founders

“I think as a founder, when you feel like, yeah, things aren't good within your team, you inevitably take that personally and you feel like it's your failure.”

“I do tend to see too many founders Who have the comfort of a current job, who are not diving off at the diving board, and it changes the way you approach everything. You know, there's a certain comfort that doesn't allow you to really, you know, fully commit t…”

“Your goal with your first one should be to get a win. Hopefully it's a big win, but at least a win. And your odds of getting win are much higher when you focus on value versus hype. When you focus on customers versus TAM, and when you focus on building and not…”

“And then if you're raising from VCs, I don't know any VC that isn't happy doing a pref round, like a price round. Almost most, most VCs are happy to just do a price round. By the way, like most times we don't do a price round because the founder is the one tha…”

“A lot of angel investors are LPs and a lot of like founders who have had exits are LPs. I actually think that's the better intro than founders.”

“The only tip that I can give founders is they have to decide if they're building something where market education will help them, and they don't mind having 15 or 20 you know, follow-up teams that will be inspired by their idea, that's fine. You can go crazy. …”

“Here's how far we can get with two 50. Here's how far we can get with 500. Here's how far we can get with a million. They're all good places for the business to net out. There's all different strategies for them. You'll create different strategies around them.…”

“There's nothing more diluted for a founder than a post money safe. It's, and I love post money saves. I shouldn't be saying this. I really shouldn't be saying this because I will turn every prep around to a post money save as I can. Post money saves basically …”

“While billion dollar startups get all the hype for 99% of founders, it's just the wrong goal. You're better off focusing on building a sustainable business with consistent growth”

“I think that, you know, sure, every founder wants their company to be as big as possible, I would say, generally speaking, and that's totally fine, but making it a goal to reach unicorn status just leads to a lot of poor thinking.”

“I think, A, that's a path that many more founders should take, and B, a path that many founders will have to take in, in these coming years.”

“Founders have to be good storytellers, so there's sort of, I always call it, you know, the storytelling power is sort of this dark magic, and you have to be very careful, because it can It can screw up your own radar if you use it in the wrong way.”

“I think any founder who does well out of their business should make sure that all of their employees are taken care of. And if I can shame you into feeling terrible about taking your ten million dollars and being like, well, it's all mine. Like, yeah, legally …”

“Overall the last 25 years have definitely created an environment where Almost every founder feels like if I'm not raising lots of money and trying to become the billion dollar unicorn, then I am not as good of an entrepreneur. I'm not as impressive of a person…”

“So that desperation often turns into it not working, but you're just making it work. You're just charismaing the shit out of it. You're convincing one customer, like you're like force of nature. But when something really works, it actually just works.”

“Going in already with like two or three different plans is just soft.”

“And there are a lot of good ideas that never get funded, not because there's something wrong with the idea, just because the founders never figured out how to tell the story appropriately.”

“So I say that almost like 80% is conviction, and 20% you are going over there with an open mind to listen what they can tell you that could be of interest, right?”

“What market is going to tell you is today's problem. The market is not going to tell you where the problem will be in the long term. And that is for us to decide and figure it out, right? So as a founder, you are making a bet on the market, you're making a bet…”

“In Latam, as a founder, I feel that if you want to raise like giant funds, You have to come across as an American or American Mitch. You know what I mean? Like somehow us educated, there's this need to feel very American. Otherwise I don't think that you race.”

“Compared to other people, you're extremely productive, but compared to yourself, you're this mouse going in circles at literally like a third of the speed that they could be going if they address the shit that is like hampering them.”

“I think that at the core for not everyone with the folks that have that view, we basically, what you want to do is avoid being worthless. And you do that through achievement. And I think that it tends to be that the level of achievement when you have that para…”

“I also think, I mean, more this year than any year that I've been focused on startups, there's just a ton of founders who are not as enamored with venture capital overall as a pathway. They're just like, yeah, maybe down the road if I need it, but pretty much …”

“I think founders are smarter now because they're right sizing the amount they raise, the amount they spend to where they're actually at in, in the journey and not like getting ahead over themselves and tipping over their skis, so to speak.”

“I strongly believe that if you're not worried about, you know, Paying your electricity bill you know, next month, then you're gonna be able to operate at a higher level than if you have that, that fear”

“On the flip side, I've seen founders bring in amazing seasoned product leaders and they, three months later, they're no longer there because the founder was not in a place nor should they be in a place To give up that product vision to someone else.”

“Not only do you have to be obsessive and hustle hard as you're describing here, you need to do it on an embarrassingly narrow problem. And solution embarrassingly narrow and not hedge and split the difference.”

