The news moves fast and Jess says be decisive as a solution. The hard part is finding the data to support decisions. Here is an example from this month:

1. Mercor CEO Brendan Foody announced they have scaled from $1-500M in revenue run rate in the last 17 months, self-proclaiming “the fastest growing company of all time.” He proposes a specific view of the future: “While everyone fears job loss, we’re creating a new category of knowledge work faster than any other time in history. The future of work will converge on training agents.”

2. ML Researcher Benjamin Anderson posted Don’t Build an RL Environment Startup, where he warns of the “free money spigots” of building RL environments: “Once AI models have a skill, the value of datasets and environments that teach that skill tend to 0, as models can now provide unlimited, cheap data as a substitute.”

3. Anthropic Co-Founder Jack Clark reportedly said that in the next 16 months, AI will be able to complete tasks that take days, weeks or months, describing it as a “call center of geniuses” or a “country of geniuses.”

4. Three former OpenAI employees are in talks to raise more money for their RL company, now valued at $500M.

So:

1. According to Mercor, the future of work is training agents.

2. Humans can only train agents on skills they perform better than agents.

3. By the end of next year, AI could be a “call center of geniuses.”

4. Smart VC’s are putting more money into RL companies at very high prices.

Once an agent has mastered an environment, the training environment’s value goes to zero. Once an agent’s abilities exceed a human labeler’s, the labeler’s value goes to zero. As Anderson put it in his post: “If the only person smart enough to make models better is Terence Tao—OpenAI doesn’t need your marketplace, they’ll just pick up the phone and call him.”

Years ago we predicted that synthetic data generation would quickly swamp human labeling, and companies like Scale would crash. Turns out it is swamping human labeling, starting at the bottom, but this has happened slowly enough for Scale to find a profitable exit and robotic rebirth.

It’s temping to make the same prediction for Mercor and others that support this RL ecosystem. Mercor is starting with a more highly skilled talent pool than Scale, but couldn’t it become one of the most rapidly depreciating assets in history? Maybe they thread the needle or maybe we make the same mistake we did with Scale, and the range of tasks requiring human-assigned rewards and RL is so broad that it will be 10+ years and many successful startups and fund returning investments before the RL economy runs out of steam.

Being decisive is key. Being right is more difficult.

Today, I rode in a self-driving car to OpenAI's office. I walked back along the Embarcadero, watching F-35s slice through the sky. This isn't a sci-fi film. It's a Friday in San Francisco.

For founders, this matters more than you think.

Living on the bleeding edge doesn't just inform your vision—it reshapes it. Your instincts sharpen when "impossible" becomes your daily commute. You start to see further, clearer, than anyone else on the planet.

It's not about the tech toys. It's about the people.

In the Bay, you're surrounded by those who've turned "can't be done" into "old news" a dozen times over. Their experience becomes your accelerant. Their failures, your shortcuts. They pay it forward to your future. 

What starts as a glimmer in a founder's eye here becomes the world's new normal. Born in San Francisco, built in the Bay, bought by the world—eventually.

This is why the next wave of world-changing companies will likely emerge from the Bay. Not because of Sand Hill Road and access to more capital but because founders in SF are already living in tomorrow. 

The Bay Area isn't just a place. It's a time machine.

So ask yourself: Are you building for the world as it is or will be? If it's the latter, you might want to consider a move. The future is calling, and its area code is 415.

You've heard it before: "Think from first principles." It's the holy grail of problem-solving. It’s the framework that led to SpaceX and most of Elon’s fever dreams. But it's a tool, not a religion.

It’s a waste of time and energy to apply first-principles thinking to every nook and cranny of your business. It’s like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame. Sometimes, you just need a nail and a steady hand.

First principles may be powerful, but it’s also…

A time vampire. Overanalyzing the color of your email signature? Congrats, you've just wasted an hour you could've spent on your product.

Shiny object syndrome. While you're reinventing the wheel in accounting, your competition is running away on product development.

Complexity creep. Sometimes, a simple solution is just that—simple. Not everything needs to be quantum physics.

A resource black hole. Throwing money and people at non-core issues is like using a fire hose to water your houseplants. It’s overkill. 

Dangerous cultural mandate: If complex, novel and clever solutions are consistently celebrated regardless of impact, your company will be unique in all the wrong ways.

So, before you redefine the role, responsibilities, and ideal candidate profiles for your SDRs, ask yourself: "Is this where my company's breakthrough is hiding?" If not, maybe just stick with 'people who can sell and focus on something that might will drive growth.

Remember, CEOs who prioritize judiciously are 90% of the wa on the road to winning. Now, go forth and selectively deconstruct. Your sanity (and your team) will thank you.

Why? Because while analysts can create strategies, it's the artists - those with true taste - who drive real value creation. 

This is happening because AI has democratized analysis. Everyone's an analyst now, armed with:

1. AI-Generated Reports. Analysts can pump out data-rich documents that catch eyes but rarely change minds.

2. Automated Data. Analysts can find patterns at superhuman speed but often miss the forest for the trees.

3. AI-Assisted Writing. Analysts can craft polished memos that sound smart but say little.

4. Sentiment Analysis. Analysts can give everyone a finger on the market's pulse but not its soul.

5. AI-Powered Forecasting. Analysts can predict trends without understanding the currents beneath.

We’re in a tsunami of analysis. Strategy decks bulge with charts. Investment memos overflow with market data. Everyone's shouting insights, and it’s unclear who's listening. 

This is where artists - people with taste - step in. They don't just attract attention; they create value by:

1. Asking the right questions

2. Identifying the few critical factors in a mountain of data points

3. Recognizing patterns that algorithms miss

4. Understanding human behavior and desires beyond the data

Think of it this way:

Analysts recognize the need for more collaborative writing tools. Artists gave us Notion.

Analysts told us banking and lending was not meeting consumer needs. Artists created Aven.

Analysts studied the inefficiencies of utilities and government. Artists put people first with Promise. 

Analysts recognized the need for better technology for our soldiers in harm's way. Artists built TurbineOne.

Analysts pointed out all the ways our education system was failing. Artists imagined School AI.

To be clear—analysis matters. It's the foundation. But in a world where AI makes everyone an analyst, it's table stakes. The real value creators - the artists with taste - use analysis as a springboard for innovation, not a crutch for decision-making. So, what's the play?

For founders: Cultivate taste in your organization. Reward those who ask "why" and "what if," not just "how much" and "how often."

