Hey Reader, At the end of any sales call, there is only one question that matters. What became riskier for them if they didn’t buy? If you can answer that clearly with the least amount of bias "their current process is failing, waiting now has a real consequence" then you have a wedge. If your honest answer is “not much” then you have to ask, what doubt stayed symmetrical. Did the status quo still feel fine, did they doubt you and inaction equally? When doubt is symmetrical, nothing moves, if...
12 days ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, Last week we agreed December decides your 2026 fate. We're still in December. So a quick reminder to act like it. Perhaps a little more bias for action... Close deals. Send updates. Align your team. Show gratitude. Build your strategy. But, I missed a pretty critical point that is so easily overlooked... None of it matters if you're executing on the wrong business. You can do everything right. Close the deals, ship the features, hit the milestones and still not feel like you are...
19 days ago • 6 min read
Hey Reader, Every founder has an imaginary list called “I’ll get to that in December.” It follows you all year while you're in the trenches, this dumping ground for everything you don’t have time for but swear you’ll handle when things “calm down.” Do I need to list them, or are we on the same page... So. Funny story. December is here. Four weeks to do nine weeks of work... The stuff you pushed off, the stuff you forgot, the stuff you should’ve done already, and the stuff you promised...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Hey Reader, The very first thing every founder says before the product exists, a single customer or dollar shows up, before any proof of any kind is some version of: I can do this. It's rarely evidence led, something inside you decides it's worth believing. It's not fraud. It's not delusion. It's simply the starting point. And this is really important. Founding rarely begins with real data. It begins with a belief you have no business holding yet and then spending years trying to earn it -...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Hey Reader, Early days, I’m not sold MRR is THE metric. Or lack of churn. Or customer adoption. Or usage over time cohort analysis. Or some performative PMF metric. Because I think, generally, these positive market signals are reflective of a different metric. The YOU metric… AIB. Am I Better. What proof do I have to show that. MRR is a lagging indicator of what you’ve already built. AIB is a leading indicator of what you’re capable of building. If the founder hasn’t evolved, they’ll...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Hey Reader, That moment when something isn't working and you have an immediate explanation? The lead ghosted, they're just not ready. The feature flopped, they're using it wrong. The hire isn't crushing it, they don't understand our hustle. Fast. Confident. Wrong.Causation. Correlation. The other thing you ignored. Your brain is working overtime to make you happy, to connect dots, to "close the file" and in doing so, it often generates plausible sounding bullshit. You do/see X, then Y...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Hey Reader, You don’t have infinite time. You have until Friday. I hope I sound repetitive. I’d say it every week, because little else matters. No one cares about your horizontal fluff work. What matters is whether the business is moving exponentially forward in the right direction. Right now. Clock speed. The speed at which you release, get feedback, learn, iterate, release again. Clock speed. The fastest team to learn wins. Clock speed. Getting in traffic and proving what you believe to be...
2 months ago • 5 min read
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...
2 months 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...
3 months ago • 5 min read