Early Stage Founders

“My recommendation to the early stage founders is, unless you have that distribution advantage, healthcare is still actually a very hard market to get into, and you're better off either working with a larger company or distributing through a larger company or c…”

“Began to realize there was a pretty significant opportunity gap for many of those early stage founders who have a need to tell their story and build some foundational assets, but have none of that capability or acts of that capability. In their company or in t…”

“I think one other thing that a lot of early stage founders forget is like when you're closing a deal or signing someone up, there's nothing better to be like, Hey, I will give you a discount if you can introduce me to five colleagues of yours that this would b…”

“If you're an early stage founder, like you're going to lose probably 50 to 75% of your equity value due to dilution alone. You may lose 10 to 80% of your upside Buy the preference stack.”

“Find one metric that you can breathe, eat, live with, and just like a monkey with a hammer, like just go after that metric. And don't worry about anything else. Don't worry about Whether everything else is upside down, but like just that one metric, if it's ag…”

“They didn't have a, this might work. Right? Like, or it could work. It was something deep-seated in their souls that they would come in and tell you, like, I have a business, and this is what it's going to do. And you're like, but you don't have a business rig…”

“I think in the world of early product building, you actually need to be like ultra paranoid about repeatability. And you need to assume that, you know, give yourself a little bit of credit and assume that you're somewhat charismatic or Entertaining or whatever…”

“First, early stage founders are typically really bad customers. They're the most resource constrained. Oftentimes they're the most demanding. And if they don't have product market fit, you are making a bet on their business in order for them to stay a customer…”

“I get scared when someone tells me that they're going to do something like that, because my, the first thing that comes to my mind is you're just trying to get to like some mushy side of me that just wants to like give you money because I believe in this and I…”

“If you're an early stage founder and you feel like you've got things under control and you've got time, then you probably don't have the pole that you really need to truly take off.”

“There's a lot more awareness on the pressure that's on founders these days, and so there's a little bit more Forgiveness within the market, I think, of early stage founders and not expecting them to be the Walmarts, the Apples, the whatever of the world, right…”

“But the reality is it's like false precision. Like you're not going to know where your LTV is if you've been in business for a year or six months or whatever it might be. So I wouldn't over index on that false precision.”

“The main mistake I see early stage founders making is that as soon as they think they're ready to raise, they start, they go out to VC. And they're not thinking about the long game when they do that. Because there's only a certain amount of money that you're g…”

“I think the biggest mistake is not trying to sell. And if someone is not paying, whether your product is ready or not, if they're not paying, it means that something is wrong.”

“It's so hard to give a founder hard feedback because they've just dedicated their life to this thing, right? Like who wants to be the bearer of bad news? And sometimes you just need to let that action speak louder than words.”

“Hiring is really freaking hard. Like it is the one area where I think most early stage founders get most wrong.”

“But if they're so certain about the idea at such an early stage, to me, that's a bad signal.”

“At the end of the day, I think early stage founders think, Spend too much time thinking about the business and not enough time thinking about the product.”

“I think it does when time constraints are the dominant force. And for that reason, I think early stage founders spending real time investing is it's just too expensive. And so when, like, there are definitely things to be learned from your investing that poure…”

“I think it's because the process of starting a company, developing a product is, is a very personal journey, right? You're really wrapped up in yourself, how it's going to impact your life, your friends, your family, and how this company is going to change you…”

“And so what early stage founder should find is the architecture engineer who are strong at architecture engineer. Because if the architecture is not well architected, then you have to rebuild in at some point.”

“If you take money from a big fund as an early stage founder, there's actually less pressure. This is so changed. The funds are so big and they're raising funds every 12 months. We have different portfolios and my portfolios, when the multi-billion dollar funds…”

“Early companies found are taking ten million dollars off the table. Personally, I think it sends a lot of weird signals.”

“At the early stages, it is important to pick investors who you think will be value adding beyond capital. So craft the cap table carefully of funds that can bring large checks and continue to support through various rounds. But also funds who are value adding …”

“My favorite people to fund are people who have created a company and like made all the mistakes, ended up with a small win where they got a taste of winning, but you know, not, not, not enough to go retire on a yacht because the next time they start, they're l…”

“Generally speaking, with most early stage runners I talk to, they always devalue their own tool. They always think it's worth less than what the market actually thinks it is worth”

“You are not raising money. You are selling a part of your company. That's what you're doing.”

“There are people that are really good At starting companies and getting them off the ground. And oftentimes the reason that they're really good at that and the reason they chose that was because they tried to be in a big company and they hated it and they were…”

“Driving home that relentless focus on the key metric or Maybe two key metrics tops is so important for early stage founders because that is the only thing that will matter.”

“So I think in the early stages of the business, when you have no one to delegate anything to, that is absolutely true. You sacrifice everything. Screw holidays. Screw weekends. You're gonna work, like, all the time. No dating. No, like, personal life. No hobbi…”

“Especially when you're a super early stage, you know, spend 95% of your time trying to make things happen on a day-to-day basis, and five percent or less of your time on things strategic.”