For investors: Look beyond the pitch decks laden with AI-generated market analyses. Seek the founders whose insights come from a deep understanding of human nature and technological possibilities through their lived experiences. 

For everyone: Use AI to sharpen your analytical skills, absolutely. But invest even more in developing your taste. In the end, it's the artists who can see beyond the numbers who will capture value and create the future. So be an artist. 

Founders often ask us how The General Partnership’s business model is different from traditional VCs. It’s a fair question. While we do invest capital like most other firms, we also earn equity grants when we deliver on a set of services—whether that’s driving product-market-fit faster, saving years of engineering time, or building a world-class team to win. 

This “services-for-equity” model is designed to align our efforts directly with a founder’s top priorities. When we enter a partnership, we collaborate to create a written statement of work that clearly defines deliverables over a specific timeframe and outlines the equity we’ll earn upon achieving certain milestones. This model holds us accountable to do the work in order to earn equity. 

Each partnership at TheGP is entirely bespoke—we unbundle resources (across go-to-market, recruiting, product, and capital) depending on what a founder needs. Once the statement of work begins, our team of seasoned builders works alongside founders in a dedicated way, providing them with the expertise they need to pursue their vision. This unique approach to service delivery allows us to maximize our impact for formation stage and breakout companies. 

We define formation companies as pre-seed and seed stage, from pre-product market fit ideas to businesses that have early indication of traction in the market. Our typical investment at this stage is between $1-$5 million. From the outset, we meet the needs of formation stage founders with some combination of capital and support across recruiting, product and engineering, and go-to-market. We also reserve capital to support the company as it grows. 

We define breakout businesses as companies that have achieved product-market fit and are poised for substantial growth. These companies are typically not constrained by capital but require specific senior talent, technical expertise, or go-to-market optimization to win their market. Partnerships at the breakout stage are designed to engage our builders to accelerate growth at full throttle. As capital becomes a constraint down the line, we can expand our partnership to support further scale with investments ranging from $5-$15 million or more.

We developed this model because we know talented people with deep domain expertise can bring out a founder’s best instincts. That’s where our builders come in. Our engineers and designers were at Google in the early days, scaled Coinbase during its hypergrowth, were CTOs in Big Tech, and have built companies acquired by Stripe and Salesforce. Our go-to-market team led sales organizations at Square and Oracle, and has guided teams to repeatable revenue capture numerous times. Our recruiters scaled Robinhood from 30 to 4,000 people, designed Stripe’s recruiting playbook, led executive search at Slack, and brought tech talent to the White House. In our experience, the collaboration that happens between our builders and founders works to establish companies that live up to the founder’s vision. 

To be clear—our model is not designed to serve as many companies as possible. We provide customized services specifically designed for each company. Because of this we’re extremely selective with the founders we partner with. The folks we like to work with are typically learn-it-all builders with a sense of urgency—they deeply understand that their company’s success depends on an increasingly rare, high-quality core team. These founders always have a clear north star. We help them reach it. 

In February 2020, I was one of the people who was very alarmed by COVID. Despite feeling a little self-conscious about my “end of days” attitude, I bought a freezer, cases of hand sanitizer and a lot of toilet paper. I spent a weekend vacuum-sealing chicken and steak because, in the moment, I was focused on what felt most critical if COVID's spread made it hard to take care of my family. It was a dramatic departure from our urban abundance, the Instacart life of on-demand everything.

At the same time, I did not systematically evaluate other areas of my family’s life that would be impacted if COVID turned into more than a local scare in China. For example, our savings remained in the stock market, where it quickly started to plummet. Obviously, this decision made no sense. While it was easy for me to assume that grocery stores might run out of meat, I didn’t question other risks that might present themselves in an unfolding pandemic. As a “buy and hold” public market investor, I didn’t think to make changes to my strategy.

On a macro level, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed because—like me at the outset of the pandemic—it didn’t reevaluate key assumptions or the operations that support those assumptions. Like most investors, our team at TheGP did not view treasury management as a critical component of a startup, and we certainly did not operate as though bank deposits were at risk. We were caught by surprise as the rumors of SVB's collapse started the bank run, and as a result, we had to confront the significant and unexpected risks that stemmed from our misguided assumptions about the stability of a banking partner. 

We have written a bunch about the fall and potential fallout of SVB from a capital markets perspective. But builders need to course correct by looking deeper into their businesses to figure out the key assumptions they’re making and then question them. After the dust settles and you’ve figured out a new approach to managing your capital so that it’s both available and safe (aka you froze steak so you can feed your family), don’t stop digging. Take this time to assess the risk in all of your assumptions. 

With some space from SVB’s collapse, I believe that what SVB did right was pick an amazing target audience (founders and VCs) and serve that audience as a niche player with a unique and highly valuable product. Their mistake might have been as simple as making an incorrect assumption around changing interest rates, but their fatal mistake was operating business as usual as the state of the economy moved into more unprecedented territory. SVB experienced outlier deposit levels (due to low rates) and ran their "normal" investment process and portfolio construction strategy. Despite operating in an all-time low interest rate world, they did not adjust their assumptions about portfolio mix, liquidity requirements or deposit duration, risking their ability to meet clients’ future needs. Outlier deposit inflows did not lead to an operating change to hold more margin for potential outlier withdrawals. 

The shift in Fed policy to raise rates put pressure on the bond portfolio at the exact same time it created a slowdown in capital flowing to SVB’s clients. One high-leverage assumption put too much pressure on the model, and as the world changed, it broke.

Founders—I hope the lesson you take away from SVB’s collapse is the importance of regularly questioning your key assumptions with a sense of urgency. When you’re leading a business, the first step is recognizing the market you’re playing in to identify unprecedented times. The second step, and the way you actually achieve operational excellence, is to make a habit of digging into your own assumptions on a regular cadence to make your business stronger. I don’t have specific “best practices” to offer on how to do this, but I believe it starts with some version of these questions: What needs to be true for me to succeed? Do I have more or less confidence that this will still be true next quarter or next year, and why? 

Maybe start by simply articulating the three main assumptions you’ve made in your strategy. These are the “truths” that underlie your operating decisions on an ongoing basis. When I think about this exercise at The General Partnership, the three truths are:  

1. Capital is a commodity and offering a differentiated service is a competitive advantage

2. Founders will invest equity to access recruiting, go to market, and product/engineering services delivered by exceptional builders in a dedicated engagement

3. This dedicated work with founders is compelling to the best builders in the startup industry

If you are unclear about your assumptions, a good place to start is with a list of your beliefs about the world your business is operating in. Why is now a good time to run this company? What waves are you hoping to ride and why do you have faith that these waves will rise? These external factors might help you identify your key assumptions and open the door to data you can use to support your beliefs. 

