No one is born to be a founder, let alone a good founder. We fail many times and as time goes on we are just getting better at failing less. The willingness to try is what makes the difference.
Unpopular opinion: when you're in your 20s, try live in the big cities! The experience and friends and connections you can make often outweigh the costs.
There are very few things that others haven’t done. Instead of trial and error ourselves it’s always better to see who knows much better than me and reach out.
Has anyone tried Runway ML and liked it? It's a new tool that takes in prompts and makes good videos.
Here's my prompt of 'futuristic Dubai with flying cars'.
@runwayml
@expocitydubai
.
I think CEOs not sleeping well is a myth. I get at least 6.5 to 7 hours of sleep every day, sometimes more. Many successful people I know do the same.
It's not a zero sum game, sometimes your healthy is more important.
Recently got asked how much salary would be enough for me to work at a big tech firm.
I said no number because nothing can buy the happiness and fulfillment of building your own startup and watching it work.
Too many people say they want to do things. It's not enough to just say it, make your reputation by doing it. Earn your reputation by sticking to your promises. That's how you'll make it.
The startup game has changed forever in 2024.
You no longer need to hire 5 developers at $125k each, spend $500k on Google and Facebook ads, and keep raising.
You can do the same today with a team of 2 and a stream of automated AI programs.
Start building!
If you have a professional network, an advice I received from a friend: always treat your network like your friend, check-in with them, ask them how are they/family doing.
We are all people and at the end of the day transactional relationships come and go. Make a change.
As a founder, I think growing up is by not making promises to your employees/partners/investors that you can't keep.
We all start by suggesting things we are unsure of, and knowing to make less promises is a good step towards maturity imo.
Truth are often pain to our ears but great to hear in the long-term.
Build that persistance so people are more truthful around you and you can grow at a truly exponential rate by accepting that:
You are not the greatest and you are wrong all the time, which is fine!
When you're bootstrapping a start-up, you're forced to have a super lean staff. Your expenses are 1/10 of what a funded startup is.
This forces you to find product validations. Now with AI, even less reasons to raise (unless you have to).
You’re more likely to succeed if you believe in the vision you created.
Most people are working for stability not vision. Use your vision to catchup and surpass your competitors.
I think meeting people in different countries or cities has a really big impact on your thought process. If you can go once in a while and for me at least it's been super helpful!
Now is a great time to build an AI startup as well as the most dangerous time to.
OpenAIs of the world crushes smaller startups or render them useless almost on a weekly basis. To succeed I think the point is to be super niche and solve a real need for that segment.
The best founders I know actually despise fancy awards like 30 under 30s, why?
Because for builders, their mission is to build and get fulfilled when their things work. Not smile in front of the camera and get some more IG likes.
Been hearing many pitches lately. What is an 'AI Agent' startup? Lol, many buzz words again, no concrete products.
A business is a business and a good business is a good business. Hype works for a few months but value businesses stays forever.
Innovation means doing something that's not being done. It doesn't have to be a technology breakthrough, just finding a niche where it has been underlooked. Wealth is underneath it.
I wasn't a big advocate of solo founders before, and I get why. Now I am.
At most, an experienced founder + a seasoned coder is a good team for a start-up. Anything more than that is starting to be a harder sell (imo). What do you think?
As a founder, there is always an urge to build. But don’t forget validations are even more important.
Too reason startup fail is building a product that no one needs!
The difficult part of being a founder is how much knowledge you need.
From validating the problem - to crafting a customer journey - to make a final call on the engineer hire.
It's a relentless learning curve, but there's a profound sense of fulfillment in steering the ship.
There are times that are tough, where you feel alone by yourself and no one is near to help. There are times that are great, that you feel that nothing will make you happier.
That's the truth about startup life, if you can't take it, it's good to stick to 9-5.
After 2021, tech is not a 'game' anymore. It's a serious job now and many I know including me are glad it's keeping the people that are really serious about making a difference.
What's missing from a lot of younger people today is the drive.
