Hey Reader, Good is the minimum. It’s the baseline. You have to be so much more than good. And even if you’re great, and lucky, you still have to work really f*cking hard. And even that is not enough. You have to scratch and claw and it never f*cking ends. And it doesn’t get better; it just gets harder. I wish I'd written that. I overheard it in my house this weekend. Someone was watching the TV show Hacks, I genuinely thought it was a startup podcast. Turns out, the rules for being a...

Hey Reader, Competence in a startup isn't about being good at your job, it's about being good at not stopping. Therefore the real / true measure of your competence is the finish line. Which means competence for a founder is just persistent repetition. Wanting to win is not the signal. History is. So show me the proof that when it actually matters, you don't quit, that you are competent. Show me any proof from any time in your life that you finish the job, do the thing, overcome the adversity,...

Hey Reader, Every. Single. Founder. If you are so lucky, will feel overwhelmed, underperforming, late, early, missing something, not clever enough, not near enough, not fast enough, not leader enough. Searching for a playbook that doesn't exist, and feeling that you're winging it, with a perpetual fear that you're one day away from it all crashing around you. The more qualified you are on paper. Domain expert, PhD, MBA, researcher, somewhat accomplished someone, the harder this all feels....