Once you figure out your key assumptions, keep a running list and try to note high-leverage beliefs you and your team hold that drive strategy and operational decisions. Make a habit of looking at this list once per quarter or every six months, and dig into the facts that underlie each assumption. How volatile are these facts? Are they more or less true today compared to the last time you checked in? Do you have more or less conviction that they will be true in the future? 

Here’s the thing—our bank collapsed. We assumed it was safe. The good CEO now knows they need to change their treasury management strategy, just like I knew to buy a freezer and spend the weekend with a vacuum sealer. But the great CEO will also figure out what else they should adjust. That leader will figure out exactly how to poke holes in their own assumptions, potentially revealing the big risks lurking around the corner. 

When I was a Creative Director at AND 1, I made creative briefs all the time and used different mediums to communicate my ideas depending on the designer I was working with. Sometimes I used text, I often used images, and occasionally, I shared music, videos, or an immersive experience (i.e. I once visited a high-end car dealership with a designer, where we found inspiration in the details of the cars’ interiors).

It’s been fascinating to see how the AI models interpret the text directions I give them, and in many ways, it feels similar to working with a designer. I started to see patterns as I modified the order of the words in my prompts, using alternative vocabulary to generate more nuanced results.

In this process, I also found some shortcuts. For example, when a word or concept carries a specific graphic iconography—like a famous designer’s name—the results represent that “look” in a way that is hard to describe. But you can feel it.

I sent this prompt to Midjourney as an initial experiment: “Basketball sneaker inspired by kobe bryant, audi RS6, Los Angeles Lakers, 35mm camera, magazine advertisement, realistic shot 3/4 view from the lateral front.” The system generated this image:

The image looks like something a board a designer would put together for concept art in the exploration phase of product creation. Crazy!

This was my first attempt at defining the visual language for the shoe based on the written design brief. Then came iteration and refinement. Next, I made a simple request to generate more versions of a specific shoe with no change to the prompt:

Modifying the prompt with words and concepts that are not visual didn’t seem to heavily influence the image. Words like “attitude” or “speed” translate into human English but didn’t work for the AI. In my experience, giving this type of direction to a designer might make a pattern more angular to depict an aggressive attitude or change the lines in the shoe to be more horizontal to incorporate the concept of speed. The generative models felt less influenced by this type of prompt: “Basketball sneaker inspried by kobe bryant attitude, audi RS6 speed, Los Angeles Lakers colors shot on 35mm camera, magazine advertisement, realistic 3/4 view from lateral front”:

Not surprisingly, creating variations on a design using AI is very fast. I wish there was a way to generate new versions with a single modification, but even without this, iteration leads to lots of options to quickly hone in on a look:

In an effort to be more effective in my descriptions, I looked for a common understanding of the text as a visual concept. I started to experiment with iconic objects that express a very specific visual language, as well as people who have a visual body of work that is well-documented or easily recognizable.

The following names and objects carry meaning, which you can see in the images the models generated.

Virgil Abloh was known for his "Off-White" collection, and the shoes below are easy to recognize in their deconstructed look. Adding “Virgil Abloh” and “Off-White” to a prompt for classic running shoes resulted in this in Dream Studio:

Chris Bengal designed the BMW 5 series, 7 series, and 3 series as they evolved the body style and look of the cars. He oversaw the creation of the X6 and Z4 and with the prompt, “Chris Bangle, running shoe, speed blur, photography by tyler mitchell” Dream Studio created this image:

Giorgetto Giugiaro is the embodiment of Italian car design—he worked on iconic brands like Ferarri, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, BMW and Maserati. “Giorgetto Giugiaro, classic sneaker, pastel, photography by tyler mitchell” generated this:

Charles Eames needs no intro, but his furniture designs defined the mid-century modern movement in many ways. The image generation model leveraged his work to create this in response to “Charles Eames, Future, Baseketball Sneaker” and below that is “Charles Eames, Collector sneaker.”

Jasper Johns, the American painter who was well-known for his depictions of the American flag:

Ansel Adams, the photographer known for his black and white images:

And last but not least, Frank Gehry. This one is a response to “Frank Gehry, classic sneaker, photorealistic.” Insane how good it is.

It's a powerful iteration tool—one where I can simply say "Frank Gehry" and trust that the AI as my design partner knows what I mean. I'd love to see a way to have the AI develop a 3D version of the 2D "sketch" to make sure the design is feasible through structural modeling logic. If you're working on something like this - or if you just want to talk about sneakers - feel free to reach out.

The image not only fit the topic we were writing about, but it also made us think about the founders we were seeing “get up to bat” in spite of the rain. The image sparked our creativity and helped us better articulate what we were seeing in the market—that the most exceptional entrepreneurs were adjusting their “game” in order to win. The Midjourney software closed the skill gap between having good taste and creating interesting, high-quality visual work. It also inspired a new way to express our view of the market in writing.

In other words, software became our creative partner in the process. This is creative compute.

In the past, software tools have certainly helped people express themselves more effectively, captured creativity, and reduced the cost (in money, time, and prerequisite skills) to create art (via digital cameras, photoshop, Instagram, etc.), but the new wave of large, foundation models that foster image and text creation mark the first time that software has become a proactive partner in human creativity. These models are showing us the power of software that has evolved from a reactive tool to an active protagonist.

To spark creativity, you need a surprise. Dots need to be connected in new ways so that previously unseen relationships can come into focus. Working with GPT-3 or Midjourney to create text or images doesn’t feel like working with a new tool that simply makes you more productive. It feels more like working with a new colleague who helps you see the world a little differently, who shapes your thinking and extends your creativity.

When you work with someone new like that, you have to learn to “speak their language.” Their work influences and inspires your own approach as you get a feel for how they understand the world. I first had this experience working with sneaker designers, where I had to learn to communicate visually through mood boards rather than writing a memo describing a “fast-looking shoe.” Learning that skill unlocked my creativity and allowed me to participate in the design process. When I figured out how to evolve my communication to fit the interactive style of the design team, I got exponentially better at turning concepts into sneakers and much more creative because of my collaboration with my colleagues.

