The advice you hear most about fundraising is useless if you don’t have the network. “Get a warm intro.” “Ask your existing investors for introductions.” “Go through your accelerator network.” What if you don’t have any of that? Most first-time founders don’t. They’re building something real, they need capital, and they’re starting from zero on … Read more
Most AI prompt lists are useless. They give you 50 prompts for things you’ll never actually do. “Write a poem about your product values.” Nobody is doing that. These are the 7 prompts I use every single day. They’re not impressive. They’re just consistently useful. The Morning Email Triage Prompt Every morning before I open … Read more
Before you can hire a sales team, you are the sales team. Most founders are uncomfortable with this. They came from product, engineering, or operations. They don’t think of themselves as salespeople and they resist the label. The founders who grow fastest are the ones who get over that fastest. Here’s the sales pipeline system … Read more
The best founders I know share one habit that most people overlook. They stop. Once a week, for 20 minutes, they sit with what happened, what they did, and what it means. Not a fancy system. Not a 3-hour journaling ritual. Just 20 minutes of honest reflection before the next week begins. I started doing … Read more
The most expensive hiring mistake a founder can make is hiring a Head of Sales too early or hiring the wrong one. I’ve seen it happen at every stage. A Series A founder finally has the budget to bring on a sales leader, hires someone impressive from a large company, and watches them fail within … Read more
I had 400 unread emails when I finally broke. It was a Tuesday morning. I opened my inbox, saw the number, and closed my laptop. Not because I didn’t care. Because I didn’t know where to start. Every email felt equally urgent and equally unimportant at the same time. That afternoon I built a system … Read more
Most performance review systems fail before anyone fills them in. They’re too long. Too generic. Too disconnected from how people actually work. They ask employees to rate themselves on “communication” and “teamwork” using a 1-5 scale that means nothing because nobody defined what a 3 looks like. I’ve seen this at every stage of startup. … Read more
Most Series A companies make the same mistake with their first VP of People hire. They wait until something breaks — a bad hire that costs six months, a culture problem that surfaces in an all-hands, a departing engineer who cites “poor management” in their exit interview. Then they panic-hire a People leader and expect … Read more
I’m going to skip the generic advice. You’ve read “fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” You’ve read “talk to your customers.” You’ve read “hire slow, fire fast.” Everyone says these things. They’re true and they’re useless because they don’t tell you what they actually mean until after you’ve learned them the hard … Read more
I burned out at month 14. Not the dramatic kind you read about — the founder who has a breakdown at a board meeting or disappears for a month. The quiet kind. The kind where you’re still showing up, still doing the work, but every decision feels like it costs twice what it used to. … Read more