For those who want to make things happen, you got to make them happen. The Left today has been brought up on some drug which makes them think there is some perfect world that an authority figure has to provide for every young person.
That is not true. You want something, you got to point your power at it.
Asking for others to do anything without committing your time, attention, and money first is a sure-shot way of becoming a complainer lefty.
There is no perfect place / government / community / country. Because human beings always want something else. We have to understand that things have been here for a long time before any of us got here and they will be there long after we are gone. No problem of ours is that important to the entire world.
In 2024, here is a recipe for a tweet whenever you want to change anything:
I want to change _______________
Problem / complaint:
Possible solution(s):
I am committing x number of hours over the next two years and $y to change this or letting go of $z in salary to make this happen
Who else wants to join me?
We may fail but we have got to try
I believe this will be a clear ground for any movement to start. Founder has to commit to a certain amount of risk in terms of time / money.
Use of words cannot be ‘i prefer’. It must bring more certainty.
Speeches and long posts become protests and we hardly get anything out of it.
At a fundamental level, i think the tightness of a community is anti-scale, especially at the beginning.
This comes from my learning from observing Visa build FAN.
While drafting my tweets, I default to using my marketing brain and make it clear, concise, to the point, ending with a call to action.
But I realised this is distribution-focused or audience-focused content, not community-focused content.
Community content is usually with a ton of nuance, and a lot of tangents, experiences, examples, and anecdotes. Best of community content – Hindu scriptures or the old testament Bible – was written in languages that were bad from a distribution perspective.
My biggest takeaway is: function of content in a community vs media is completely opposite.
As founders, we tend to look at funding as an event. But we should look at funding as shifting of rails to make you go faster. It is part of the process, not one point in time when you prepare a deck and get some money in the bank. Think of it like surfing more than skydiving.
As a startup grows, ideally with exponential potential, investors would want to thrust that growth with some money and get an upside of it. This is the wave. You have to position and re-position and try different things until you hit one of these waves where users or revenue starts coming in.
Great VCs will not invest on fomo. They would want to see some proof of the founder being formidable and the product / market being conquerable.
One of the founders that I have been working with got tailwinds. They were paid little attention by chains and investors alike. But as their numbers started growing, they started getting inbounds – from every top VC including a16z.
I have seen many founders get into this position. Many of them don’t know how to act once they’ve caught the wave and they fall multiple times before raising good money or giving up by raising from tier 2 investors.
So here are some tips:
You need to know the next milestone and have a reasonable view on how you will get there. Taking money is just the start of bigger challenges. You will be standing on the surfboard instead of paddling now. The risks are higher, your burn is higher. So you better have a reasonable idea of where you are going to get with this money. Communicate that to your investors. Get their buy-in.
Remember, external market conditions in web3 are subject to change every week. So just because your sector is hot today doesn’t mean it will remain forever. Make sure your investors aren’t investing on hype. This will make them bad partners or even drivers of bad behaviour (like premature token launches).
Don’t become egoistic. It is the wave that is pushing you, even if you achieved a great product or good growth numbers. Many founders reject good tier1 VCs because they want a slightly better valuation or are waiting for someone better. If the investors have great reputation and believe in what you are doing, close the deal.
Vision expansion. I have made this mistake earlier. Because we are getting more money than we want to raise, we sometimes end up broadening the vision. This takes away focus. More money doesn’t mean you can conquer one layer above/below you or an adjacent market. Startups have to be razor-sharp and the aim is to conquer 60%+ in one vertical. This results in making loose promises of grand visions to the investors. Don’t do this. Raise only what is needed.
Make sure you know the weakest links in your chain. Just because top VCs are courting you doesn’t mean you have everything figured out. If you have, great. But most founders haven’t. This is an exercise that keeps you grounded, lets your investors know that you aren’t too delusional, and helps you stay on course.
Don’t pit investors against each other. This is very counter-intuitive but every VC back-channels with their competitors. At a point where you pitched to 5 VCs, they have evaluated you from every major angle.
There will most likely be the one investor/operator who doesn’t believe in what you are doing and will make sure they communicate it to all others. Admitting what you know and what you don’t know reasonably is the best way to be transparent and make such back-talk die. Believers will step forward and others will be bogged down by the market gossip. If you are building something on the cutting edge, there are multiple risks and a great VC understands that.
Surf the wave well. You are in a rare special spot!
Will keep adding to this and writing much more. Subscribe from the sidebar.
To be written:
All money is not equal.
The aim should always be to raise from the best.
Investors are like partners.
Startups got to dominate or die. Power law applies
When I lived in a beach village in India running an artists’ hostel, I would visit my friends and family in Mumbai during the off-season. I would feel this stretch in my brain.
I would find myself telling my hippie friends to work harder and challenge their brains while recommending my city friends to chill out, stand and stare for a bit.
Both would yield minimal results.
Just like if you talk about Bitcoin to Solana folks and vice versa. It gets very aggressive and very dumb very fast.
The gap is just too wide.
In a world without truth, there are only tribal truths.
———–
I can put this into words for the first time: I travel across bubbles.
These are just two wide spectrums.
But I do hang out with:
GenZ as well as my friends who are 60+.
Right-wing religious folks as well as left-wing purple hair folks
Men’s rights activists as well as women’s rights activists
Bikers as well as drum circle organisers
Yacht partiers and those eating McDonalds at a crypto conference
tpot as well as e/acc
I think my insatiable curiosity drives me to learn from each one of these groups + my undying desire to teach people (or maybe just reconcile my own beliefs) gets me exposed to numerous people who can handle well-intentioned critique of their bubbles.
The only problem I am left with is: I have to design my tribe with a specific value system from the ground up.
After seeing an aisle full of values and beliefs, I cannot buy anything out of the box anymore.
But that is little price to pay for the knowledge and the learning that I got.
I keep saying this: the magic is somewhere in the middle.
And I am here to find that middle. Samatvam, as it is called in trad Indian literature.
While talking to hundreds of founders and investors, i can sometimes see gaps and opportunities that is likely to have a much higher success rate.
Either a problem has been defined quite well, or a pain point that people are willing to pay for.
Earlier in my life, i used to note these in my journals and stash them away thinking someday i would work on these.
Now, i just post them here. i will even keep updating these with more insights as i get them.
They are free for you to take.
Not just that, if you are giving any of these ideas a serious shot, i will invite you to (preferably physically) work with me, connect you to the right people, and help you fundraise.
Shoot me a DM when you have decided that you want to do this.