I feel the same excitement I felt then when I use Midjourney—I love figuring out the prompts that lead to the images I like most. And I can feel the potential of these foundation models in their ability to change the way we create, research, and work. We see hints of this today in projects like Stable Diffusion becoming more approachable and effective through the curation available from folks like RiversHaveDreams, KREA and PromptBase allowing users to access prompts that have already been designed to drive specific results. It feels like we're on the verge of unlocking creative computation for many more users and a much broader set of industries. Better UI, new workflows, AI-first tools, verticalized applications, and the infrastructure stack required to support them are still needed to bridge the gap between foundation models and commercial value creation.

AI can be horizontal by design. It can help us associate disparate concepts and provide inspiration with new connections. Rather than speed us up, it can create value by slowing us down to show us things we didn’t imagine—this is a new human/computer interaction paradigm. You see this in simple sentence completion tools, and you see it in the way Midjourney, Dall-E and Stable Diffusion construct images. There is imagination required to understand or interpret new images and evolve instructions. The effort to decode the prompt or hone the result requires and inspires creativity.

When AI surprises us, we have to use our imagination to take us from where we are to what the system created. This inspiration is the energy needed to drive critical insight and breakout ideas. The real value of AI lies in its ability to expand human creativity.

I’m excited to see how far we can go.

I had the opportunity to spend an hour with an incredible talent leader this week. We talked about the key moments when he knew he created real value for founders. Obviously, adding great people to a team is part of this, but he also brought up the moments when founders internalized a framework or worldview he shared with them, causing them to execute differently or more creatively. For example, he saw a founder apply the “Standard Conversion” concept in recruiting, which unlocked better prioritization across the entire company. 

When building teams, founders will say, “We’re going to hire nine engineers,” and then set off to get it done as a top priority. But without understanding Standard Conversion, you have no idea what the actual scope of the work is or how it will impact other initiatives. You just start doing it. 

Standard Conversion frames the goal result as the outcome of the expected scale of activity. Clarity on the scale of effort and time required to complete an activity informs prioritization. In recruiting, Standard Conversion will tell you something like, “for every candidate you engage, 50% will fail the technical interview, 1 in 4 candidates who come in for onsite interviews will progress to offers and you are likely to close about 2/3rds of the offers you make.” This means that to hire those nine engineers, you will need to run 100+ technical interviews. Of course, depending on your yield on initial outreach, you may need to reach out to a large multiple of that number as you kick off the process. 

Most founders won’t say: “We’re going to run 100 technical interviews this quarter.” But doing that will help scope projects more effectively and allow teams to be more realistic about the timing for results. As you prioritize projects, consider the required level of activity and then set your goals accordingly. 

In addition to scoping projects more effectively and being realistic on timing and goals, Standard Conversion can help your team course correct early in a process and avoid projects going off the rails. Think of it as instrumenting the process so everyone on the team has an objective measure of performance and can apply judgment as they execute (rather than being managed). 

In recruiting, if you are not moving 50% of your candidates forward after the initial tech screen, you have a calibration issue with sourcing and experience requirements. If 1 in 4 of your on-site interviews is not leading to offers, you may want to revisit the key needs with the hiring manager and the specific questions or moments in the interview process that are driving the failure. Last, if your close rate is lower than 66%, you need to diagnose the lack of connection between the potential hires and your company. Do candidates have a feel for the leadership team and their direct manager? Is the hiring team highlighting the growth adventure of your company and what this means in terms of the opportunity for personal growth for each employee? Is your team responsive and communicating effectively with the folks in your pipelines?

In each example, the person responsible for the specific process (i.e. sourcing to technical screen) can accurately judge performance and engage in finding solutions to divergence from Standard Conversion without needing engagement from their manager (or founder/CEO). This is leverage for you!

The concept of Standard Conversion is a fantastic framework and founders can apply it to almost any challenge—from growth marketing to sales to product development and more. Using this framework will dramatically improve your ability to forecast the effort and time required to deliver on a goal, as well as understand the cost of every potential project before taking it on. 

In a startup’s constant race against time, prioritization is pretty important. Applying Standard Conversion will make you and your team more effective. 

I’ve heard VCs say that while many companies get started when markets are hot, the best companies get started when markets are cold. I think investors say this based on their approach to placing bets, rather than speaking to the motivations of top talent when markets cool off.

I’ve always felt you should start a company because you have to, not because you want to. You should be compelled to build rather than move with the crowd, and when you can’t fight the obsession any longer, create the company. When markets are hot, this mindset is rare among founders. When markets are cold, obsession becomes more common.

In a hot market, everyone takes shortcuts when they evaluate things. For example, in the competitive Bay Area housing market, prospective buyers often need to waive inspection rights and present cash offers without contingencies in order to successfully purchase a home. When VC markets are up and to the right—and investors are often taking shortcuts—founders have to as well. As a result, more companies get started and funded. But as the decision to start a company becomes the default, the evaluation of the actual opportunity and the inherent challenges involved in building a durable business are lost. Too many people raise money to support ideas that aren’t worthy of their talent, usually from folks who are more interested in placing bets than building companies.

On the other hand, when markets get tight, investors and founders take fewer shortcuts in evaluating ideas because startup risks loom larger. In this way, cold markets limit the companies that get started, but economic headwinds disproportionately impact the happiness of the exceptional and experienced builders who are working on hard problems inside established companies.

When markets cool, established companies have to focus on their core businesses and more strictly align resources with near-term impact. Generally, this pressure makes it harder to justify working on new ideas and brings in the guardrails on the most talented folks inside a company. As corporate focus erodes personal freedom, top builders struggle to access the kind of work that’s most satisfying to them. This reality can make the risk of a startup and the challenges of fundraising feel more compelling than the constraints of management (or being managed) inside a large org.

In recent conversations I’ve had with some incredible folks about company formation and the earliest stages of building, I’ve observed frustration among top talent when the focus and culture of a company changes. It’s especially fraught when promising projects are deprioritized and extremely senior people are limited in their freedom to explore interest areas outside of existing roles. For folks who have been in tech for less than 12 years, the recent market cool-down is the first time they have felt truly limited in their capacity to do great work. And while some folks are OK with staying in their assigned lane, the most exceptional people are starting to look inward and create startups around problems they are passionate about. For these people, pausing their work based on shifting corporate priorities is simply not acceptable.

If this sounds familiar, and the market-driven limitations of working in an established company are driving you crazy, let’s talk about a partnership. Now could be your time to build…

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reading Cubed: The Puzzle of Us All by Erno Rubik, the guy who invented the Rubik’s Cube. As a fan of the Cube, I found Rubik’s personal reflections on his process creating the Cube—rather than solving its puzzle—to be particularly interesting. Mostly because it reminded me a lot of what it takes to build a company, especially as a founder.