“What they were doing was going out and taking the first few photos to set the bar for their scalable marketplace. So they did things that don't scale to bootstrap a scalable marketplace. And that's the part, but that's the second part of the sentence. That mos…”

“Any investor that feels they have time isn't writing a check in a week or two. They're gonna take their time because time is optionality, so why wouldn't they? So, like, you have to put them on their heels, and you can only do that by packing things, and you c…”

“So we actually, contrary to a lot of people, would prefer that they not have had a large, successful exit. Like, enough money to, you know, buy a house is okay.”

“I haven't seen like not so many people who became successful from the first attempt, but I have never seen any founder who would not become successful from five attempts.”

“I think as a founder, it's your responsibility to be taking the first hundred sales calls, because again, you're figuring out pricing, you're figuring out who the right customer is, et cetera.”

“When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, They see your name. They see your face. They see that you have CEO in your title or founder in your title or whatever it is. And already you have a leg up on 90% of the other SDRs that are doing outreach on LinkedIn, …”

“You need to be on the phones, learning, pitching, well past the first million.”

“That mastery of how do you surround yourself with two or three people who can be your go-to advisors for certain topics. Now, I usually say that don't go to a Japanese restaurant and ask for fried rice because just because they have rice. Like they're, that's …”

“I think that founders generally focus too much on their business plan and not enough on their lifestyle plan.”

“People ask me, should they start a company? And my answer very quickly is no. And the And the reason I say that is actually related to your question. I say that because if just talking to me and I tell, you know, you're convinced that like, oh, maybe I shouldn…”

“In my view, the only way to really fail as a founder is to lose your time. And it's to, you know, be three years in on an idea that you now realize wasn't good enough, wasn't worthy of your time.”

“I think a lot of founders have a tendency to self delude into believing like, oh, as long as they just like keep on, you know doing it, it'll work out. But while they think that they also aren't actively trying to prove that it's going to fail, like, you know,…”

“What I realized is you need to product, you need to productionize it and need to like solve specific need for people. And I think that really involves getting at least like one really good product designer in early. You being a really, like the founder needs t…”

“The dilution for a given venture backed company has more to do with the needs of the investors. And it has the needs of the founders. And so founders are, you know, don't get screwed by a bad deal, but realize that the numbers that you're coming to with in neg…”

“The zero to one phase, in my case, but I think it should be the case for every company, all of the closings, all of the sales are done directly by the founder. You are in touch, you are involved in every single deal. Then the one to 10 phase, you start stickin…”

“Realistically, there are a lot of people, and this includes founders that can do it once and they can't do it again because it's just fucking hard.”

“There's this metaphor of like exits off the highway that a lot of founders use. And when you get an exit off of the highway, if you say no, then you need to know like the next exit is 50 miles away or a hundred miles away. And I think M&A for founders is Is ab…”

“Get people around you that understand what you're doing, and who will call you on your BS, and be a cheerleader all at the same time, and then listen to them, and then figure out, you know, the 90% of the advice they give you that you're going to ignore, becau…”

“You want a corporate lawyer who sees a lot of activity and ideally a corporate lawyer who never works with VCs, but only ever works with founders.”

“Look, there's the only thing that is really a risk when you're a founder, as long as you're following the law, is wasting your time.”

“Majority of founders, when dealing with products market fit, is that they either do not do enough volume, or they do not do the right channel. They're working on the worst opportunities that no one wants.”

“The conversation that I'm having more than any other with founders today is if I'm not in this super hot quartile, in this super hot AI circle, do I have a chance? There's like a, I wouldn't call it fatalism, but there's a definite strong negativity or sense t…”

“I think founders have to be 60% good at everything. And product was a great example. I would be on every single call every day. We had two standups, obviously not good enough to scale it, but good enough to get it off the ground. I did the UX. I did the UI. I …”

“I think first-time founders often think that they can just, like, talk to users, users, users, and, like, find the answer to their problems, and we're just not. And it's not to say that you shouldn't talk to users, but you need to have a very clear idea that, …”

“I think one of the biggest challenges from tier one and tier two venture capital firms is they're always looking for people that check a box on paper. Usually the people that check a box on paper, aren't the people that start generational companies.”

“If you're not a tier one or tier two VC, like a lot of those are just like trying to take advantage of people. They want your time. They're essentially like vampires in my opinion.”

“And I think that comfort doesn't make them less motivated. I actually think it just makes it easier to like, okay, more things are taken care of. I can take care of my family and now I can put more energy towards the company. And if you have somebody who has a…”

“I don't think you should move, and I do think you should visit, is the way that I've been telling founders lately.”

“I think you have to do the manual stuff at the start to kind of, to tinker the messaging. So, like, what I would be telling founders to do is, like, start with social selling on LinkedIn and, like, be as personalized as you possibly can from, like, voice notes…”

“Every time I go on a call with the VC, that VC probably wants me to be the best founder that they've ever met. I mean, that's their job. They want to invest.”

“When founders of startups, especially ones that like know their space, well ping other people very often your ICP customer early does want to talk to you. And the reason is because people like discovering new products and they like seeing new things and they l…”