When making a living is sucking the life out of them, few get creative and can solve society's pressing problems.
It's time to change this and let young builders build.
In 2023, building a startup is about building up your resilience.
Grow your customers, grow your revenue, and grow your skills. Everything else does not matter.
Startups exist to solve problems. Some startups grow, and eventually become part of the problem.
Solve problems, and ruthlessly disrupt inefficiencies from existing players and competitors as you see them.
A company needs a visionary and a builder. Sometimes these two are one person, but most likely it needs two.
Find your co-founder to make the magic happen!
Before AI, you had to rely on other people. With AI you can now finally rely on yourself to get everything done.
For aspiring entrepreneurs and current founders, this is the best time. You don't need more people - you need YOU.
When I first started doing startups, I thought everything was a competition. But the real value can only be built from forming collaborations.
Less than 1% of startups die from competition, the rest 99% focused on the wrong things to solve.
When starting your business, think about go to market and your customers first, not investors - too many startups think about how to impress an investor than what’s good for their customers.
Being a founder means having your own brand, our solution, and our interpretation to things.
Merely following the trend doesn't make you a founder, it makes you a trend chaser, just like the NFT guys, VR guys, and who knows what's next?
On my latest podcast, we predicted the biggest thread to ChatGPT is copyrighting.
ChatGPT having to explain the sources of where it learned its responses and get sued can break the project. What do you think?
I took a short break from mid-2021 to 2022 from actively building and shipping products (partly due to burnout).
A few months after that initial break, miss so much on building software. Got back and started building again. My takeaway: don't give up on things you love.
I need to come out and stress again the importance of taking care of your health and sleep while building your startup.
I was sick for the past week but couldn't get away from work due to deadlines. It's not a feeling I'd recommend for any founder. Take a break whenever you can.
30% of your job as CEO is going to be managing people. 40% is going to be about hiring.
As startup scales you might realize it might not be for you and that's okay. Also treasure the early days of your startup where you'll have the most freedom.
Your mission as an entrepreneur should be always helping out your customers, not taking advantage of them. That’s the real path to success as a founder.
I've got a lot of respect for ppl who had great exits and just decided to start something after. Know many of them, inspires me to keep on doing what I do.
After this many years of building startups, I'm still a huge advocate on bootstrapping.
There has been many pains that happened because of this, but I think this helps you as the founder to not lie to yourself.
The secret sauce to retention is to give your employees the chance to significant personal and career growth. When we grow quickly, we appreciate the opportunity and stay on.
When I was just starting out, COVID hit - 2 years of lost opportunity to connect and build in-person relationships.
Now I travel more and meet more people. There are costs but I find more opportunties/relationships are built that way.
I started picking up running about two three months ago, and it has surpassed meditation for me to get exercise and find good peace of mind. Do you do/like running?
After being in many countries, I gotta say: it's lucky to be in one that respects entrepreneurship/SMBs.
Businesses are the backbones of societies yet many parts of the world are still against innovation.
Be in the business of helping others, not profiting from feeding off others.
Both are maybe equally easy/difficult, but only one right path that will lead you to become a great entrepreneur.
Have principle on which features you want to build.
When on a budget as a startup, every hour spent developing a feature is crucial. Only build what customers demand you to build for months.
I don’t think it’s a good idea for a founder to be distracted. Founders’ job is building and scaling the business. Sometimes it’s widely accepted as okay (always fundraising), but to me it’s not.
1/10: A recent revelation in the
#AI
world sparked a debate on transparency and authenticity. It involves Chinese startup 01. AI, their AI model 'Yi', and a claim that's causing quite a stir. Intrigued? So was I. Let's dive in!
When someone on your team is not working out, first ask yourself what I did wrong, second ask folks they work with what they think, third talk to the person in question.
Often times I find the issue underlying is rarely about the person, but more on the process.
The past few months have taught me that you don't really need a large network.
You just need a few mentors who really care about what you're doing to help you out. A few co-founders who will stuck with you in hard times. And people who will help you - it's all you need.