The blog
What we learned building from zero.
Ideas, co-founders, first money, fundraising and exits. Written from inside the companies, not from the outside looking in.
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Hiring · · 5 min
How much equity to give your first employees
Ranges by stage and role, where the equity actually comes from, why the option pool is your expense rather than the company's, and how to frame an offer so it motivates.
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Hiring · · 3 min
Hire for zero-to-ones, not titles
Running a department of forty teaches you to keep a working machine running. It does not teach you to build one from nothing. How to read a senior operator's real track record.
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Building · · 2 min
The 2.5-year build trap
If you have been building for 18 months and cannot show five customers who paid for an unfinished version, you do not have a product. Why the build was never the risk, and what to do instead.
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Building · · 2 min
Work-life balance is a year five problem
When a first-year founder asks about balance, investors hear someone protecting a life they have not built yet. The three real phases of founder time, and how to be honest about which game you are in.
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Building · · 3 min
Ignored, mocked, fought, then accepted
If your idea was called great and then quietly killed, you were not unlucky, you were on schedule. The four stages of resistance every disruption walks through, and how to read them as progress.
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Building · · 4 min
Four pieces of startup advice that are actually wrong
The most repeated startup advice is often the most dangerous. Raise as much as you can, move fast and break things, follow your passion, build in public: four sacred cows worth killing, and what to replace them with.
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Fundraising · · 5 min
How CEE founders accidentally underprice ambition
You did not lose the round on the numbers, you lost it on the language. Why CEE modesty reads as a capped outcome to US partners, and the three phrase swaps that fix it.
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Fundraising · · 4 min
The cap table mistakes that kill startups before PMF
Founders blame the product when a startup stalls. Usually the cap table they built in week one is why the next round will not close. Five mistakes, and the fix for each.
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Building · · 3 min
First-time vs second-time founder: ten things that change
Experience is not a magic upgrade. The real shifts are behavioural, and almost all of them are about what second-time founders refuse to do anymore. You can steal most of them on day one.
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Fundraising · · 3 min
Six red flags VCs spot in the first 30 seconds
The verdict on your deck is usually formed by slide three. Six signals that kill a pitch before it starts, and the fix for each one.
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Fundraising · · 4 min
The warm intro economy: how VC deals actually get done
Most first-time founders think they are losing fundraising on the deck. They are losing on the network. How the warm intro economy works inside a fund, and a playbook for outsiders without one yet.
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Fundraising · · 6 min
What VCs actually mean when they say "let's stay in touch"
A founder's guide to soft pass language. Nine phrases VCs use instead of no, what each one really means, and the one structure that signals a genuine not now, yes later.
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