#startups
Facial similarity between investors and entrepreneurs increases funding likelihood by 3.2 percentage points, even after controlling for race, gender, and age.
Sufficiently down-to-earth founders will, by default, convince themselves that they won’t succeed. This is partly because down-to-earth people are rarely successful in anything grand. It’s partly because everything looks simultaneously harder and easier before you try it. And it’s partly because all good ideas sound like bad ideas until they come to fruition.
Companies must leverage AI to remain competitive, as industry dynamics will shift dramatically over the next few years.
Many founders burn out because they’re always praying for the problems to finally ease. And, sure, you will occasionally experience short periods where things seem to be going well. But it’s always only a matter of time before your success leads to more challenges.
When an early stage employee can satisfy their own needs by simply succeeding in their role, you’ll achieve better results with less management overhead. When an employee needs more than you can give them, they will distract you from focusing on the most important things.
The team behind X’s Community Notes developed a community-driven approach to combat misinformation, addressing challenges of speed, scale, and trust faced by traditional methods relying on internal teams or media partnerships.
Mark Zuckerberg led a swift, secretive six-week effort to alter Meta’s speech policies, bypassing the usual lengthy process involving employee and civic input.
It can be difficult to convince a customer to adopt your product when they already have a solution they’re happy with. This is why disruptive products typically need to be radically better, radically cheaper, or both. However, thanks to platform envelopment, it’s actually possible for a notably worse app to disrupt superior incumbents.
Most managers in early-stage startups think that chaos is inversely correlated with results. That is, they think that chaos breeds bad results and an unhealthy environment, while order breeds good results and a more harmonious environment. This perception is wrong.
The best salespeople have great intuitions for which prospects are most decisive, and how to get access to better contacts. Everyone else wastes their time talking to people who will never buy, no matter how appealing they make it sound.
The study analysed data from 6,286 websites across 24 industries to assess the impact of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on online usage over time.
The widespread negative perception of surveillance capitalism is misguided; its dangers are exaggerated while its benefits are underappreciated.
International founders often join the batch as business visitors under ESTA or a B-1 visa.
To win, startups need to lean into their advantages because they’re a decade away from the kinds of moats enjoyed by established corporations. This means they need to work smart (i.e., mostly do the right things) and work hard (i.e., execute at a pace and with intense risk tolerance).
Conveying complex ideas through language often results in loss of nuance, leading to misunderstandings and flawed approaches to problem-solving.
Startups should try to hire salespeople in pairs. This is particularly important when spinning up a new channel (e.g., launching in a new market, opening up a partner channel, or kicking off outbound sales).
The introduction of a new tax on superannuation earnings over $3 million, including unrealised capital gains, is raising concerns about negative impacts on self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs).
Founders historically relied on media and publicists to share their narratives, but with the ubiquity of social media and email, they no longer need these traditional gatekeepers.
Under proposed changes in Australia, acquisitions exceeding certain financial and market share thresholds must be reported to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), with initial reviews taking 15 or 30 days.
Direct customer engagement by founders is highly valued in early stages.
A few years ago, the New York Times chose to apply an investigative and critical approach to technology reporting, focusing more on scrutiny than on business or consumer interests.
Hyrum’s Law states that with enough users, all behaviours of an API will be relied upon, regardless of the intended contract.
As great as it would be to solve all problems with clearly defined processes and documented knowledge, the reality is that most organisational knowledge tends to be tacit. So, companies should factor this into their ways of working.