Dropship, but not sketchy

The strongest predictor of founder success may just be a willingness to look stupid.

A prototype is worth more than 1000 slides.

Mind blown when @LouisKnightWebb told me that >800B lines of COBOL still run on mainframes within financial services, aviation, health care, insurance, government, retail, etc. bloop (bloop) is single-handedly modernizing enterprises. Very bullish x.com/LouisKnightWeb…

"I'm actually going to be in your neck of the woods on thursday, any chance we could grab coffee?" says yes, then buy a ticket to actually go there kind of crazy that this sales move is timeless, everyone knows it, and yet it still works

The classic software startup writes code to solve users' problems. If AI makes writing code more of a commodity, understanding users' problems will become the most important component of starting a startup. But it already is.

Yesterday, I launched a little community exclusively for YC founders interested in jamming on GTM problems and learning. Woke up to >90 founders requesting to be part of it 🫡

Ambitious, motivated non-technical folks can totally mog engineers these days.

🎨Tempo (YC S23) just launched v2 of their visual editor for React, powered by AI. Tempo feels like a design tool but works like an IDE. It enables designers & devs to collaborate on code and helps teams ship production-grade software 10X faster. ycombinator.com/launches/N19-t…

PMF is demand, usage, and retention. Bearish on category creation. Bullish on existing markets.

Sam Altman (Sam Altman) on sales:

Idea: When you buy a CRM, the tool is pre-populated with your TAM. All contact/company level data accurately in there on day one, fully enriched.

Common red flag in seed pitches: a founder who isn’t excited about founder-led sales. The earlier they try to hand it off, the less likely they are to find true PMF.

Great learning here on asking for multi-year deals upfront. Commercial term options (pricing, logo rights/case study, contract length, etc.) enable a multi-variable negotiation with procurement. Otherwise, the only lever you can bend is your pricing. x.com/kushalbyatnal/…

This was great—Gili Raanan // Cyberstarts on why Wiz was able to grow so incredibly fast

A lot of startups are afraid to promise a significant outcome. If you’re hesitant, lean into services. Embed yourself and the product within the customer and figure out how to achieve the significant outcome you promised. Selling outcomes is how you do $1M+ deals.

1st time founder: I want to build something completely new. If it even resembles an existing business, I won’t touch it. I want to invent. 2nd time founder: I want to be 90% the same as successful businesses that came before and 10% new (based on my unique insight). I want to

If your product requires sales to get revenue and usage, your ability to get meetings becomes the obvious barometer of demand. I’m now of the opinion that if it’s hard to get meetings, founders should try self-serve, pivot into adjacent markets, or pick a new problem.

Have a life changing sales leadership role available with a close friend. Full scale up needed, hire and manage a team of 50 sellers in a business that's growing 10% week/week on INBOUND alone currently. [email protected] if you're ready to become one of the all time greats.