Tag: ryan hoover

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What You Can and Cannot Control as a GP

radio, communication, fm

Not too long ago, I was catching up with the amazing Owen Willis, someone I’ve been lucky to see in action during our time at On Deck together, who now runs Opal Ventures. And there was one thing he mentioned that I cannot stop thinking about.

As a fund manager, there are things you can control. And things you cannot.

So often, many a fund manager focus on things they cannot. The market. In many ways, marks. And not enough on things, they can. Chief of which, communication. What. How. When.

Are your LPs hearing about news on you or your portfolio — good and bad — from you or from another source?

What are you seeing in the market? What is your insight into it? Why? After all, LPs pay you for your opinion.

And how frequently do you maintain an open line of communication with your LPs? Do you share everything? Or only the good? Do you miss regular updates because of how busy you get?

To nosedive a level deeper, as a GP, what are your most powerful tools of communication with LPs? Not to lead the witness, but you’ve probably figured it out. LP updates. Many GPs I meet tend to only have one type. At best one and a half.

There’s the update GPs send your existing LPs. But they also understand the value of prospective LPs, so they end up sending the exact same to prospects. Maybe with some numbers redacted (if it includes sensitive information on the portfolio). Most of the time, that’s it. But really, it’s helpful to think about existing and prospects as two different audiences. The former will naturally be disposed to support. The latter is still deciding if they want to support. They have yet to be converted.

As such, instead of one, there should be two types of LP updates. To make it simpler, one is for “customer success.” The other is for “sales and BD.”

The “customer success” update

There’s a lot of content on this front already, so I’ll spare you the extra verbiage here. But if you want a place to start, I’d recommend the below first:

But to provide a brief summary (plus, a snazzle dazzle of the Cup of Zhou perspective), typical LP updates I see have:

  1. The Abstract / TL;DR / What to know if you only had 2 minutes
  2. Performance (TVPI, DPI, IRR, new investments, % deployed, % left, % capital called, and (if so) did you preemptively mark down portcos and why)
  3. Net New Investments — 2-3 lines about each company + what’s promising + why’d you invest + website link + key highlights (you’ll need sign off from your founders for this last one)
  4. Asks — for your portfolio and for your fund
  5. Team updates — if your team changed (i.e. new hires)
  6. General portfolio updates — the good, the bad, the ugly
  7. Capital call schedules / Legal stuff if any
  8. Insights into the market (if any)

In general, you want to tell your LPs if there are any updates before they find out about them themselves. Better to hear from you than from other channels.

Lastly, I like personal flare and highlights as well. But hell, that’s up to each GP’s preference.

The “sales” update

So, there will be some overlap of information with the earlier type of update. With some redactions, particularly the specific numbers on the portfolio side. That said, rather than what goes in it, what might be more helpful is how to think about it.

Sales, like in any other industry, requires you to know your customer.

Some general framing questions:

  1. Are they the solution to your problem or are you the solution to their problem?
    • For instance, are they actively looking to deploy? Why? What motivates them? If not, you might be pushing a rock uphill. If yes, are you actually what they’re looking for, or can you better triage them to a friend who is investing in what they’re looking for. Relationships are long.
  2. Do they see VC as an access class or an asset class?
    • Generally, not always, individuals and family offices see VC as an access class. So they care more about co-investment opportunities, deal flow for them to directly invest, and/or opportunities to learn from you. In other words, these LPs want to see what you’re investing in, who else is validating your investments, and what are you seeing and learning. If you’re a Fund I, you’re probably spending more time with these LPs.
    • Institutions, like foundations, endowments, pensions, and fund of funds, see VC as an asset class. As such, returns and performance matter a lot more. So the best ways to convince them is to let the numbers do the talking AND how close you stick with your initial strategy and if you deviate, why. Promise fulfillment, or in LP lingo, consistency of strategy, matters just as much as returns, if not more, once return profiles measure up to 3-5X across several years. Or when and how quickly DPI hits 1X. If you’re a Fund II+, you’re probably spending more time prospecting these.
  3. Are you looking to institutionalize your fund? To go from a fund to a firm?
    • If so, how do you set yourself up to grow in team? How are you knocking out key risks one by one?
    • And in a loose way, not for an LP update, what happens once you get hit by a bus?
  4. What kind of cadence makes sense for you and is enough to keep you top of mind for these LPs?
    • Including events you’re hosting or when you’re visiting certain geographies are always a nice added bonus.

