Opinion
Kurdin: Companies no longer need product managers to relay information
“Good written culture and no public managers. I was always bearish from the role and now more so. I don't think you need a conduit of information anymore. And, you know, I think engineers should work with customers and yeah, if someone has good design standards…”
Insight
Kurdin: A '7 out of 10' hire is the most dangerous
“Also, like, one thing that I deeply believe in is that a seven, like a seven out of 10, is actually one of the most dangerous hires you can make because this person will have enough redeeming qualities to shine And we will be very slow about letting them go. M…”
Insight
Kurdin: Founders need six to twelve months hardcore commitment before quitting
“Our stance was, like, at least six months to a year, like, hardcore, obsessed, like, crazy hours, sell it, code it.”
Insight
Kurdin: Accounts receivable automation has no PMF risk, only execution risk
“So like there's respectfully no PMF risk. What we do, we get people paid fast. We sold like our receivables. Every business has this problem, just the customer support, and it's just execution risk.”
Insight
Kurdin: Plain-text unformatted cold emails outperform polished outbound copy
“And then for copy, you know, plain text, no links, no images, doing things like sent from iPhone, lowercase, They cannot know that it is AI or spam, especially today. Like there's so much email. There's like 50 guys that are smarter than me that are doing outb…”
Insight
Kurdin: Cold email sequence length shows little difference between 3 and 9 steps
“I've tried like nine step sequences, and I've tried three step sequences. I haven't really found a huge delta between them.”
Disclosure
Kurdin: Monk pitches recruits on talent density and autonomy, not mission
“The pitch is, I have a fancy story about, you know, how we're going to improve global GDP and we're not pitching that. We're not pitching the mission at all. What we pitch is come and do your life's work with a very talent dense, ambitious group of people Form…”
Insight
Kurdin: Asking for under $10M in a Series A looks unambitious to VCs
“If you come out for the A and if anyone is listening, if you come out for the A and you say like low teens or like not even below a 10, it doesn't seem like you're ambitious and it just doesn't make sense to like VC math.”
Disclosure
Kurdin returned Gattaca capital after quick profitability due to small market
“We became profitable quite quickly, but I returned the money because it was a small market and I had a co-founder breakup.”
Insight
Kurdin: Smart talent is motivated by growth metrics, not founder speeches
“Smart, ambitious people want to work with fast growing companies. There's only like so much yapping that I could do to motivate the team. People want to look at graphs and go up and to the right.”
Opinion
Kurdin: Far better to compete against other founders than AI labs
“I would much rather compete against respectfully all the founders than the labs.”
Insight
Kurdin: FinTech's unstructured data makes it purpose-built for AI models
“It was an incredible use case for AI. There's so much unstructured data. It is, like, purpose-built to use the models.”
Disclosure
Kurdin pitched five unbuilt products simultaneously in Figma for customer discovery
“And I made a fancy Figma as if we have them all. And I went to people, like, I was like, hey, Pablo, like, we're building this company. It's called Atlas. We're called Atlas at the time. And I already built these five products. Which one do you want to pay for…”
Insight
Kurdin: Private equity buyouts create a multi-year opening for startups to disrupt incumbents
“If a company is bought by a private equity firm, that typically to me means that A, it's a big market that people have sharks, but B, the B firm will like rip out the people. They'll go through like a period of fast growth and they're going to sell it. There's…”
Insight
Kurdin: True validation requires signing pilot agreements or committing implementation resources
“So, like, the penultimate test is, hey, let's sign this doc. Like, give me some of your resources. Sign this pilot doc and or, you know, dedicate some resources to implement my thing. An NDA could be a good signal.”
Insight
Kurdin: Enterprise buyers reject black-box automation without a user dashboard
“What I've realized is that if you got a job at a big enough company to own this function,
You kind of want to log into somewhere to see what's happening.
It's like not enough for it to just happen behind the scenes.
You want a dashboard.”
Insight
Kurdin: Finance leaders prioritize cash in hand over software insights
“The number one metric that every finance leader or CEO cares about is just more cash in hand.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kurdin: Cold outbound was Monk's only go-to-market channel
“It was cold outbound email, and that was our only channel all of last year. No sales team, no nothing.”
Insight
Kurdin: Never trust default volume limits from outbound tools
“The mistakes that I made in that QA company is like, never, never trust the floor and the ceiling in these larger tools.”
Disclosure
Kurdin: Monk is building its team using a barbell hiring strategy
“And so I think that, like, at least the way that we're going to build this company is going to be a barbell. We're going to have senior staff, and we're going to have folks that are possibly going to be brilliant, but they're early.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kurdin: AI lab capital is inflating compensation for top engineering talent
“Great people are expensive because of the labs, because there's so much money. And so there's a lot of money. There's a big amount of money chasing a finite pool of people. And so salary is a bit up. You need the cash.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kurdin: Monk closed an early customer without a single live call
“They emailed us. I ignored. They emailed again and again, and then I couldn't do a call, so I just sent them like our sales platter, which is like a one-pager, and then they said, okay, send me something else, and I couldn't do a call again, so I just sent the…”
Disclosure
Kurdin: Monk aims to index global payments as its best-case outcome
“The best case outcome is you can somehow index global payments, which is what we're aiming to do.”
Disclosure
Kurdin: Monk pitches cash acceleration and efficiency, not headcount cuts
“No laying off. The main metrics that we are proud of, that we sort of cite, is like, time saving, slash making the team more efficient, following your cash.”