Weekly digest #71
The case for compute, The math of hypergrowth, Defining "toxic" workplaces
We (Matt and Shray) read hundreds of articles on company building, venture investing, and self-management and curate the best ones into a weekly digest to help founders and operators stay on the top of their game.
Better thinking
Self-discipline vs obsession (1 minute watch)
Tim Ferris and David Senra unpack the difference between self-discipline and obsession. When you’re really obsessed with something, you rarely need to think about building discipline around it. Your adherence to doing the thing is just a natural consequence of your obsession. Find what makes you obsessive (in a good way..)
The day Quentin Tarantino became a filmmaker (8 minute read)
A few issues back we shared a short video of Tarantino telling the story behind how he got into filmmaking. This piece extends that story. Quentin is a fascinating storyteller (figures). Beyond that, there’s just so many useful pieces of life advice buried in his story, and this written piece around it. I’d summarise it simply by saying - do not get complacent. Comfort kills.
Abundant intelligence (2 minute read)
The latest from sama. Perhaps a retort to the questions around Nvidia’s investment in OpenAI. Altman makes the case for the world’s compute needs in a short (and elegant) memo. AI will power much of the global economy. In fact, access to it might some day be considered a human right (he argues). Compute is the engine that powers that value, and he uses this to set the stage for what he’s up to; “we want to create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week.”
Operational tactics
Cristina Cordova’s GTM playbook (Stripe, Notion, Linear) (59 minute listen)
Cristina was an early hire at Stripe (first 30 employees), Notion, and now Linear (as the COO). She’s built GTM functions from the ground up. In this conversation, she walks through those experiences, and touches on the way she’s approached partnerships, sales, and marketing - and when to layer on each.
There’s more than one path to $100m (6 minute read)
Triple, triple, double, double, double. That’s what a SaaS company has to do to get from $2m ARR to $100m in the right amount of time. Or so, we’re told to believe. With AI companies blowing that out of the water, expectations are even higher. But the reality is, getting to $100m ARR, no matter how long it takes, is a huge achievement. Trying to hyperscale (blowing lots of cash in exchange for growth) massively reduces the margin for error. Christopher Janz from Point Nine argues that slower growth (and more margin for error) is OK.
A masterclass on founder PR (48 minute watch)
Lulu Cheng is one of the go-to comms and PR experts in the valley. She has a whole manifesto, called Going Direct, that suggests a founder should avoid almost all traditional media and go to “new media”. Characterised by people with podcasts, newsletters, and large following (aka, influencers). Here she talks with Palmer Luckey (Anduril founder) about founder-led comms. It’s an excellent discussion. Roughly summarised with, “founders, have opinions and share them.”
Refer and we’ll send you our favorite books as a “thank you” for spreading the word.
Venture investing
Why do so many startups look the same? (2 minute read)
“It’s a consequence of the fact that investment decisions in VC are mostly relative judgement,” says the Head of Insights at Equidam. That is, VCs need to benchmark in order to feel comfortable. You can only benchmark with things that look reasonably similar, and so that behaviour acts as a standardising function. I personally find this an overstep. VCs do not influence the best founders and ideas, they simply discover them.
The math of hypergrowth (2 minute read)
There’s really two ways to get to a billion dollars in revenue. Very quickly via hypergrowth, or slow and steady via long term compounding. Hypergrowth arguably creates more value, because of the time value of money. A billion dollars today is worth more than it is in 10 years, and it opens up more opportunities. But it’s a constant knife-edge. If you can’t balance growth, margin, and retention from the start, don’t try hypergrowth.
Alpha, beta, and an inverted venture risk curve (5 minute read)
Resurfacing this piece from Gil at Angular Ventures from 2021. I think it’s a perfect characterisations of what we’re witnessing now in venture. Late stage venture capital, which was previously about fundamentals, has become more about momentum. Newly minted megafunds have a lot of capital to deploy. They follow into high momentum opportunities, knowing that their capital is likely to solicit more capital. Comparatively, there’s almost zero momentum at the pre-seed and seed level (bar a few deals), which shifts the focus to fundamentals.
Managing your career
Defining a ‘toxic’ work culture (2 minute read)
This is a refreshing take from Claire Vo. “Toxic” is thrown around a lot these days. Particularly when it comes to the workplace. Let’s reset. A toxic workplace is one that invites sexism, harassment, fraud, and laziness. Competition, ambition, high bars for promotion, and spirited debates aren’t necessarily toxic. The most challenging and fast-paced environments can sometimes feel toxic, but really it’s that friction that brings out the best from people.
Why employee surveys ain’t it (2 minute read)
Arguably, company wide surveys are a big waste of time (hello Stripe Pulse). The biggest damage they enable is driving consensus around grievances so that they become commonplace. Small grievances can become big in this way. The things that really need to be worked on are typically a heavy lift (reorg the company, change the roadmap, change the execs). Surveys don’t build consensus at this level or weight. Nothing changes.
“To solve any problem, you don’t have to be super smart. You just have to 1) be able to break down problems into subproblems, 2) be slightly smarter than the hardest of the atomic subproblems. The real challenge is that the process can take a very long time.”
— Source.