What running small ventures taught me
A migrated newsletter piece — the unglamorous lessons of building on your own terms.
This piece was originally published in my LinkedIn newsletter. I’m keeping it here as part of the archive.
There’s a version of entrepreneurship that fits on a slide. The real version is quieter: a hundred small decisions, most of them reversible, a few of them not.
Ship before you’re ready
Waiting for the perfect moment is just fear wearing a nice outfit. The first version of anything I’ve made was worse than I wanted — and better than the version that never shipped.
Distribution is the product
Making the thing is maybe half the work. Getting it in front of the right people is the other half, and it never stops. The founders who win aren’t always the best builders; they’re the ones who kept showing up.
Keep your costs boring
Cheap, reversible, boring infrastructure buys you the freedom to experiment. Every fixed cost is a small bet against your own flexibility.
That’s the short version. The long version is this whole blog.
Originally published on LinkedIn.