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scaling by "delegation" isn't good enough

mission, vision, potayto, potahto

when being an "expert" is harmful

your target market isn't demographic

max mrr: your growth ceiling

specificity: a weapon of mass effectiveness

ruthless prioritization while the dog pees on the floor

bootstrapped cpc rule of thumb: arpu/25

rude q&a: the constructive devil's advocate

when customers buy your competitor's product… and then buy yours

invention is drudgery

product purgatory: when they love it but still don't buy

how to get customers who love you even when you screw up

ssebitda -- a steady-state profit metric for saas companies

startup exercise: what can't be solved with money?

sometimes never compete on price

how to simplify complex decisions by cleaving the facts

all pretty models are wrong, but some ugly models are useful

reframing "freemium" by charging the marketing department

the wrongness of relativism

"i scratched my own itch" isn't good enough

why it's nice to compete against a large, profitable company

how to select your first marketing channel

our unhealthy fixation with emulating #1

the startup drake equation

on the (un?)importance of design

"stealth mode" and other f'ing brilliant strategies

the important thing -- powerful enough to override all your deficiencies

explore vs execute

a butterfly flaps its wings and you make a sale

when you have nothing: how to find potential customers to interview

solving the low-budget online marketing dilemma

brittle points: how to make companies robust

intense asymmetry and self-flagellation

p-hacking your a/b tests

a life-changing challenge guided by pascal's wager

no wait, of course that is the single most important saas metric

tech support is sales

the serengeti plain: fallacies that aren't fallacies

you're a little company, now act like one

why startup biz dev deals almost never get done

the code is your enemy

ignoring the wisdom of crowds

human + fallible = love; corporate + sterile = refund

profitable on day one!

the mid-market briar patch

individual efficiency vs administrative efficiency

double your productivity without more work or stress

"authentic" is dead. and so is "is dead."

how much of success is luck?

how annual pre-pay creates an infinite marketing budget

procrastinate for success!

not disruptive, and proud of it

"it's a balance" isn't always the answer

being who you are, while becoming better

the lindy effect on startup potential

when being "first" is not a competitive advantage

disentangling the three languages: customers, product, business

rare things become common at scale

hello, i'm 1074018628

adjacency matrix: how to expand after pmf

capturing luck with "or" instead of "and"

it's a torturous chaos until it isn't

the "convergent" theory of finding truth in darkness

avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy

color wheels are wrong? how color vision actually works

stubborn visionaries & pigheaded fools

the pattern-seeking fallacy

ai startups require new strategies: this time it's actually different

how startups beat incumbents

easy statistics for a/b testing and hamsters

easy to criticize, hard to create

deciding whether an investment is worthwhile

pick one and own it

the "errors" that mean you're doing it right

how to measure the accuracy of forecasts

selling to carol: why targeting an icp brings 10x more customers than you expected

"roi" is the wrong way to sell your product

the roadmap to product/market fit (pmf)… maybe

the unfortunate math behind consulting companies

how many things should there be? (hint: not 10)

change: damned if you do, damned more if you don't

quarterly strategic planning using the fairytale structure

reputation isn't as powerful as you imagine

you're a real company when…

product/market fit (pmf): experience & data

rich vs. king in the real world: why i sold my company

metrics that cannot even be measured in retrospect

building in public forces true competitive advantage

your non-linear problem of 90% utilization

never say "no," but rarely say "yes."

the fundamental forces of scale

the only way to guarantee startup success

stop saying "fail"

your customers hate mvps. make a slc instead.

worse, but unique

impostor syndrome: why i felt like a fraud, and how i overcame it

what makes a strategy great

startup identity & the sadness of a successful exit

distinguishing constructive criticism from bad business advice

selecting the right product metrics (kpis)

business advice plagued by survivor bias

for probabilities, use fermi numbers, not words

discount gambit

the three kinds of leverage that anchor effective strategies

satisficing vs maximizing

using the needs stack for competitive strategy

in its emptiness, there is the function of a startup

willingness-to-pay: creating permanent competitive advantage for the right reasons

more money if you do, more money if you don't

you can have two big things, but not three

what a startup does to you. or: a celebration of new life

how repositioning a product allows you to 8x its price

when you want to quit because it's just not worth it

excuse me, is there a problem?

when should a decision be fast, or slow?

pricing determines your business model

navigating the unpredictability of everything

finding fulfillment

the iterative-hypothesis customer development method

jit selection from independent streams: an alternative to the "big backlog" of work

rocks, pebbles, sand: how to implement in practice

binstack: making a maximal multi-dimensional decision

fermi roi: fixing the roi rubric

the "talk vs walk" workshop

productive meeting activities: leverage the team, empower the individual

moats: durable competitive advantage

the "great" product manager, a.k.a. the impossible product manager

failure to face the truth

extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideas

the elephant in the room: the myth of exponential hypergrowth

distributed logical time

what if there isn't another 10x?

refutation: an acquisition is always a failure

why i don't like the ltv metric (lifetime value)

coc: a new metric for measuring cancellations in saas business models

which is better: many customers at low price-point or few at high price?

hiring employee #1

ballad of the lean startup

if you build it, they won't come, unless…

yes, but who said they'd actually buy the damn thing?

real unfair advantages

telling the 800-lb gorilla to shove it up his ass

enough with the "expert" guilt

put down the compiler until you learn why they're not buying

letters to joel spolsky

your idea sucks, now go do it anyway

breaking the rules

limiting options

the "opposite test"