Nobody talks about failure in Silicon Valley, yet 90% of startups fail.

Why?

3 yrs ago, @neerajberry and I shut down @Sprig, which raised $60M from @GreylockVC + @socialcapital & grew to $20m revenue.

Then, it all fell apart.

For an honest story about failure,

**Read on**

In 2013, I was @lyft, envious of how fast it was growing!

What about @lyft for food?

We looked @Postmates + thought:
- the food arrived sloppy / restaurants don't care about delivery
- it took forever (1hr)
- too expensive

We struggled through product iterations until we found "magic":

3 taps and $15 for a healthy meal delivered in 15 min

To make it possible, we had to run the restaurant ourselves; it would be expensive but worth it

We recruited @n8keller, Morgan Springer + @mattkent as founders

We launched and had immediate success. The buzz was unbelievable. Within months we were on track to do $1M revenue/year.

Our Series A was a hot round. I did 4 partner meetings on the same day. Raised $10M.

Great investors, great team, off to the races - @omal and @simonrothman

2 challenges arose:

1) Govt. SF health + planning made our lives hell. They didn't like our innovations. We had to bribe officials ("lobbying").

2) Gross Margins (GM). As we grew, our burn rate grew too. We were losing money on every meal. If only we could get to critical mass.

At Udemy, we were 3 first-time entrepreneurs trying to raise seed capital. We made every mistake in the book.

We got 200+ no’s and wasted 12 months fundraising.

We eventually pulled through, just barely. 😅

This thread shares our mistakes as lessons for founders.

**Read On**

We built an impressive product, but we were nobodies.

We thought: we need money to build our vision, so let’s go talk to some investors.

WRONG.

Nobody gave a fuck that we needed money. We needed to prove we deserved their money.

We met some associates and intermediaries who might introduce us to investors.

Few decision-makers wanted to meet with us.

We should’ve stopped there.

If getting meetings is hard, it will take you forever to raise.

Instead, spend your time building product + getting traction.

I was frustrated with investors: treated them as adversaries who asked dumb questions. My derision turned them off.

Learn to understand and appreciate investors. Follow them on Twitter, listen to podcasts from @HarryStebbings or @eriktorenberg.

An investor's job isn't easy.

They kiss a ton of frogs just to find one deal that may make them money 10 years from now.

They only win if you become a billion dollar company.

Don’t kid yourself - if you aren’t the right fit, bootstrap.

Risk-adjusted, bootstrapping can make you happier and more successful.

Introducing “Superpowers” - the underlying skills that help you succeed at anything

I spent nearly 6 months building this list and almost wrote a book on the subject

Instead, I’ve condensed that work into a pithy (and punchy) Twitter thread

**Read On**

Learning.

Learn how to learn. If you do, it unlocks everything else. The deeper your learning practice, the more you can learn.

This is the ultimate superpower: not only can you learn new subjects; you can even learn to change your mind, your preferences and your mood.

Self-Awareness.

Dispassionate self-awareness helps you improve, grow, and be happy.

Feedback is a gift. Inconsistency is growth. The more of your imperfections you accept, the less imperfect you will be.

Delegation.

Many view delegation as the “top” pushing things “down.” That is insane. Delegation is a multi-way street. It’s the essence of capitalism and the reason why you have a roof over your head and a phone in your pocket.

Learn to let others help you so you can help them.

Managing your ego.

When your inner voice controls you, it leads to jealousy, regretful decisions, and low self-worth.

Taming your ego helps purify your intentions. Pure intentions lead to clear decisions. Clear decisions lead to happy outcomes.