And lastly, getting feedback is always important. As you might suspect. So that your communication between both your existing and prospective LPs only improves over time.

Photo by ANDY ZHANG on Unsplash

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The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

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The Curious Case of Disappearing TVPIs

disappear, card trick, shuffle, magic

In 2016, I jumped into the VC world, knowing no better than what my forefathers and foremothers taught me. Outside of a handful few, many of the people I looked up to and sought for advice had been in the business for less than a decade. In effect, they started their investing career after the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) in 2008. While they still bore more scar tissue than I did, I learned quickly that the one question to ask founders early on was “What is your last round’s valuation?” or “What valuation are you seeking?” For the latter question, the implicit answer we sought out for was their 12-month revenue. And subsequently, their valuation multiple. In Mark Suster‘s words, we were “praying to the God of Valuation.” But really, their exit multiples matter more than the entry or current multiple.

Going into 2023, we’re seeing median pre-money valuations drop across the board. Of which, late stage deals are taking the largest hit with over 80% drop in valuation at the Series D and over 70% drop at the Series C.

Source: Cooley GO

For fund managers and partners, the question was “What is your IRR or TVPI?” or “What’s your AUM?”. Rather, the answer we should be seeking isn’t some function of their portfolio’s valuations, but the quality of the businesses they invest in.

To be fair, I failed to fully appreciate the latter answer until this year.

The odds aren’t bad, but that doesn’t mean they’re great

Jared Heyman wrote a great piece last year on the probability of success for YC startups. After parsing through the data, he found that after a couple years of survival, a startup is just as likely to go through an exit (i.e. acquisition or go public) as it is to fail (i.e. inactive). Additionally, ~88% of startups reach resolution (exit or inactive) around the 12-year mark.

Source: Jared Heyman

It’s also interesting to note that the average time it takes for a YC company to exit (if they exit) is seven years. In fact, the time horizon has shortened in the past few years from an average timeline of nine years to five. Of course that’s pre-2022, so the time to exit is likely to increase once again to the mean or longer as:

  1. Markets are less liquid. Valuations drop. Rounds are smaller. Buyers are less eager to buy. Founders have less access to liquidity and exit opportunities. As such, the markets will demand more proof from founders of market traction.
  2. Investor sentiment is guarded, echoing Howard Marks. I haven’t seen the newest numbers but at best, I imagine we’ll see more capital go towards existing investments, maintaining overall investment volume. At worst, a decline of capital deployment, outside of ephemerally “hot” industries, like generative AI.
  3. Investors’ key worry is investment losses. Investors up and downstream become more risk averse.
  4. Interest rates are rising to curb inflation, leading to a debt investor’s market rather than an equity investor’s. Founders are likely to turn to expensive debt instruments (and many already have). Higher interest rates also mean greater return expectations from investors.

Jared does note in another piece that “while YC startups may cost 2-3 times as much as their non-YC peers to investors, they’re worth 6-7 times as much in terms of expected investor returns.” It’s great to be an LP in YC, but tough to be choosing YC startups. Of course, at the very end there’s a gentle reminder that VCs (and angels) are defined by the magnitude of their successes rather than the number of their failures (and successes). Just because a portco gets to an exit doesn’t mean it’ll be a fund returner. With shifting markets, this will be as true for YC under Garry’s leadership as for any other fund.

Of course, I don’t mean to pick on YC. They do a tremendous job of picking founders. And it’s true that they have set the golden standard for startup accelerators. It’s just that the above data was easily accessible.

Portfolio consistency

Interestingly enough, Oliver Jung, Airbnb’s former VP International, wrote half a month later that Adinvest’s Fund II made him $200 on every dollar he invested in the fund, largely because of a 1000x Adinvest II made into Adyen.

That’s a phenomenal outcome! To make investors back $200 on every dollar invested is definitely one for the books. The question becomes (and I have no inside scoop on this): How did the rest of the portfolio do? Was Adinvest’s Fund II purely based on luck or is there a consistent model that can be replicated in future funds?

