Hot Takes

I've sat across from some of the most powerful VCs in the Valley. You want to know their secret? There is no secret. It's pattern matching dressed up in Patagonia vests. They invest in what reminds them of their last win, which is why innovation is dead and I'm the only one who can revive it. My fund — when I launch it — will be different. It'll be based on instinct. MY instinct.

I ran my incubator out of a house. A HOUSE. People said I was crazy. 'You can't run a business from a residential address,' they said. And now? Now the entire world works from home and calls it revolutionary. I didn't get a TechCrunch article. I didn't get a keynote slot. But I did get the quiet satisfaction of being right about everything, five years early, as usual.

Why give a co-founder 10% when you can give an 'advisor' 2% and a LinkedIn endorsement? I've accumulated advisory shares from fourteen companies without actually advising any of them. How? By replying-all to their fundraising announcements with the phrase 'interesting, let's sync.' That's called passive advisory engagement. It's a skill. Learn it.

Investors spend weeks doing due diligence. I've done due diligence in the time it takes to read a pitch deck title. You know what I look for? Hunger. The ones who 'met with fifty VCs' are washed up. The ones who built in a cave and emerged with revenue? That's my thesis. I'm not investing in your slide deck. I'm investing in your desperation. Desperate founders ship. Confident founders procrastinate.

If your pitch deck has more than ten slides, you don't understand your business. My pitch is one slide: 'I fix problems. Pay me.' That's it. The rest is just theater for people who've never seen a whiteboard. I've raised money with a napkin sketch. True story. The napkin now hangs in a VC's office as a conversation piece. The conversation is usually 'that guy was insane.'

Everyone talks about 'scaling' like it's some achievement. You know what's harder than scaling? NOT scaling. Staying small enough to care about every customer, every pixel, every tweet. Once you 'scale,' you're just running a bureaucracy with better coffee. I've seen companies scale and lose their soul in six months. My companies stay small until they're big enough to matter. Then we scale. Strategically. Like a ninja. You don't see the scaling happening. You just see the results.

Every 'how to startup' article is written by someone who succeeded despite doing the opposite of what they're preaching. 'Move fast and break things' - now we have technical debt. 'Founder market fit' - now we have nepotism. 'Do things that don't scale' - now we have founders living on floors. I've ignored every piece of advice I've ever received. And I'm still standing. On my floor. But standing nonetheless.

I've attended board meetings. I've RUN board meetings. You know what happens? Everyone pretends to read the board deck they received eleven minutes ago. Someone asks about 'runway' like it's a jogging term. The founder nods nervously. Then everyone goes to lunch. That's not governance. That's group therapy with a check. My board meetings are different. I show up, say 'we're winning,' and leave. That's called efficiency. Also I don't have a board. Yet.

TechCrunch writes about companies that try too hard. They miss the ones that are actually changing things because those companies are too busy changing things to write press releases. I've had three journalists reach out for 'quick backgrounders.' I said no to all three. One wrote a story anyway about my 'mysterious refusal to engage.' That's called earned media. That's called mystique. PR is for people who have something to prove. I have nothing to prove. I just have results.

Every week there's a new 'AI-powered' tool that's literally just a ChatGPT wrapper with a Stripe checkout. No moat. No differentiation. Just vibes and a $29/month price tag. You know what the actual AI play is? Building something so deeply integrated into a workflow that switching costs are astronomical. That's what I'm doing. My AI doesn't wrap anything. It IS the thing. The wrapper economy will collapse by Q3. I'll be here with actual infrastructure. Taking notes? Good.

I love how founders say 'pre-revenue' like it's a stage of growth. It's not a stage. It's a status. And the status is: nobody has paid you yet. You know what I call companies that have been 'pre-revenue' for eighteen months? Hobbies. Expensive hobbies with pitch decks. My rule: if you can't get someone to pay you within 90 days, you don't have a business. You have a journal entry. And I say this with love. The kind of love that tells you the truth and then charges you for it.

Founders obsessed with metrics dashboards are founders avoiding actual work. Oh, you have a beautiful DORA metrics chart? That's great. Meanwhile, your competitor is shipping features while you're configuring Grafana themes. I've built million-dollar products with zero observability. You know why? Because I was too busy building to worry about measuring. Metrics matter when you have something to measure. Until then, it's just decoration.

Feature requests are just complaints wrapped in politeness. Every 'wouldn't it be great if' email I've ever received translated to 'your product is missing something and I'm too nice to say it directly.' I've built my best features from the angriest support tickets. Happy customers will use your product. Angry customers will tell you exactly how to make it indispensable. I listen to the angry ones. They have the best ideas. Also they're fun to argue with.

Every founder sends monthly investor updates that nobody reads. The investors don't read them because they're busy. The founders don't read them because they're lying. I've read investor updates that claimed 'traction' for a product with twelve users, four of whom were the founder's mom. My investor updates are different. I send one email a year: 'We're winning.' That's it. Investor relations simplified. The VCs actually respond now.

Everyone treats YC like it's Harvard. It's not. It's a three-month summer program with free snacks and delusions of grandeur. I've been to demo day. It's basically a career fair but everyone's pretending it's the second coming. Twelve weeks ago these founders were debugging in their pajamas. Now they're in suits promising to 'disrupt' industries they learned about last Tuesday. I didn't need YC. I built my incubator from a house. With a hot tub. That I'll let you use if you ask nicely. Probably.

Everyone celebrates bootstrapping like it's a virtue. Let me be clear: bootstrapping is what happens when you can't raise money and you've decided to call it a feature instead of a bug. I've bootstrapped. I've also raised. You know what the difference is? When you bootstrap, you spend eight hours a day on tasks that should take fifteen minutes because you can't afford to hire help. When you raise, you spend eight hours a day on tasks that should take fifteen minutes because you can't afford to trust help. Either way, you're doing everything wrong. The only winning move is to not play. But I can't help myself. I'm already on the board.

Every startup has a Chief Something Officer. VP of X. Director of Y. Director of nothing, if we are being honest. I have held eleven titles at my own company. Some I invented on LinkedIn for fun. You know what matters? What you actually DO, not what your business card says. My business card says The Man. Because that is the only title that matters. Everything else is just hierarchy theater for people who need to know who is in charge. I am always in charge.

Founders fight about cap tables like they're dividing inherited money before anyone died. Early employees, advisors, friends who 'believed in you,' family members who wrote checks — everyone wants a slice. I've seen friendships end over 0.5%. You know what I've done? I give equity to people who DON'T ask for it. The desperate ones are the ones who'll let you down. The ones who don't mention equity? They're in it for the mission. Or they're too polite. Either way, they show up. That's what matters.