I’ve run enough product meetings to know the default move when something isn’t working: add a feature. Ship the ninth thing. Hope it tips the scales. Instagram’s founders did the…
Three engineers built a dating site. Nobody uploaded a single video. That failure is where YouTube’s parasitic growth strategy actually began. I’ve watched plenty of launches go quiet like that.…
Three founders. $200 a week. A bowl of leftover election-themed cereal for breakfast. That’s not the origin story most growth decks show you. But it’s the one that actually explains…
A giant neon-pink mustache should never have worked as a business strategy. David Baga thought so too, the first time John Zimmer pulled one out in a cramped Palo Alto…
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…