Hey Reader, At some point, whether you've been tracking Palantir, been in startup, software, or product circles, B2B, B2C, or anywhere in between, you've heard the term forward-deployed engineer. Sounds expensive. Sounds technical. But it's really about something universal. Making your customer’s success inevitable. Many founders stay busy doing horizontal fluff. Universally applicable work that looks productive but helps no one specifically. Forward-deployed founders do the opposite. The...
8 days ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, Implicitly or explicitly, the most common word a founder ever hears is no. And just to be clear. There’s a difference in no. There’s “no” as a boundary. The kind that protects, that ends the conversation. And there’s “no” as a negotiation. The kind that starts it. I have a six-year-old.“No, you can’t have your iPad” is a negotiation.“No, you can’t climb inside the fireplace and up the chimney” is a boundary. What we’re talking about here is the negotiation kind. The no that shows...
15 days ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, The line between early traction and early captivity is razor thin. No matter who you are, frictionless B2C to heavy B2B, your first customers are, by design, total mayhem at best. They expose the sh*t that's broken. The sh*t you forgot. The support doc you never wrote. The button in the wrong place. The button missing. All of it. Go deeper, the infrastructure that cannot handle the load, the observability missing so you have no idea what's happening. All of it. The great thing...
22 days ago • 7 min read
Hey Reader, Thanks for supporting my book launch the last two weeks, I am incredibly thankful for your support. This week isn’t a newsletter. It’s a memo. The market looks better than ever and worse than ever. Multiples make no sense. AI is rewriting the rules. Money’s flying, but not always toward you. The default triple, triple, double, double that used to guarantee venture investment is gone. Churn is brutal. Pricing models are delusional. Breathing room is non-existent. The market is...
29 days ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, For two years I've written this newsletter every week. Said no to the shitty sponsors. Pretty much the only newsletter without a paid tier and without a crypto sponsor. I answered your emails, engaged on social, and shipped something I thought was of extraordinary value. Now it's my turn, for the first (and last) time.... My book goes into general release this Tuesday. I'm asking you to buy the book: Starting a Startup: Build Something People Want. If you've ever gotten value from...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, The worst thing that can happen to you isn't rejection, runway, co-founder walking, or even building a product no one wants. It's resenting the hits. Believing they shouldn't have happened. A lot of our conversation is that shitty moments are part of the process, a view that you should be grateful for the stress. But there's another way of looking at it... love of the fight. If you can broadly accept my thesis: Everything that happens is your fault, because ownership is the...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, Do you have a pipeline problem or do you have a nerve problem? More specifically, are you more comfortable emailing 20k cold leads via some LinkedIn automation than asking your network for help? The answer to almost all of your early-stage questions - maybe late-stage too - is likely in your contacts. And before you start trying to find more cold imaginary leads that kinda match your ICP and put them in some sort of doom funnel, why wouldn't you text your contacts? All of them....
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, The word quit tastes like metal in the mouth. It sounds like failure, but really it’s a dirty word for allocation. This is not a pep talk or a eulogy, that’s not my job. Mine is just to ask you to hold up a mirror if you’ve stalled, and consider three honest paths: Keep Going (Beast Mode): The loops are kinda working. The smoke signals are kinda forming. You are confident this isn’t a delusion issue, the issue is it’s just not fast enough. (the dip) Redeploy (New Vehicle): You...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Hey Reader, Who cares. Hurry up. That's it. That's the whole message. As in stop doing random acts of nothingness that don’t drive the outcome.Do the thing that matters. Do it again. It's not about being perfect. It's about moving. And violently ignoring everything else that doesn't align with your goal for today. Go do that. Also, if you happen to enjoy my content, would be hugely appreciative if you could pre-order my book. Starting A Startup: Build Something People Want Every founder...
2 months ago • 3 min read