I’ll start by saying that founders have a strange job. They require a worldview that is not broadly shared or understood, and founders are often solving puzzles with no known solution. To be good at this type of work, you have to enjoy the discomfort of not inherently having all the answers, as well as the free-falling feeling that there might not ever be an answer (Rubik felt this when he first created the Cube). Because in that process of working towards a solution, a new puzzle—often more urgent and valuable—will reveal itself.

When you are surrounded by problems (as most founders are), you see them all around you. Maybe your engineering team is struggling to hit milestones, the killer sales leader you hired is slower to ramp up than you hoped, or some customers have churned. The problem is clear in one way—the result is not what you wanted—but the problem to be solved is less obvious. This is the puzzle to focus on as a founder.

Is the slowdown in engineering a symptom of a larger management process breaking down? Is the sales leader struggling to ramp because they lack familiarity with key value drivers in the product or because customers still want to ‘speak to the CEO’? Is customer churn driven by a specific type of user?

A startup is a puzzle, but the solution lies in problem definition. Founders are creating the Cube, not solving the Cube. The Rubik’s Cube we experience as players has a set of rules that define the game, as well as a very well-defined solution. “Cubers” figure out how to solve the puzzle with algorithms. The more algorithms you know, the easier it is to identify how to solve the puzzle. Execution is critical, but as a founder, you have to choose the right puzzles to solve. You need to ask “why?” instead of “how?”

The founder doesn’t pick up the Cube and try to solve it with an algorithm. The founder is creating the puzzle from the elements of the company. The ability to see this metaphorical game board differently is a creative skill, but it comes from 1) understanding the current rules and 2) knowing that the rules themselves are a puzzle to solve. “How?” will lead to solutions within the existing rules. “Why?” is the abstraction—it’s the weird theory founders can test in order to see if a contrarian perspective leads to the right answer. Why does the world operate a certain way? Can I operate under a different set of rules? What is my way? Why does that create an advantage for me?

This is not just about industries and approaches, but also applies to how you run a company. It applies to how you access the best resources to amplify your gift to see the world differently. How you challenge the rules. How you reject defined constraints and best practices, knowing that best practices are the fastest path to average results.

Find the answer to your “why?” question and you will have the whole world wondering “how did they do that?”

The first step towards getting somewhere new is to decide you are not going to stay where you are. — JP Morgan

Fear is clarifying. After overcoming the terror that comes with moving on in the first place (an ongoing process of containment more than actual victory TBH), I found that clarity lived in conversations with incredible founders, investors and company builders across Silicon Valley, New York, Los Angeles and Boston. Clarity lived with friends and mentors who helped me understand what the very best founders are looking for as they allocate space on their cap tables. Clarity came from looking at what I wanted in my day-to-day work and how I defined my long-term success.

Over the course of 18 months, I saw firsthand how founders looked for capital to meet their company construction needs with minimal cost (in terms of both dilution and distraction). I also saw that, as capital was becoming more and more of an available commodity, GPs were shifting away from building partnerships towards deploying capital at an increased velocity and fund scale. At the same time, the very best founders talked about actively looking for something more than capital. They’re after the exceedingly rare, extremely senior folks who have deeply relevant experience to engage with their vision. These founders define partnership through the collaborative work and tangible contribution made to the value of their company, rather than the valuation negotiated or the size of the capital commitment offered.

But, what I didn’t realize 18 months ago, was that the opportunity to meet this founder need and the opportunity to build again was sitting in my inbox 4 hours after I announced I was leaving First Round. It was an email from Dan asking if I had some time to talk about what he had built at SEV, where his team was evolving the business model of venture. He had figured out how to apply deep expertise and hands-on collaborative work with founders to support team building, product creation and go to market execution. I had known Dan since I first moved to San Francisco in 2014 and always had tremendous respect for him and his work. I saw this work firsthand when he and his team engaged with founders in my network — it redefined my understanding of partnership with founders and inspired me to do more impactful work as an investor.

Over the last year and a half, I’ve spent a ton of time with the founders SEV has partnered with so far, as well as the builders on the SEV team who are serving these partnerships. Each founder I talked with counted Dan and his team as their most valuable investor. Founders told me how SEV saved them a year or more of engineering time, closed meaningful revenue with new customers, and added key leaders to their teams. These stories were unlike anything I had experienced and completely changed my perception of what “value” really means as an investor.

Time with the members of the SEV team feels very different than any other team in venture when it comes to expertise, motivation and service. Every member of the team is extremely senior, understands how startups operate in the earliest days and knows how to operate efficiently at scale. There’s also a sense of ownership they bring to their work; they’re driven to build with and for the founders they serve, and the lengths they go to in service of the best entrepreneurs is just epic.

The senior team of builders that Dan has brought together over the last four years is unparalleled in the startup ecosystem, and I am humbled to be invited to join as a member of this team. I am also unbelievably lucky to have found a partner with shared values and definitions of success, similar sense of honor in the service of founders as well as the vision to build something that lasts well beyond either of us.

The service offering Dan created with SEV has been evolving beyond its initial focus in recruiting to include depth in people, product, go to market and capital. When you understand what’s being built here, it’s clear that this group is redefining partnership in both venture capital and company building. Today we’re excited to announce our rebrand from Sweat Equity Ventures to The General Partnership.

The General Partnership is creating an incredible opportunity for the best builders in the world. Every member of our team is a true partner in this business, and many of them are either builders who never saw themselves working at a VC firm or VCs who want more from their job than simply deploying money. We partner with a very small number of incredible founders who understand that their company’s success depends on an increasingly rare, high-quality core team. We’ve found that this approach to partnership drives product market fit faster, saves years of engineering work and builds world class teams that win.

Very few people can deliver on the quality of work our builders promise and working this way is not a fit for every investor. But I can’t imagine a better way to practice the craft of investing or a better team to build with.

I can’t wait to build. Fast.

Imagine being responsible to tell Trump he lost…how much would that meeting suck? It would be so painful to present facts and logical conclusions and be met with confusion, anger, dismissal, demeaning insults, questions of your integrity, doubts of your loyalty…

Now, in your leadership role at your company, think of times when you could not hear someone or see their point of view. What was the situation? Why was it hard for you to understand where someone else was coming from or what they were trying to say? What were you afraid you would hear? What was it about their point of view that was unacceptable to you?