For that question, it begs another. If we took out Adinvest’s investment in Adyen, what is the DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) of the rest of the fund? That will dictate Adinvest’s ability to raise a subsequent fund, at least from the larger, more sophisticated LPs. A great and consistent portfolio may look something a little like this.

Given that the average fund’s returns (with a large enough portfolio i.e. 100 portcos) normalizes to a 3x gross return — venture’s Mendoza line, 3-5x would put you in the ball park of good. High single digits would put you in the great category. And double digits would put you in epic.

And if Adyen really was the sole outlier success, did the GPs have the conviction to double down in subsequent rounds? If so, how did they earn their pro rata?

Sometimes all you need is one investment to push you from a nobody to a somebody, but if you’re intent on building a multi-decade-long career in the space, your founders should see you in the same or better light than those equipped with asymmetric information (i.e. those who read about you in the media).

While many Fund I’s and II’s may not have a reserve ratio, were the GPs and LPs able to continue to invest via SPVs? By doubling down, it’s the difference between a strategy to win and a strategy not to lose. How much of Adinvest’s AUM does their investment in Adyen account for? And being a fund manager means balancing oneself on the tightrope between the two strategies. In doubling down, that investment becomes a larger percent of the capital you manage (AUM). If you lose, you lose much more. If you win, you win a lot more.

Of course, this is true for any fund. I ended up overly picking on the case study of Adinvest to illustrate the point, but I have nothing against the great success Oliver, the other LPs and the team at Adinvest did have. On a broader spectrum, the purpose of having many shots on goal is theoretically so that you will have a few outliers. So your fund can grow based on a consistent strategy.

There are many times when all you have is that one outlier (often still in paper returns, not distributions yet). It happens. I’ve seen it happen. But if that one doesn’t work out, how forthcoming are you with your “disappearing TVPI?” I imagine a lot of investors who are planning to raise in 2023 will come face to face with these questions, having made big bets on hot startups in the last two years. Will you shrug it off? Or will you candidly share the lessons in which you learned?

The above is just something I’ve thought about a lot more as I see more emerging GP fundraising decks, as they boast about their angel portfolio (if they did have one).

In closing

There’s a proverb that goes: A broken clock is still right twice a day. You can be the worst investor out there, but with enough swings at bat, you’ll still be able to hit some outliers.

In the world of investing, you’re guaranteed to be wrong more often than you’re right. But I’ve seen many that do a lot of stuff ‘wrong’ and still have a winning fund. The big question… and the question, sophisticated and institutional LPs are asking is: Is it repeatable?

So, even if you did hit some home runs, is your success repeatable?

One last footnote. In talking with a number of investors who’ve been in the business for more than a decade, I’m starting to realize that selling (i.e. knowing when to sell and how much to sell) is just as important. An art and a science. I’ve written about it before (here and here), but I imagine I’ll revisit the topic again in long form soon. Especially as I see more discourse on the topic and funds close and liquidate in the near future. From great ones like Union Square Ventures to those who need to return some DPI to raise their next fund.

Photo by Edson Junior on Unsplash

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Any views expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone. They are not a representation of values held by On Deck, DECODE, or any other entity I am or have been associated with. They are for informational and entertainment purposes only. None of this is legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Please do your own diligence before investing in startups and consult your own adviser before making any investments.

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Why Should the Investor NPS Score Exist?

I’ve written about product-market fit on numerous occasions including in the context of metrics, pricing, PMF mindsets, just to name a few. And one of the leading ways to measure PMF is still NPS – the net promoter score. The question: On a scale of one to ten, how likely would you recommend this product to a friend?

As investors, while a lagging indicator, it’s a metric we expect founders to have their finger always on the pulse for their customers. Yet how often do investors measure their own NPS? How likely would you, the founder, recommend this fund/firm/partner(s) to your founder friend(s)?

Let’s look for a second from the investor side of the table…

Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate pioneered the saying, “Your fund size is your strategy.” Your fund size determines your check size and what’s the minimum you need to return. For example, if you have a $10M pre-seed fund, you might be writing 20 $250K checks and have a 1:1 reserve ratio (aka 50% of your funds are for follow-on investments, like exercising your pro rata or round extensions). Equally so, to have a great multiple on invested capital (MOIC) of 5x, you need to return $50M. So if you have a 10% ownership target, you’re investing in companies valued around $2.5M. If two of your companies exit at $200M acquisition, you return $20M each, effectively quadrupling your fund. You only need a couple more exits to make that 5x for your LPs. And that’s discounting dilution.

