5x or feel depressed

A founder in the accelerator had a quietly great week. 300k in rewards paid out. Nobody knew, and he was planning a nice incremental quarter. I told him the mindset that gets you funded and the mindset that gets you comfortable are different mindsets.

Look at your chart. Ask how to 5x it. Not 20 percent. 5x. It will sound impossible. Sit with it and feel depressed. Anything that moves the chart by 5 percent a month, feel depressed about it. Stay depressed until your brain throws something so crazy it has to work. That’s the only reason people go crazy. The alternative is linear growth, and linear growth in software is death, because software has power laws. The winner takes 50 to 80 percent. The second takes 7 to 15. The third can’t pay his bills. You want to be Google or you want to go home.

This is why I won’t run a Nitro cohort that’s 20 percent better than the last one. Alliance has seven years on me. If I copy them and improve 10 percent, I play catch-up forever. Power law means you can’t catch up in startups. So I either find a greenfield where I’m the only cow grazing, or I stop.

Same for you. Once someone dominates a sector, you never take them head on. Google couldn’t take Facebook with a better product and everyone’s data. You have to invent 140 characters. You have to invent Snapchat, which Facebook can’t understand. Robinhood can’t beat Solana’s trenches on Solana’s playground. They needed stocks paired to memes, something Solana then had to copy. That’s winning.

So find the one lever. What’s 10x bigger than the thing that brings you most of your volume today? Can you spend 5,000 on something that pumps the chart by hand? Can you launch your own asset? I’m giving you the worst ideas on purpose because the point is to think that way, not to do those specific things. A token is a lever you can’t reverse, so park it for two weeks and see what else your brain throws up. If nothing, pull it.

And if a competitor shows up, don’t say competition makes you better. That’s the lack of aggression. Say block them, we’re closing them. Competition is for losers.

the call where i said it best

Same founder said he liked having competitors. I said that’s the problem. You have skin in the game and you’re treating this like a sport. A founder I know would have turned your laptop rewards into the biggest narrative in the industry, gotten Delphi to write about it, and had 5 million in the bank by now. You’re not in the limelight. That’s a blessing you don’t know how big it is. Use it.

do this this week

Take your main metric. Write down what would have to be true for it to be 5x in 90 days. If everything on the list is “more of the same”, throw it away and start over.

the line to remember

anything that doesn’t 5x my chart, i’m going to feel depressed about it. and i’m going to be depressed till the time my brain throws something that’s so crazy it has to do something.