Usually, if you are really honest with yourself, you will find some way that their world view triggered a fear you harbor and was in conflict with the narrative you have created about yourself — for yourself.

It has been shown that power causes brain damage. It makes you more self-absorbed. For many, this fight against imposter syndrome and the work to convince yourself you belong or deserve to be where you are can be all consuming — and severely limit your capacity for empathy. You become more impulsive, less risk-aware and find it impossible to see things from other people’s point of view. Trump is an extreme example, but start up leaders can fall victim to this same thing and certainly VCs are far from immune.

Powerful people tend to disregard social norms in general and, maybe because they think they have crossed over from asking for help to commanding action, tend to be less considerate, less kind and less conscientious of their teammates. In my own arguments with powerful people, I have struggled to have a conversation when the only point of view they can understand is their own — and if you’ve held these relationships over time, you may note “the power paradox” that the most impaired capacity is often the thing that was foundational to their success in the first place — the ability to pursue something bigger than themselves, to listen, to advance the needs of others, to show respect etc.

The best leaders know who they are — these folks know that their identity does not depend on their role or their power in the organization, but on the value they create for others, the credit they give away.

But for most of us, insecurity about identity and our value can push us toward defining ourselves through performance in a role. When you push to perform at a high level driven by ego — likely an impossible level of perfection to achieve anywhere outside your own head — you stop seeing yourself (and the world) through anyone’s eyes but your own. When you do this as a leader, you make it impossible for those around you to contribute.

When founders fall into this insecurity trap, I see it start to show up in five specific ways:

1. Fear of failure —The risk of failure is a constant in a startup, but when insecurity rises up, you can fall into the trap of focusing on results rather than rewarding good risks. You focus on what works, you make marginal improvements to it and work very hard not to fail. When you think like this, your team loses the ability to identify and take worthwhile risk and you can never achieve outlier success.

2. Size of your slice (vs. size of the pie)—When you feel insecure, you start finding ways to take as much of the credit as you can vs. do everything you can to make the win bigger for the team. This shift from giving credit away to a narrative where you are the star can be subtle, and often emerges as a shift from “we” to “me” when you report to the board or otherwise summarize success for an audience that did not “do the work” or contribute to the win directly. Listen for this red flag and, when you notice it, take the time to reflect on why you are feeling insecure and how you can get your head right.

3. I’ll do it (so that it is done right) — You find that you are taking on everything that needs to be done. It’s a lot of work, but at first you are energized by your capacity to execute. You rationalize this with the reality that startups are so complex, the CEO is often the only one to have information on all parts of the company. This makes it hard for you to agree with the perspective of a team lead because you literally know something they don’t. In this mode of thinking, management tends to shift from collaborative modalities that leverage the strengths of others to command and control that eliminates any sense of agency or autonomy (and responsibility) for the team. The danger lies in the cultural mandate that if anything good is going to happen, you are the one who must make it happen and the explicit lack of trust this conveys to your team. This mindset is often rooted in the fear that you are the only one who knows enough to make the right decision, the voices in your head warning that if you listen too much, your judgement will get worse. If left unchecked, you will spend all your energy working to be right and burnout. Course correct by finding the confidence not to carry the whole load, to liberate yourself and empower others. You will be most successful when you focus on what you are best at and arm the team with the information they need to do the same.

4. Fear of chaos (need for control) — One way to be in control is to limit surprises. This is impossible at a startup, so if you find yourself making a great effort to organize and orchestrate so that no messiness bubbles up, step back and identify the fear behind this work. Warning signs here are rigidity of rules and procedures that seem over built for the scale of your company. For your team, these requirements are imprisoning not empowering. You think you are creating efficiency and reducing uncertainty, but you’re just taking the soul out of everything. As a leader, you’ll spend all your energy to keep folks in their lane as you have defined it and lose the fluidity required in a startup (and desired by the very best employees). The fear of uncertainty makes you forget that mess is required for creativity. When you hand down too many rules, too much judgement, everyone freezes. In the extreme, nothing happens and no matter how much talent you have, the company fails to execute.

5. Refusal to fail (ego over objectives) — It is great to be passionate, but be careful if you become attached to a project, the novelty of the idea or its early success. When this happens, your identity merges with the initiative and you quickly fall into denial that all things must die at some point. When you are victim to this way of thinking, you put too much of yourself in the thing to be able to kill it without destroying a piece of your identity. You tax the team and keep prioritizing things that are no longer vital or alive. Because you don’t want anything to die on your watch or don’t have the confidence to kill something you created, you force others to manage projects with life support level resources and no amount of data or logical argument can move you from this position. Data is often the go to fix here, but this is often too late. Instead, be aware of your emotional attachment and work to be more open to killing the things you love the most — as hard as it is, listen most closely when your team tells you why your baby is ugly.

As awful as it may be to watch the president these days, I think he provides a monstrous version of insecurity that any leader can learn to see early and address before it limits the scale of the opportunity in front of you or your ability to deliver for your team.

Just by clearly stating the metrics that matter and documenting the beliefs you hold about how to move these metrics you are well above average when it comes to scaling your business. There has been a lot written about goal setting and best practices around OKRs — worth reading for sure — but here, I am focused on the time after you do this work, after you establish the metrics and motivate the team to sprint. In this moment, as the data comes back in unexpected ways, knowing what type of miss it is can define success or failure as a CEO.

The first job is to decide if the data shows a near miss (i.e goal signups for the month was 15,000 and you hit 14,473) or a clear miss (i.e. goal signups for the month was 15,000 and you hit 54,473). Second, you need to decide if the underlying driver of the miss was something in your control (i.e. the optimized sign up flow shipped late — but once it was live it had the impact you expected) or out of your control (i.e. your primary competitor had a massive security breach and most of the new signups were driven by organic searches for alternatives). Last, you need to evaluate how this data impacts your strategy going forward by deciding if the primary driver of the miss is persistent with repeatable impact or temporary with one-off impact.

As you prepare to meet with your team, you can frame the conversation with these questions:

1. Were the assumptions about how to move the metric wrong?

2. Was your quality of execution unexpected?

3. Was something out of your control the primary driver of the miss?

And try to place the miss into this 2x2:

From this, the next steps for you and team might generally look like this:

Near miss, inside your control — Focus on execution.

Clear miss, inside your control — You may have found Minimum Viable Failure.

Near miss, outside your control — if temporary, carry on. If persistent, adjust the goal to account for this variability in forecasting.

