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Random thread on things I've learned while running Medal the last few years. In no particular order.
Scale solves most things. Get to it as fast as you can.
Trust compounding efforts. Paid user acquisition is overrated. Useful for your first few users, and way down the road. Don't get on a train without rails.
Build retention & healthy organic top funnel. Then run to scale.
Trust compounding efforts. Paid user acquisition is overrated. Useful for your first few users, and way down the road. Don't get on a train without rails.
Build retention & healthy organic top funnel. Then run to scale.
Bad retention can't be fixed. Pivot. Start with a fresh mind & don't start handicapped with tech/vision debt. Listen to users. Ideas are nothing. Execution is everything. @nikitabier said it best in this tweet - a product is more than a group of features: https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1360073773286707200?s=20
Worst hiring mistake I've made is hiring people who look good on resumes, do well in interviews, and can't ship consistently. Most people at Medal ship something in their first month. Shipping = culture. Multiple times per week per person. And should be celebrated and watched.
Selling products to companies is not about selling. It's about listening. Most business partnerships are useless before you hit scale.
A tech company outsourcing engineering is a marketing agency. Be wary of people who want to get to an outcome of a successful tech co but are not willing to build & do the work.
(ready to get ratio'd on this
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(ready to get ratio'd on this
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Good product = razor blades, not swiss army knives. Explain in 1/2 sentences, and then expand by understanding what that sentence means to different types of people. If you can't, you're not ready to ship. Don't become a paragraph. Become a verb.
Good people are everything. Be a good person. Find other good people to connect with. Treat people right. Relationships matter. Good people are everywhere. It'll take time, but will find them if you don't spend too much time with people who are not good, despite their position.
Play long term games with long term people (h/t @naval) is the single most meaningful professional sentence in existence.
The biggest mistakes I've made have been where I didn't trust my own judgement. My biggest mistakes have been where I over-trusted my own judgement. Surround yourself with people who don't judge, but instead seek what's underneath a thought, and expand it together.
Reflecting and becoming aware of cognitive biases is a great use of time, and learning how to manage them is the only way to become successful. Pick and choose which ones are useful and be aware of them when used. Manage the ones that aren't.
My biggest one is underestimating effort. Which has given me the courage to try a lot of new things, but I've learned that if I wanted a successful outcome, it's important to maintain that excitement and courage, but dig deep into something before spending time on it.
Build products that people think they'll use more every year. Everything else is really hard to convince anyone to sign up for.
Investors are often incentivized differently than founders, and have a portfolio of opportunities to de-risk any single one of them. Keep that in mind when taking advise from them when it comes to risk, fundraising, and execution. For your team, the company is their single bet.
When you stay true to set a set of values, and don't go with the pre-defined culture/approach of certain things because they go against them (self-promoting, fundraising, hiring "experts" who are also bad cultural fit) the road may be longer, but it leads you to the right people.
You'd be surprised how much opportunity is found in simply being responsive and solving problems with good people, even if you have no financial interest
Example: Megacool acquisition was a result of trying to help them put a round together. @aurorakb is now our (excellent) COO.
Example: Megacool acquisition was a result of trying to help them put a round together. @aurorakb is now our (excellent) COO.
Gatekeeping happens everywhere. There is a lot of opportunity in understanding what types of gatekeeping exists in your industry and seeing opportunity in it. Example, game industry doesn't hire a lot of people who haven't worked in games. ~70% of our team never worked in games.
(this is changing rapidly, by the way - and the meaning of gaming as an industry is also rapidly expanding). Simply to illustrate the point. Also applies to hiring: Slope is a better indicator of future performance than Y-intecept, yet most cos optimize for the latter (h/t @sama)
No matter what your brain tells you, there's always the next goal. Real success is the people around you. I know people with loads of money that didn't enjoy getting there. Some with real family consequences. Learn to love the journey. Which happens by deeply caring for people.
Be wary of FOMO/hype as it's everywhere and abused heavily. Big difference between hype and trends. Trends can be re-constructed from first principles with today's variables. Spend time on trends. Be wary of hype not reachable through first principles.
Last one for now (gn):
Every. Single. Thing. works better when there is trust present. Optimize for it, protect it at all costs. Teach every single person on your team that trust building is critical, and your words and promises matter. Things fall apart when trust is broken.
Every. Single. Thing. works better when there is trust present. Optimize for it, protect it at all costs. Teach every single person on your team that trust building is critical, and your words and promises matter. Things fall apart when trust is broken.
