Podcast

People are already familiar with core metrics like unit economics. The question is: Why does negative unit economics catch startups by surprise? The answer is that, in a lot of cases, unit economics are hard to measure. More

A lot of founders are susceptible to “happy talk.”  They only want to hear good news; they want to believe. More

Just as founders should balance their own psychology, they should also balance the psychology of the “hive mind,” the corporate mind. More

VCs now compete to see who can be the most pro-founder. They don’t want to tell founders they’re doing something wrong or give them any tough love.  Founders of fast-growing companies get to pick their board members. More

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