Startup Strategy

Chasing product-market fit too early is one of the most reliable ways to build a company that fits the market that exists instead of the one that's coming.

Figma's pricing wasn't aggressive. It was a statement about what kind of company they were building and who they were building it for.

The funding advantage is real. It's also a trap. Here's what actually happens when startups have too much money to spend.

In 2013, every reasonable person told Butterfield that enterprise chat was a dead market. He ignored them. Here is why that was the right call.

Everpix had hundreds of thousands of users and a product people loved. It shut down because it priced itself into a corner it couldn't escape.

The waitlist, the invite code, the cryptic landing page. Deliberate obscurity is a growth strategy, and it works because scarcity is a feeling you can manufacture.

Customer discovery is gospel in startup culture. But the companies that built durable value often ignored what customers said they wanted.

The founders who turn down paying customers in year one aren't being precious. They're avoiding a trap that kills more startups than running out of money.

Basecamp never raised a Series A. Its better-funded competitors are mostly gone. The story of why is less romantic than you think.

How a single pricing page decision trains customers to spend more without feeling pressured. The mechanics behind anchor pricing, told through the companies that figured it out first.

Industry expertise feels like a competitive advantage. Often, it is the thing that kills you.

More money doesn't mean better decisions. It usually means worse ones, made slower, by more people who weren't there when it mattered.

The pressure to hire fast and scale immediately kills more startups than competition does. Here's why the best founders resist it.

More funding doesn't guarantee better products or faster growth. Often it guarantees the opposite. Here's the mechanism behind why.

We call great startup ideas 'obvious in hindsight' as if that's an insult. It's actually the highest compliment, and misunderstanding why is costing founders years.

More funding doesn't make startups more likely to succeed. In most cases, it makes them less likely. Here's the mechanism behind that counterintuitive truth.

The partnership email looks like an opportunity. It is almost always a trap. Here is how founders who survived learned to tell the difference.

Funding feels like the solution. Often it's the thing that kills your feedback loop, bloats your team, and turns a sharp product into a committee decision.