Subtle real advantage nobody talks about: if founders can access deeper pools of capital early/quickly, they can get bigger faster without spawning lots of competitors.

If your startup is real, pitching Sand Hill is sometimes like giving away copies of your treasure map

This advice is seldom given because most of the time and for most founders, you are still better off talking about your idea as much as possible to better understand where the dead ends are in the idea maze. Can’t do that in isolation.
Asking investors what is hot is usually less useful than asking what has worked, and what didn’t work and why? That’s how you can skip ahead and avoid death.

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.” —Munger

More from Startups

There are some amazing founders and indie hackers that have made 🤯-worthy progress this last year.

The stuff you can do in a year is seriously astounding 👇

👉 @TransistorFM reaching $22k MRR in one year:
https://t.co/BuKmXEeEtH

I was one of their first customers and the progress @mijustin and @jonbuda have made working mostly part-time has been crazy.

Now both are full-time. Follow them on @buildyoursaas

👉 @talk2oneup reaching $10k MRR in one year: https://t.co/SOoGkKA19r

@daviswbaer joined as a co-founder and through many different marketing tactics, pricing changes, and product updates, they've managed to carve out a niche market in a really competitive industry.

👉 @hostifi_net $9k MRR in one year: https://t.co/TknroGZWoK

After getting fired from his full-time job, @_rchase_ embarked on a year focused on building products to replace his salary in a year.

The dude seriously SHIPS and even took investment from @earnestcapital


👉 @ClosetTools $11k MRR WHILE WORKING FULL-TIME AND WITH A FAMILY: https://t.co/pKQ7pFvpZY

With a strong product, continuous improvement, and SEO, @unindie has really been inspirational.

There are no excuses.

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I like this heuristic, and have a few which are similar in intent to it:


Hiring efficiency:

How long does it take, measured from initial expression of interest through offer of employment signed, for a typical candidate cold inbounding to the company?

What is the *theoretical minimum* for *any* candidate?

How long does it take, as a developer newly hired at the company:

* To get a fully credentialed machine issued to you
* To get a fully functional development environment on that machine which could push code to production immediately
* To solo ship one material quanta of work

How long does it take, from first idea floated to "It's on the Internet", to create a piece of marketing collateral.

(For bonus points: break down by ambitiousness / form factor.)

How many people have to say yes to do something which is clearly worth doing which costs $5,000 / $15,000 / $250,000 and has never been done before.