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.

0/ Nothing pisses me off more than Lawyers ripping Founders off when putting investment docs together.

The worst part is most Investors aren’t helpful - 85% push the bill to Founders.

As an ex-lawyer, I saw all the inside tricks.

Here's how to reduce your legal bill by 90%:

1/ First, it’s important to understand how lawyers make $.

A legal bill has nothing to do with the end deliverable.

Wait what? That’s right. Lawyers make money via the billable hour.

Regardless of quality, you get charged based on how many hours the lawyer(s) spent with you

2/ The second cost variable is hourly rate.

Hourly Rate is a function of seniority of the lawyer you are working with.

Why is this important? Because the hourly rates go up FAST at top law firms.

Junior Associates = ~$400/hr
Senior Associates = ~$1000/hr
Partners = $1000+

3/ Most financings are very routine.

This was obvious at Seed (hence YC Safe), but it's also the case at A.

The problem is, as a Founder:

(a) You don't know what you don't know
(b) You don't want to mess it up
(c) You want to close fast
(d) You want to move on to your biz

4/ And that’s how you get trapped.

If you let the lawyers run it, a financing process will easily cost you $150k+.

You need to do 2 things: (1) pick the Lawyer and (2) establish the ground rules.

0/ If you’re an SMB operator and want to increase the value of your business, focus on 2 things above all else.

1. EBITDA: how much $ do you make
2. Risk: how reliable is the $ you make

Enough has been written about #1. Here are 5 things you can do to tackle #2:

[THREAD]

1/ All 5 of these tactics are a function of the same guiding principle:

Spend more time working ON the business, not IN the business.

Your job as CEO is to consistently:

- Identify opportunity
- Execute once
- Set process
- Delegate
- Fire yourself

With that said…

2/ Establish your focus

Most SMBs survive in the early days through 1-2 key customers.

If you do a good job, they'll give you more business.

That's the trap.

If it's not in your core focus, resist the urge.

If you don't you'll become a consulting firm for 1 customer.

3/ Eliminate Key Man Risk

SMBs are overly reliant on a small handful of individuals to run the operation.

Implication: Most knowledge about the business sits in the heads of a few people.

Take the time to develop strong Tier 2 management - this creates redundancy in the org

4/ Institute Operating Process

Strong Tier 2 management isn't good enough. You need knowledge to live in docs and systems, not just in brains.

Every dept should have a stand alone playbook.

An easy test: "how quickly can somebody that knows nothing about the dept. plug in?"

Hot Take:

The metaverse is going to make everything more extreme.

Here’s how the world is about to go on tilt and what it means for you 👇👇👇

My friend @ShaanVP had an awesome thread on the metaverse a few weeks ago.

He set a clear, understandable definition of the metaverse:

The metaverse is a time, not a place.

It’s when our digital life is more important than our physical life.

If you believe in that definition (I do), then it pushes an interesting second order question.

What happens when that shift occurs?

I think everything gets a lot more extreme.

Why?

The world doesn’t get any bigger, but our surface area of exposure increases exponentially.

We have more insight and visibility into everything that’s going on.

This will put more pressure on the proverbial pressure cooker.

Here are 10 examples:

1. Opportunity

As more economic activity moves online, constraints and barriers go away.

You can be 10,000 miles away and considered as a candidate for a job.

Measurement pushes away from inputs (politics, facetime) to outputs (deliverables).

This simple idea may appear too obvious to be useful, but there is an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere:

(1) Take a simple, basic idea and
(2) take it very seriously.

The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

The fate of those who do not make others dependent on them:

Sooner or later someone comes along who can do the job as well as they can — someone younger, fresher, less expensive, less threatening.

By being unabashedly open you make yourself so predictable and familiar that it is almost impossible to respect or fear you, and power will not accrue to a person who cannot inspire such emotions.

While he considers you weak and inferior,

and takes no precautions against you,

you are using the time to catch up and surpass him.

This soft, permeable form of invasion is often the best,

for the enemy has nothing to react against, prepare for, or resist.