I’ve watched plenty of marketing teams beg for bigger media budgets to fix problems that had nothing to do with advertising. Uber’s early years are the best case study I…
I’ve seen founders panic over a slow first sale. Ten dollars, after six months of unpaid work? Most people would call that a failure signal. Collis Ta’eed called it proof…
I’ve watched a lot of software companies chase growth by copying whatever the last unicorn did. Teachable did the opposite, and that’s why its story still gets studied in marketing…
Most founders protect their best-selling product like it’s the family dog. Kenny Rueter shot his. In 2015, he took Kajabi — a profitable, seven-figure software business he’d built from a…
Greg Smith once lay on an office floor making snow angels. Not because he’d cracked under pressure. Because a single webinar had just generated $20,000 in cash and finally proved…
Zach Perret once had to tell hundreds of employees, live on a Zoom call, that the payday they’d already spent in their heads wasn’t coming. Visa’s $5.3 billion offer for…
I’ve watched plenty of founders walk into board meetings clutching a term sheet like a lottery ticket. J.R. Farr did the opposite. When Lemon Squeezy had an offer valuing the…
Most founders launch a product and then market it. Tenev and Bhatt did the opposite. They had no brokerage license. No customers. No app. What they had was a landing…
Three Swedish students once stood on a stage in front of the King of Sweden and finished dead last. Their pitch was a concept called Kreditor. The judges weren’t interested.…
Two guys in their twenties walked out of HBO’s Los Angeles office with $3,000 left in the bank. They’d just turned down $750,000 a year. I’ve sat in rooms where…