Why most pivots fail
The pivot is the most romanticised move in startup lore — and the least understood. Most founders treat it as a creative…
LONG-FORM
Essays
One argument each. Written with care, read in a sitting.
Against conviction
The cult of founder conviction has gone too far. Belief without legible evidence is not a leadership trait — it is a…
Sequencing bets in year three
The first two years are about staying alive. Year three is about deciding which bets are worth being slower for.
On taste
Taste is what people call judgement once they have stopped being able to explain it.
The quiet org
You can tell a company is working when the loudest signal in the building is the customer, not the leadership team.
Fundraising is not the product
Treating the round as the milestone is the most expensive mistake a Series B founder can make.
Your first ten hires are a strategy document
You can read a company’s real strategy off its first ten offer letters more reliably than off its board deck. One is…
The quarterly plan is a comfort object
Most quarterly plans are not forecasts. They are rituals that make an unpredictable business feel briefly legible — which is fine, as…
Nobody wants your platform
Customers buy one thing that works. Platform is a word founders use when they have not decided which one thing that is…