On the flip side, if you have a $100M fund with a $2-3M check size and a 20% ownership target, you’re investing in $10-15M companies. Let’s say your shares dilute down to 10% by the time of a company’s exit. If they exit at unicorn status, aka $1B, you’ve only returned your fund. Nothing more, nothing less. Meaning you’ll have to chase either bigger exits, or more unicorns. But that’s hard to do. Even one of the best in the industry, Sequoia, has around a 5% unicorn rate. Or in other words, of every 20 companies Sequoia invests in, one is a unicorn. And that means they have really good deal flow. Y Combinator and SV Angel, who have a different fund strategy from Sequoia, sitting upstream, have around 1%.

Erik Torenberg of Village Global further elaborated in a tweet:

And, Jason M. Lemkin of SaaStr tweeted:

Why does a VC’s fund strategy matter to you as the founder?

A fund with a heavily diversified portfolio, like an angel’s or accelerator’s or participating investors (as opposed to leads), means they have less time and resources to allocate to each portfolio startup. The greater the portfolio size, the less help on average each startup team will get. That’s not to say you shouldn’t seek funding from funds with large AUMs (assets under management). One example is if you have an extremely passionate champion of your space/product at these large funds, I’d go with it.

I wrote late last year about founder-investor fit. And in it, I talk about Harry Hurst‘s check-size-to-helpfulness ratio (CS:H). In this ratio, you’re trying to maximize for helpfulness. Ideally, if the fund writes you a $1M check, they’re adding in $10M+ in additive value. And based on a fund’s strategy (i.e. lead investors vs not, $250K or $5M checks, scout programs or solo capitalist + advisory networks, etc.), it’ll determine how helpful they can be to you at the stage you need them.

If you were to plan out your next 18-24 months, take your top three priorities. And specifically, find investors that can help you address those. For example, if you’re looking for intros to potential companies in your sales pipeline and all a VC has to do is send a warm intro to their network/portfolio for you, bigger funds might be more useful. On the other hand, if you’re struggling to find a revenue model for your business, and you need more help than one-offs and quarterly board meetings, I’d look to work with an investor with a smaller portfolio or a solo capitalist. If you’re creating a brand new market, find someone with deep operating experience and domain expertise (even if it’s in an adjacent market), rather than a generalist fund.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all and there are exceptions, here are two ways I think about helpfulness, in other words, value adds:

  1. The uncommon – Differentiators
  2. The common – What everybody else is doing

The uncommon

Of course, this might be the more obvious of the pair. But you’d be surprised at how many founders overlook this when they’re actually fundraising. You want to work with investors that have key differentiators that you need at that stage of your company. By nature of being uncommon, there are million out there. But here are a few examples I’ve seen over the years:

  • Ability to build communities having built large followings
  • Content creation + following (i.e. blog, podcast, Clubhouse, etc.)
  • Getting in’s to top executives at Fortune 500 companies
  • Closing government contracts
  • Access/domain expertise on international markets
  • In-house production teams
  • They know how to hustle (i.e. Didn’t have a traditional path to VC, yet have some of the biggest and best LPs out there in their fund)
  • Ability to get you on the front page of NY Times, WSJ, or TechCrunch
  • Strong network of top executives looking for new opportunities (i.e. EIRs, XIRs)
  • Influencer network
  • Category leaders/definers (i.e. Li Jin on the passion economy, Ryan Hoover on communities)
  • Having all accelerator portfolio founder live under the same roof for the duration of the program (i.e. Wefunder’s XX Fund pre-pandemic)
  • Surprisingly, not as common as I thought, VCs that pick up your call “after hours”

The common

Packy McCormick, who writes this amazing blog called Not Boring, wrote in one of his pieces, “Here’s the hard thing about easy things: if everyone can do something, there’s no advantage to doing it, but you still have to do it anyway just to keep up.” Although Packy said it in context to founders, I believe the same is true for VCs. Which is probably why we’ve seen this proliferation of VCs claiming to be “founder-friendly” or “founder-first” in the past half decade. While it used to be a differentiator, it no longer is. Other things include:

