before we work together
the ground rules — how to use my time, what i can and can't do for you, and what i'll ask of you in return.
A few ground rules, so we don’t waste the hour. I’ve done thousands of these calls, and somewhere along the way it stopped being evaluation and became pattern matching. Read this before you message me and you’ll get a lot more out of me.
What to bring. Don’t explain the problem or the TAM — I already know them. Bring the chart. Send me a Dune dashboard or your Google Analytics, and if the curve has a bend in it, we’ll have plenty to talk about. Bring who pays and whether it’s recurring, how many users came back last week, your real numbers and not the deck’s. If you’re too early to have any of that, just say so. That’s a fine place to start; pretending you’re past it is not.
Tell me the real thing. The single most useful thing you can do is stop trying to impress me. I’m not grading you. If something’s broken, lead with it. I can usually see where a founder is going to fail inside the first half hour — but I’ll only say it if I think you actually want to hear it, because most people don’t like being told they’re wrong by a human. Make it easy for me to tell you.
What this looks like week to week. I coach like a game of ping pong. Go get 100 users this week, DM them yourself, come back Friday. Then: can those 100 do one repeatable action? Next week, again. I’m the bottleneck on purpose, so you can’t skip the unglamorous step. If I send you off to post once a day for a week, send me the links and I’ll tell you what’s working. The work is yours. I just hold you to it.
What I can’t do. I can’t hand you a billion dollar company, and I can’t teach you some things better than the people who’ve actually done them — if you want to learn go-to-market, go sit in front of a YC partner, not a podcast and not me. The most a program like mine can really do is put twenty genuinely driven people in one room and get out of the way. If you leave thinking your old friends aren’t that interesting anymore, it worked.
What I’ll ask of you in return. Ask. Asking is a founder trait, and it’s the one I see least — I run cohorts for months and get zero asks, no intros, no help, nothing. You’ll be surprised how often you get exactly what you ask for and how rarely you get what you don’t. And don’t come back with partners, incubators, programs, and a 200-person waitlist and call it progress. Come back with the number it produced. I’ll introduce you to two people who matter, not twenty who don’t, and I’ll put you in front of investors only once I’m sure you’ll close — because a demo day where nobody raises wastes everyone’s time, starting with yours.
the call where i said it best
A founder in my cohort had a product doing 250 to 300k a week in rewards and nobody knew — he hadn’t told me, hadn’t told anyone. I asked if Keone had heard about it. He hadn’t. When another founder in the cohort changes his underwear, Keone knows about it. Use the people around you. The ones who ask get the introductions, the attention, the help. The ones who sit quietly get a nice certificate.
do this this week
Before you book the call, write your ask in one line and put your live chart at the top of the message. If you have neither yet, that’s the real first task.
the line to remember
stop trying to impress me. bring the chart, tell me the real thing, and ask for what you need.