david

Founder psychology is at the heart of most rail-jumping behavior. A founder CEO pushes things too far, not just on one dimension but typically on a whole host of them. More

The simplest way to understand company culture is as a macrocosm of the founder’s psychology. If there’s a founder psychology problem, it’s going to be writ large across the company. More

In between these once-a-decade macro-shocks, there are mini-shocks that affect certain kinds of companies or certain stages, where investors reevaluate their fundraising criteria.  We had the SoftBank shock, which was a mini-shock in late-stage rounds, where all of a sudden people started re-examining late-stage valuations for certain kinds of companies. More

I published “Blitzfail” in late February, and the last pitfall on the list is: macro-shock meets unprepared company.  A week later, Sequoia published “Coronavirus: The Black Swan of 2020.” We’re going into one of these periods where some macro-shock hits the startup ecosystem and fundraising either dries up completely or investors reevaluate their fundraising criteria. More

One of the toughest things about being a founder is the Darwinian struggle you’re locked in with your competitors. More

I don’t want people to interpret “Blitzfail” as a criticism of blitzscaling, which is often necessary and desirable for startups. More

Entrepreneur and investor David Sacks, who serves as a Spearhead mentor, recently published a popular blog post, “BlitzFail: How Not to Go Off the Rails.” We’re going to discuss the article and ways that scaling companies go off the rails. More