Clear miss, outside your control — if temporary, asses the damage and re-group. If persistent, you likely need to rethink the metric to avoid the fools errand of evaluating your success against an outcome that you do not control.

Overall, focusing on the miss is a mistake — spending the time to understand the miss and deciding how to move forward is all that matters.

It’s Friday, and many folks are looking forward to a couple days off the screens that dominate our lives these days — but for a ton of founders with partner meetings set for Monday, this weekend is packed with preparation. As you get ready to “pitch” make sure you also take some time to think about what you are looking for in a partner and how you will identify the right person to work with. Firms have brands, but you work with a person and in many ways the mental model the partner uses to define how they will contribute to your success should drive your choice.

Every investor is different, but in my experience, there are three VC mindsets when it comes to partnering with founders — those who fix, those who help and those who serve. (NOTE: I am ignoring the 4th category of vampire VC who sucks the life out of you as your company heads toward zombie status. I assume you did not respond to the email inviting you to meet their partners…)

1. The Fixer — The fixer is very sure the best solution to any problem your company faces lives in their past. This partner typically has operating experience and believes in applying their lessons with high frequency and force to your business. The Fixer is exceptional at finding what is broken, and this is actually where their primary value lies. Often the observations of a fixer will highlight challenges and areas of weakness that you’ve missed and if you can leverage them for problem identification rather than lean on them for solutions, they can be great partners. This can be challenging because the Fixer is unlikely to have a well developed appreciation for how the world may have changed since their time in the trenches and the investment in education or debate rarely pays off for founders.

2. The Helper — The helper views your weaknesses as an opportunity to show their strengths. Different than the fixer, who finds problems and always has “the solution”, the helper listens to your problems and offers to engage where they can add value. Very unlikely to be value detracting, the helper is highest leverage in areas where many startups struggle (i.e. recruiting process and pipeline, PR, customer connections or general management tactics like goal setting and OKRs). The challenge with helpers is they can take away more than they give by getting you to comfort with best practices but stopping short of pushing you to the world class, and often contrarian thinking required to maximize your potential. When your partner is a helper, use their support to establish the basics, but don’t be afraid to leave them behind and explore the edges of what is possible. These edges are often where company defining decisions are made and where helpers are most out of their depth.

3. The Enlisted — The enlisted are in service of you and your company and will do whatever they believe is best for those they serve. There can be tension when a CEO and a VC partner with an enlisted mindset disagree about what is best for the CEO or for the company. The strength of conviction it takes to “enlist” can also lead to emotion around what is best and how to achieve it — and this typically has to be managed by the CEO. The enlisted can also be frustrating for CEOs to work with because they are conscious of not robbing you of your autonomy by “helping” or “fixing.” The enlisted tend to sit with you in the struggle longer than others and explore solutions that depend on amplifying your strengths and demanding your growth as a leader. But, even in disagreement, the intense desire of the enlisted VC to do whatever it takes for you to maximize your potential as CEO, to have the most meaningful impact on the company and for your company to capture the largest market opportunity available is the foundation of this type of partnership.

Every founder has unique needs and their own path to walk in the search for their best. There is no optimal VC type but knowing who you are partnering with, the mindset they will bring to the partnership and how that mindset will (and will not) serve you is the most critical part of the decision.

In my house we have a doorway that is covered in pencil marks — they measure my daughter’s height in somewhat random increments from the day we moved to San Francisco in summer 2014 to today. We always measure on birthdays and on the first and last day of school, and compare year to year. But, we also take the time to measure whenever we get a sense that she “just seems taller” — and talk about the thing we noticed that made us want to measure.

As a start up CEO, you have to grow incredibly fast— and typically your growth is measured in regular increments — fund raising cycles, annual 360 reviews or board meetings etc — with folks looking for indications of growth like hitting goals, efficiency in the operations of the business, improvements in team culture and e-staff effectiveness, strategic positioning and planning…on and on.

BUT, there are also moments when a CEO does something and you just get a sense that they are stepping up as a leader, growing and evolving in a way that everyone can feel viscerally. These moments often go past without mention. As a partner to the CEO, I try to point out and celebrate the moments of growth that I notice, talk about what changed for them and make sure that they note the difference and appreciate the work they did to get there — and the new ceiling they have just created for their business through personal growth as a leader.

This is top of mind as I just got an email from a CEO that said,

You’ve likely noticed that that growth seems strong, and it is. However, we continue to benefit from organic growth and we remain bad at targeting customers.

This is a muscle we need to develop.

Our healthy, generic adoption has let us get away without improving here for too long.

“Our healthy, generic adoption has let us get away without improving here for too long” shows perspective on how the business operates and identifies a key priority for the organization. The CEO moved from understanding and celebrating the metrics that matter to understanding how much control the team has over these metrics. They have identified that while the company is growing really well today, to achieve it’s full potential, control over growth has to be core to their DNA — and, with plenty of cash in the bank and an incredible team with lots of momentum — as CEO, they are choosing to raise the bar on this part of their operations. Immediately.

This type of CEO growth needs to be highlighted and celebrated. It is these small shifts in the mindset of a leader that lead to massive shifts in outcomes for companies. This personal growth is the core work of a start up CEO, and I don’t think there is anything more important than supporting folks in this journey.

In my experience, investing is simple, but extremely hard to do well. The truth is, you only need to do 4 things as an investor:

1. Access — Earn access the best opportunities

2. Pick — Decide which founders you can build successful partnerships with

3. Win — Win the opportunity to build those partnerships

4. Support — Deliver on your promises and support the founders you partner with

The other truth is to be great, you have to do each of these things extremely well AND in your own unique way.

All the individual investors I have spent time with are awesome operators with great networks and incredible company building experience to inform the advice they offer founders — so access and support come naturally. Picking and winning tend to be the areas where our conversations focus — and when it comes to picking, people seem to be looking for a formula or checklist approach to company selection. For many processes a checklist is a great tool— they can help you do a better job, be more efficient and make fewer mistakes. Investing is not a place for checklists.

Checklists work extremely well when outcomes are largely decided by your actions and there is a knowable correct process to follow — regardless of how odd or anomalous the situation seems — you can start at the top of your checklist and by the time you get to the bottom, you have done the best anyone could do. Getting an airplane off the ground is likely the most well known example of this, but you can apply a checklist to just about anything where you want to take a formulaic approach — including investing.

