Founder lessons
Founder-led sales, advice, work models, hiring judgment, liquidity, and the social machinery around startups.
The company-building essays: incentives, judgment calls, and the subtle ways founders get pulled off course.
Start with founder judgment, then follow the incentives into hiring, liquidity, and momentum.
Read first
- The Three Types of Startup Advice (And Why They're All Wrong)2 min
The most dangerous thing about startup advice isn't that it's wrong -- it's that it's partially right. Each type comes with its own flavor of wrong.
- Founder-Led Sales: The Art of Selling Your Vision2 min
For startup founders, sales isn't just another function--it's the lifeblood of your business. Early on, founders are usually the lead salesperson,...
- The Illusion of Traction: When Technical Founders Mistake Interest for Product-Market Fit3 min
Technical founders consistently confuse polite interest with genuine demand. Here's how to tell the difference.
- The Secondary Celebration: A Founder's Perspective on VC Liquidity Events2 min
During my morning LinkedIn scroll, I came across yet another post from a venture firm celebrating a massive return multiple from a secondary transaction.
Everything else
- The Optimization Trap: Why Technical Founders Self-Sabotage1 min
For every startup that dies from technical debt, ten more die from trying to prevent it too early.
- The Dehydrated Entity: Hire Only When You're Truly Underwater1 min
Varun Mohan's hiring philosophy: only add headcount when critical work is actively being dropped. Not deferred. Dropped.
- The Phantom Projects of Overhiring2 min
One of the most quietly corrosive things a company can do is overhire. Not because people are malicious or lazy.
- The Startup Reality Check: Payment, Promotion, and Pace3 min
Three uncomfortable truths about early-stage building, in the only order that matters.
- The Responsiveness Principle: How Small Signals Build Big Trust in Venture2 min
In early-stage venture, responsiveness is a proxy for dependability. Founders remember how you behaved in the process.
- When the Ask Feels Awkward, It's Already Too Late2 min
When the Ask Feels Awkward, It's Already Too Late: There's a thing someone on your team is supposed to own. But you hesitate to bring it up.
- Reading Between the Lines: How to Decode Community Investment Rounds3 min
When a VC-backed startup pivots to retail funding, you're not getting democratized access. You're getting the deals the wealthy already passed on.
- Keep Your Hands Dirty: Why Executives Who Stop Doing The Work Destroy Companies2 min
The Executive Trap I've seen it happen a dozen times: A brilliant engineer becomes CTO and suddenly decides their job is 'managing the engineering...
- Clarity Over Compromise: Making the Right Call on Work Models2 min
When it comes to remote work, hybrid setups, and office mandates, most debates miss the real point. It's not about which model is _better_ in some...