your time and effort. It also gives your colleagues who might keep circling around the same topics the confidence that there is one consistent plan that is always in effect and driving all decisions (and if there isn't - there SHOULD be).

By showing them the same diagram each time, their visual memory is triggered and they can think "Oh thaaaat's right - I've seen this before, and the answer is obvious and consistent each time I ask".

I always like to have these kinds of diagrams and documents laying around (to name just a few).

1 x product strategy deck (including principles, assumptions etc).

1 x product stack diagram

1 x roadmap

1 x problem/persona description/diagram

1 x org chart

And so on...

Stop doing so much work.

Stop making up your answers on the fly.

Stop re-formulating your information over and over.

Take advantage of reusable documents and your audience's visual memory to engender more confidence and deliver better, more consistent results.

Minimum Viable PROBLEM

You need something CRITICAL before you create your MVP.

MVP standards for Minimum Viable Product.

Most founders think that the FIRST thing they need to do is develop their MVP

This is WRONG.

What they ACTUALLY need FIRST is their Minimum Viable PROBLEM.

This is an embarrassingly narrow subset of the broader problem that you want to solve. A very specific persona, problem and use-case that is far, far more conservative and narrowly scoped than is typically suggested by your full vision.

Having a Minimum Viable PROBLEM allows you to build a TRULY Minimum (small) Viable (actually solves the problem) Product (Usable and delightful).

I am hereby coining the phase MVP(roblem).

The virtue of waitlists

Ship early and often.

Consumer app?

Try a waitlist. It can create scarcity, buzz and enthusiasm even while allowing you to throttle growth and measure app improvements by cohort.

There are a lot of good ways to make waitlists that really work for you.

Drop me a line if you're interested in learning more

Documentation helps to clarify thinking

Never underestimate the value of forcing people to document their thinking.

It uncovers subtle misalignment and confusion.

It also helps to force them to think about how they think, which tends to improve their thought process!

Deconflate to scale

It's amazing when restructuring a scaleup for true scale and efficiency how many new fertile areas and insights emerge when you deconflate and decouple each aspect of the business and its processes.

It really helps you uncover and dig into important details for standardization and scale.

Helpful people can be very unhelpful

If you have no real product and you start pitching to customers, your "market validation" can often just be a mirage. This is because people often try to appear kind, helpful, or smart - so they just say hollow things like, "Oh, that sounds like a great idea!"

This kind of feedback does not prove they will actually use your product when you put a real thing in front of them.

Similarly, if you have no real traction and you start pitching VCs, then they will start firing brain farts at you, which can be really distracting. They will say stuff like "oh, this would be better if it was in this other vertical".

Focus on growth before pitching VCs. Particularly if you're a first-time founder and/or you're getting this kind of feedback/objection.

Growth transforms your hypothesis into fact. It will minimize or eliminate debate with well-meaning but misguided investors.

Everything else is academic.

God is in the details

Some cultures and companies can be afraid to be "nit-picky" with each other.

I have recently noticed this in a group of PMs reviewing a product iteration on staging. Much of the feedback was prefaced with "this is just nitpicky but..."

Don't be afraid to dig into pixel-level details.

As a leader, be intentional about building a culture where teammates don't feel a need to apologize for this kind of rigor.

The details are the difference between good and great.

A trick for AI Customer Service Chat bots

A big watch-out for AI customer support chat bots:

Don't just deploy a chatbot. Build incredible documentation and a searchable knowledge base, then use THAT as the RAG for the bot.

You get to kill two birds with one stone + some people hate bots.

Chatbots are a layer of abstraction above knowledge bases and product info - not a replacement for them.

Generative AI changes EVERYTHING, right? Wrong.

Startups and products are about solving real problems from first principles.

Sometimes, a fundamental change occurs in regulation, culture, macroeconomic conditions, and/or technology, allowing you to re-think the problem and solution space from new principles.

Generative AI is such a fundamental change.

But the original intention/goal/pattern doesn't change. Solving real problems.

Decisive vs Thrashy

Don’t do this.

Founder running a company with huge potential - but it’s going sideways. He reaches out asking for help getting to the next level and unlocking growth.

We engage.

We have 1 meeting.

He cancels.

Months later he reaches out to engage again.

I decide to give it another chance despite my reservations.

We have 1 meeting.

Then he emails saying he wants to switch to working via written questions.

I explain this is a bad idea but I’m open to trying it as an experiment.

His submits written questions that are about me, not his business.

I answer the questions I’m willing to answer.

He cancels.

🤔

I’ve worked with only a few people who I would consider completely incompetent.

Very few people act like this.

But this is an (very) extreme version of a common trait amongst inexperienced operators: a lack of consistent execution and follow through .

NOTHING will work if you don’t do it consistently over time.

Making fast, thrashy decisions can feel decisive, but it’s likely to be wasteful and blunt any momentum you might have otherwise experienced.

Effective leaders walk the line between acting consistently and concienciously over time, and being agile enough to appropriately adjust to changing conditions.

Ineffective leaders get this balance wrong. They just spin their wheels and drive everyone around them crazy.

How do startups find me

I've had a number of people ask me recently how I find and select the companies I work with.

The answer is quite straightforward. But the last method might surprise you.

My primary sources of deal flow:

- Ambient reputation: People have heard of me (but they're not quite sure how) so they google for me and reach out from my site.

- Word of mouth: Founders I've worked with tell other founders to reach out to me.

- Social media: People stumble onto my social media posts, go down a rabbit hole, and then reach out because my world view and advice resonates with them.

- Newsletter: People have read a newsletter (sometimes because someone forwarded it to them) that alerts them to a problem or opportunity in their business. They then reach out from my site.

- Podcast: People are discovering and listening to my podcast regularly. It's growing fast (from algorithms or listener shoutouts). Some founders and operators like what they hear and reach out.

.

- VCs: Investors suggest founders contact me under 2 very different scenarios. a) They meet a lot of companies that are not yet ready for investment, so they send them to me to help them get ready, and b) They invest in companies and then learn about an opportunity or a weakness that I can help with - so they introduce me - this de-risks and maximizes their portfolio outcomes.

- Licence plate: You wouldn't believe the number of people who have stopped my wife, my dad, or me at the lights and asked about the plates on our cars (STRTUPS) - and then they want to connect.

My criteria for choosing to work with a company:

- 6+ months of operating capital.

- Potential to disrupt some fundamental aspect(s) of the world.

- A founder with ambitious goals.

- A coachable team, eager to evolve and improve quickly.

- A deep appreciation for opportunity cost and the value of moving fast.

- A “Chris-shaped hole” in the team where I can add a lot of value quickly.

You work for your direct reports

In the old world, your direct reports worked for YOU.

In the new world, YOU work for your direct reports.

It's YOUR job to fix org problems such as a lack of resources, context, clarity, causes of inefficiency and thrash, etc.

Are you doing a bad job? Does your team need your help? They will escalate to you. You better do a good job when they do!

Learn more about this in our escalation episode of The Startup Podcast - link in the comments.