There are 2 paths to success:

1. Be Top 1% in the world at 1 thing
2. Be Top 25% in the world at 3 things

Top 25% is achievable by most people.

The problem is most people focus on being Top 1%.

Work on combining “3 pretty goods” and stay at it.

It’ll pay off big.

There’s a lot of bad advice out there on how to pitch your startup.

Last year, I invested $1M+ and heard 200 companies pitch.

Every great pitch I've heard nails 5 ingredients.

In this thread, we'll go through each to help maximize your chances when fundraising

Let's dig in👇

1/ Every pitch should have 5 ingredients:

- Problem: Is this an issue
- Solution: Do you have the fix
- Market: Is this a big enough issue
- Business: Can you make money
- Team: Are you the people to do it

The best pitches nail all 5. Good ones hit 4. Subpar hit 3 or less.

2/ PROBLEM

The problem statement is an explanation of why a set of circumstances is painful for a set of users.

There’s one word in that sentence that is most important: painful.

If your problem is not painful enough, it's a vitamin.

The best startups are pain killers.

3/ SOLUTION

The solution statement is an explanation of how you address the pain felt by your users. If you don’t have the right solution, you won’t get customer traction.

Customers don’t buy your thesis on the pain point. They buy the actual thing that solves their pain point.

4/ MARKET

In tech, only businesses that have outsized potential get funded.

To have outsized potential, you have to either be in a:

(a) small, but rapidly growing market or
(b) large existing market that can be resegmented

If not, the business is not venture backable.

0/ [THREAD] Over the last 4 years, I’ve interviewed 100+ of the most successful Investors, Founders and Executives in the world.

Here are the 20 "must have" lessons that most stuck out to me.

Lessons on life, career advice, entrepreneurship and startups 👇👇👇

1/ Having a billion dollars is great, having a billion seconds is priceless.

Interesting thought experiment: If you had the opportunity to switch places with Warren Buffet, would you do it?

You would be a billionaire, but you would also be 90.

Time > Money.

2/ Always strive to simultaneously be overrated and underrated.

Contrary to popular belief, being overrated is good. It opens doors and gives you credibility.

But don’t let this go to your head. Stay hungry, humble and hardworking.

3/ Surround yourself with open minded people vs. close minded people

Open Minded People:
- Ask genuine questions
- Insatiably curious
- Listen attentively

Close Minded People
- Make statements instead of ask questions
- Focus on being right
- Speak more

4/ Get comfortable with being uncomfortable

If you get advice from enough people, the advice will cancel out. You can find 2 smart people to take opposite sides of the argument on virtually every topic.

Focus on developing your instincts and trusting your own intuition.

This week I interviewed someone who:

- Built a $1.5B company as COO
- Sold a $1B company to Microsoft
- Invested in 25 🦄🦄🦄🦄

Here’s 10 timeless lessons from one of the greatest tech entrepreneurs of our generation:

is a legend and man of many titles:

Founder, Executive, Investor, Coach, Filmmaker.

He’s also a down to earth guy that’s incredibly generous with his time.

This convo was a follow on from a dialogue we started earlier this year.

Alright...onto the lessons:

Lesson #1: Startups should NOT “do things that don’t scale”

The whole point of technology is to find an elegant, scalable approach.

The sooner you do that, the better off you are.

When you glorify doing things that don’t scale, you end up with a startup that doesn’t scale.

Lesson #2: You can’t do it alone, no matter how great you are.

To win big, surround yourself with:

A. Other greats
B. Role players
C. A system that brings out the best in everyone.

All three of these are equally important and allow organizations to thrive.

Lesson #3: Silicon Valley is no longer a place. It’s a way of doing business

20 years ago SV was the home for innovation.

Today it's now spread to many other places.

Risk Capital + Knowledge + Support = a more inclusionary and global ecosystem.

That's a great thing.

"You can define a free person precisely as someone whose fate is not centrally or directly dependent on peer assessment." - @nntaleb

How to think critically:

(mental models and logical fallacies)

Whenever possible, confirm the "facts."

"Fact-checkers are just fake authorities anointed by the media, according to fact-checkers." — @naval

Authorities can make mistakes.

Don't fall for the "arguments from authority fallacy."

"In science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts." — Carl Sagan

Survival of the fittest argument.

Always think of multiple explanations for an argument.

Then think of tests to disprove each explanation.

Whatever remains has a better chance of being right than simply sticking with the first idea.

Two mental models that fit here:

Occam's Razor: When faced with multiple explanations pick the simpler.

Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." In other words, there can be honest mistakes.

Learn to take advantage of other people’s work to further your own cause.

Time is precious and life is short.

If you try to do it all on your own, you run yourself ragged, waste energy, and burn yourself out.

It all boils down to:

When things go wrong, where do you look first -- inward or outward?

One who looks inside, owns his actions,

One who looks outside remains a slave of his circumstances.

For not many men, the proverb says, can love a friend who fortune
prospers without feeling envy;

and about the envious brain, cold poison clings and doubles all the pain life brings him.

His own woundings he must nurse, and feels another's gladness like a curse.

-Aeschylus