A checklist approach is the shortest path to competence but will leave mastery out of reach in an industry where the largest wins are by definition anomalous. In venture, the path to these successes is idiosyncratic and carved with the unique craftsmanship (and tremendous effort) of a given entrepreneur.

Understanding the market in general, the product in concept, the team on background or the business model in the abstract doesn’t matter. What matters is the granular specifics of the now: Current market dynamics and where and why the team sees unique opportunity; the way the product is crafted and the specific early indicators of user obsession and leveraged distribution; the way the team works together and how this dynamic creates a force multiplier for each member to do 10x more than their Linkedin profile suggests; the nuanced alignment of price and willingness to pay that create efficient go to market and open up opportunities for margin expansion with scale.

When you take a checklist approach to investing, you never get to the first principles required to identify the largest outliers. Your checklist includes the business concept you are looking for, but you don’t develop the tools of critical thinking that allow you to apply the concepts in new ways on your own — and it is exactly this type of thinking that the best “pickers” apply to each partnership they form with a founder.

To be clear, perfect is not a state of being, it is something you can achieve for a few moments each day with a strong practice. When it happens, I am thankful.

In Maslow’s work on peak performance (done after the after the hierarchy of needs) he writes about the benefit of peak states as allowing us to discover “heaven” and says something like

Peak performance allows us to replace immature concepts in which Heaven is like a country club in some specific place, perhaps above the clouds with the idea that Heaven is all around us, always available in principle, ready to step into for a few minutes. It’s anywhere — in the kitchen or the factory, or on a basketball court — anyplace where perfection can happen, where means become ends or where a job is done right.

I was talking to a friend the other day about the need to project perfection as an identity and how this effort requires a lot of energy that would be better spent on other, more fulfilling and productive things — like working to eliminate distractions in the office and at home, finding and maintaining peak performance and flow state in our day to day work and interactions with others etc. etc.

For most of us, some daily effort flows toward the creation of an image for the outside world to consume and at times, you fall into the trap of crafting, burnishing and projecting the specific, “perfect you” into the universe. When the belief in a perfect you existing in the eyes of others takes over, it’s an endlessly exhausting pursuit. You imagine perfection in the eyes of the world and come up with objective measures of success that others will be able to see or understand. In this effort, you will fail a lot and when you succeed, it’s never good enough.

When you chase perfection, you forget that by the time you achieve the goal, it is likely to seem too small or not enough. The world will have moved on, your definition of success will have changed and your understanding of how success is defined in the minds of those you are working to impress will have evolved. In my experience this change only happens in one direction — and the finish line just moves further and further away.

In this mindset of not-enoughness you are trapped operating in a situation where your sphere of concern is much larger than your sphere of influence — you have no control because you outsource your confidence to your imperfect understanding of the judgement of others. You become dependent on them for approval and lose the ability to insource your confidence and sustain its growth based on the alignment of your actions with your goals and values.

I think this is why the most impactful people tend to embrace the obsession with crafting, polishing and projecting a product into the world. This creates days that are rewarding, fulfilling and a sense of accomplishment in the work itself. It allows for moments of perfection to be appreciated.

So, this next week as you reflect on what you are thankful for, remember that perfection is not a thing like a specific amount of money in your bank account or company size that we imagine existing around some corner of our life’s journey. It is all around us and always available for us to discover and enjoy for a few moments. It’s anywhere — at home, on a call with a friend, in an e-staff meeting, in a 1:1 or a sales call — anyplace where perfection can happen, where effort and preparation meet focus and a job is done right.

Be thankful that you are perfect every time it happens. In the moments in between, focus on what you are currently doing because in that moment, nothing is more important.

Grinding to find product market fit is a normal operating paradigm when you start a company. The discontinuous nature of hunting this beast is stressful AF. You search for signal in lots of noise, feeling in the dark for pull from the user, signs of engagement, indications of willingness to pay. You battle to the top of a hill, only to realize this path is a local maxima that leads back down into the grinding noise of your vision against the realities of the market.

Maintaining the conceptual continuity of testing products and features in the search for market acceptance is where you spend most of your time — effort is applied to creating products that represent your vision and learning from the market data that they generate. Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. Solve the puzzle.

But this search is episodic and these periods of continuity are interrupted by revolutionary insights revealed by anomalies in the data. Success is when the market reacts in an unexpected way and changes your thinking on the user, the product, the vision or all three.

Sometimes people I have partnered with do the hard work to discover the anomaly but miss the opportunity because it requires a new operating paradigm. In this mode, you immediately start to build new tests to gather new data to validate, de-risk or disprove the new solution to the old puzzle. You miss it because you are puzzle solving in the old paradigm and trying to make sense of the anomaly within the same framing of the business and operating approach.

When you do this you miss an opportunity for an even larger step change in the trajectory of your company. Instead of jumping right to new data capture, consider if the anomaly is showing you a new puzzle. If the anomaly you have discovered changes the rules of the game and redefines the map directing where you should focus your energy to create the most value, you can start by asking new questions of old data. The answers to these questions will guide you to new KPIs, new channels for customer acquisition, new product priorities etc.

Often, when you look at your old data through the lens of the new operating paradigm it will tell you a brand new story — and reveal a ton of value you didn’t know was there.

The CEO job is to to get started and go from Zero to one — but quickly it becomes maximizing the product of the complex multiplication equation that describes the way your business creates value. This starts simple, something like the number of customers * the value of each customer = value creation, but quickly becomes a multi-variate equation with hundreds of inputs as you grow.

Everyone knows that any number multiplied by zero (no matter how big it is) is zero. In a startup, a failure in one area or one role, can make all the great effort in other areas worthless. Fixing the zero is typically the most impactful thing a CEO can do.

Rather than creating the next element to add to the equation, or doing everything you can to grow a number, CEOs who relentlessly fix the zeros in the value creation math will win. If you have a product that people love but gross margins are zero, it is hard to capture value. If you have an incredible innovation with zero differentiated or leveraged distribution mechanism you will capture zero value. If retention is zero, no matter how efficient your marketing channels are, you will create zero value etc.

I love to work with CEOs who invest the time and effort to turn zeros into numbers greater than 1 or eliminate them from the equation. It is hard to find the zeros, it is even harder to turn them into 1’s, but the hardest thing is deciding when to drop the zeros completely. This requires admission of a bad strategy or a failed tactic. This requires the strength to cancel a project or product, to stop marketing in a certain channel or to a specific audience or to end a relationship with an employee, advisor, partner or customer.

Eliminating zeros is painful, but at a startup, it will create way more value than focusing on growing other areas.