garrickvanburen

Ha! Sometimes you don’t know what you’re getting even with a demo of a working product.

radically different?

I mean, aside from being comfortable with longer sales cycles and taking the time to build more advocates on the enterprise side, I haven't seen a substantial difference across this spectrum (<1K is very different). All are best when the relationship-building is first and foremost.

I don't care if they 'like' it, I care if they'll fight me when I take it from them.

Don't build until you have received payment from customers. Otherwise you absolutely won't know what to build.

It's likely because they're both indirect and comparatively expensive.

Direct & laser-focused is far more cost-effective in the early days.

I originally read The Cold Start when I was inside a startup studio with an abundance of marketplace ideas.

This book helped clarify for me that no successful marketplace starts out as a marketplace - simply because you need to start out with ready access to one side (likely the supply side as in the Uber & AirBnB examples) and build demand.

The marketplace/network then emerges strategically as more suppliers are onboarded.

This insight helped quickly focus and filter the marketplace ideas we didn't have any business pursuing.

I'm always conflicted about this because it's like saying the sky is blue.

Stepping outside of the VC startup bubble, we see small self-funded businesses are the norm. It's the neighborhood businesses all around us.

82% of all US business have <10 employees https://forstarters.substack.com/p/for-starters-10-the-three...

99.976% of new businesses don’t raise venture capital. https://forstarters.substack.com/p/for-starters-32-start-wit...

I'm also very big fan of cal.com.

Their URL design is great, the flexibility of their free plan is great.

And my no-show rate went from >50% to maybe 1 a month compared Calendly.

it can be as simple as, the messiness of figuring out what to do is completely taken care of - I'll deliver you the recommendations next week.

Even this can be an over investment as it presumes potential customer find the landing page.

Pro tip: just go find the potential customers.

All three of those examples strategically traded profitability for marketshare, and at a time when money was very cheap. This is what is meant by "prioritize growth over everything else."

That is not today's environment.

When it's the focus, profitability can be easily achieved somewhere between day 1 and month 18.

My rule of thumb is $250K/yr employee all in (benefits, the opportunity cost of an actual job, etc).

I'm always surprised by multi-person founding teams with no path (aka pricing model) to covering their own lifestyle.

https://forstarters.substack.com/p/for-starters-17-at-least-...

How much time is appropriate? Who decides? What _should_ they doing instead? Who decides? Where does the kids agency during their discretionary time end?

So? There was a time when all the phone-based activities were separate objects and devices. But today, conveniently they’re all in a single device. Aggregate screen time is a useless measure and discrete screen time only matters to help diagnose when something has done wrong. If the kid is wildly successful what doors screen time matter?

It’s not necessarily about the parent being excluded. It’s about the kid, the kids friends, and the kids friends parents all knowing that a) bad behavior will get back to the parent and b) screenshots are forever.

It’s an entire community.

Social media within Wikipedia's Media Panic article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_panic#Social_networking_...

VR/AR won't take off. It'll get better, if only in that our moral panic about it will evaporate as it did for comic books and video games.

Kids prefer being IRL with other kids w/ or w/o screens.

You're presuming a great deal here.

once moral panic is subtracted out, it's not actually that complex.

I've 4 kids, the youngest is 11.

The rule in the house is; 1) no social media accounts until 13 and 2) one of your parents will be your 'friend' on that account.

This is actually a pretty great expression of "kids keep you young."

But, right now is right now and how kids communicate with each other is constantly changing - social media or not.

So, if you're not a parent to a tween or teens now - I'd say you have little to actually worry about as the landscape will be completely different in a decade.

In my experience, it's a coin toss on whether having the last bit increases or decreases a chance of the appointment being made. Some people require it.

Ultimately the only thing that matters is: you have a phrase that you can say comfortably and expresses genuine curiosity about the other person.

“Hey it’s been forever, grab a coffee and share what we’re both working on and how we might help each other?”

This is the answer

I use phone call quality as my prime example of why most people don't actually care about quality.

Quick reminder that FAANG is not small/mid.

My guess is, you’re selling to the individual devs at the smaller places. Talk to them and their managers. If they want to buy, they’ll buy with what you have already.

Who do you expect to buy it? How many face-to-face conversation with them about why they’d use this tool?

Customer don’t exist in hn, ph, twitter, they exist in their own offices, on Zoom, and your local coffee shops.

This.

Build only after customers have thrown money at you.

As it’s at that point you have enough clarity and specificity to build.

Theoretically, if I as an investor, believe strongly in a given thesis, it would be prudent to place bets that address it from multiple angles.

What's behind your move away from dead tree paper?

The siblings metaphore is apt.

War Plan Red by Kevin Lippert suggests relations between the two countries is also similar to mutually annoyed suburban neighbors.