Archive
2020
- Opening Applications and Announcing $100M for Spearhead Founders
- Rapidly Growing Valuations Shouldn’t Scare You Off
- Reading Social Proof Is an Art Form
- Social Proof Is a Valid Signal
- Ask About the Metrics They’re Not Showing You
- It’s Easy to Exaggerate Early Traction
- Everything Is a Proxy for Traction
- Early Winners Don’t Always Make It to the Finish Line
- Invest in the First Credible Mover
- Monopolies Fall When Platforms Shift
- A Lot of Great Tech Businesses Are Natural Monopolies
- Great Companies Expand Their Markets
- Invest in $0 Billion Companies
- Invest in Pure Tech Companies
- Raising Money Without Any Product Is a Red Flag
- The Product Is the Resume of the Team
- Expanding Fast vs. Dialing in the Model
- In PayPal’s Early Days, We Lost Money on Every Transaction
- Get the Operation Working at a Small Scale
- ‘Tech-Enabled’ Often Means Thin Margins
- Startups Didn’t Need Great Accounting Until Software Ate the World
- You Can't Optimize Profits If There Are No Profits to Optimize
- Negative Unit Economics Create the Illusion of Success
- Startups Are Susceptible to ‘Happy Talk’
- Mature Your Culture as You Grow
- Nobody Wants to Give a Founder Tough Love
- Founder Psychology Is at the Heart of Most Blitzfails
- Culture Is a Macrocosm of the Founder’s Psychology
- Micro-Bubbles Are Constantly Building and Bursting
- ‘High-Burn Startup Meets Macro-Shock’ Is a Recipe for Blitzfail
- Moving Fast May Mean You're Not Really Moving at All
- Startups Are a Race to Get to Scale
- Blitzfail: Why Startups Go off the Rails
- Repeat Founders Don’t Really Want to Start Over From Scratch
- ‘First-Time Founders’ Often Have Been Tinkering for Quite a While
- Avoid Teams That Would Sell Early
- Founders Almost Can’t Be Referenced
- Your Reputation Is Built by the Companies That Are Doing Poorly
- Coachability Is Overrated
- You’re Not Investing in Nice People
- Invest Only in Technical Teams
- Invest in the Smartest Scientists in a New Field
- Don’t Fantasize About What You Would Do If You Were the Founder
- You’ll Get Less Money in Your Winners
- You Can Give Every Deal One Fatal Flaw
- The Best Deals Look Weird
- Judgment Requires a Willingness to Be Unpopular
- Are Good Investors Piling in the Round with You?
- Pivots Mean Your People Judgment Really Matters
- Judgment Is the Work You Do Before a Deal Arrives
- Judgment Gives You the Winning Lottery Numbers in Advance
- Everybody Thinks They Already Have Good Judgment
2019
- Founders Backing Founders
- Be Non-Consensus Right
- Be a Shadow Co-Founder
- The Best Deals Come from Your Network
- Don’t Build a Brand in a Narrow Vertical
- Spearhead Opens Applications for $1M Angel Funds
- My Original Brand Was in Growth Hacking
- There’s Very Little Innovation in Venture Capital
- You Can’t Build a Brand by Aping Someone Else
- You Need a Brand to Get into Hot Deals
- Don’t Let Deals Pass on You
- Investing Takes Capital, Judgment and Dealflow
- Being a Founder Your Entire Life Is a Tough Road
- IPOs Are for the Last Investors in Line
- You’re Living Inside the Gold Mine
- Living in a Tech Hub Is Half the Battle
- Strong Opinions, Loosely Held
- How to Angel Invest