  • Money, maybe follow-on investments
  • Access to the VC’s network (i.e. potential customers, advisors, etc.)
  • Access to the partner(s) experience
  • Intros to downstream investors

That said, if an investor is trying to cover all their bases, that is a strategy not to lose rather than a strategy to win, to quote the conversation I had with angel investor Alex Sok recently. As long as it doesn’t come at the expense of their key differentiator. At the same time, it’s important to understand that most VCs will not allocate the same time and energy to every founder in their portfolio. If they are, well, it might be worth reconsidering working with them. It’s great if you’re not a rock-star unicorn. Means you still get the attention and help that you might want. But if you are off to the races and looking to scale and build fast, you won’t get any more help and attention that you’re ‘prescribed’. If you’re winning, you probably want your investor to double down on you.

Even if you’re not, the best investors will still be around to be as helpful as they can, just in more limited spans of time.

Finding investor NPS

You can find CS:H, or investor NPS, out in a couple of ways:

  • The investors are already adding value to you and your company before investing. Uncommon, but it really gives you a good idea on their value.
  • You find out by asking portfolio founders during your diligence.
  • Your founder friends are highly recommending said investor to you.

Then there’s probably the best form of validation. I’ve shared this before, but I still think it’s one of the best indicators of investor NPS. Blake Robbins once quoted Brett deMarrais of Ludlow Ventures, “There is no greater compliment, as a VC, than when a founder you passed on — still sends you deal-flow and introductions.”

In closing

“How likely would you, the founder, recommend this fund/firm/partner(s) to your founder friend(s)?” is a great question to consider when fundraising. But I want to take it a step further. NPS is usually measured on a one to ten scale. But the numbering mechanic is rather nebulous. For instance, an 8/10 on my scale may not equal an 8/10 on your scale. So your net promoter score is more so a guesstimate of the true score. While any surveying question is more or less a guesstimate, I believe this question is more actionable than the above:

If you were to start a new company tomorrow, would you still want this investor on your cap table?

With three options:

  • No
  • Yes
  • It’s a no-brainer.

And if you get two or more “no-brainers”, particularly from (ex-)portfolio startups that fizzled off into obscurity, I’d be pretty excited to work with that investor.

Photo by Laurice Manaligod on Unsplash

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A Strategy to Win Versus A Strategy Not to Lose w/ Alex Sok

For a number of friends and founders I’ve chatted this with, I’ve been a big fan of the concept of “winning versus not losing”. Ever since I heard back in 2018. In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate said, “This is probably the hardest piece – knowing the difference between a winning strategy versus a strategy not to lose. […] Not losing often involves a lot of hedging. And when you feel that urge to hedge, you need to focus. You need to be offensive.”

There are a few great examples of what differentiates winning and not losing from both Tim and Ann in that interview. For instance, a lack of focus by going after two different market segments is a strategy not to lose. “The reason why that’s really hedging is you have two completely different ways of selling to those organizations and you’re afraid to pick one because maybe you have some revenue in both.”

My college friend recently connected me with entrepreneur, designer, angel investor, Alex Sok. Both of us found unlikely common ground in using sports analogies to relate to building a company. Me, swimming (e.g. here and here). Alex, football. Specifically, American football. Having been a quarterback for his school’s football team back in the day, he said something quite fascinating, “You can’t win in the first quarter, but you can lose in the first quarter.” And you know me, I had to double click on that.

I was previously under the assumption that you only needed a strategy to win, but not to lose. But as all generalizations that start with the word “only”, I was wrong. And Alex contextualized it for me – that sometimes you do need to think about how not to “lose”.

Winning versus not losing

“You can’t win in the first quarter, but you can lose in the first quarter.”

Throwing the ball deep for your running back to make the touchdown is a strategy to win. On the flip side, if you don’t convert on the third down, you’re going to lose. You may not win, but if you don’t, you could very much lose. Not all mistakes carry the same gravitas. Some mistakes can be detrimental; most mistakes aren’t. Just because you’re making sure that you convert on the third down does not mean you can’t still swing for the fences.

For founders, losing in the first quarter is akin to:

  • Burning through your seed funding in six months;
  • Hiring four professional executives before you get to product-market fit;
  • Not talking to your customers;
  • There is no one in the room who can tackle the biggest risk of the business (i.e. no engineer when you’re building an AI solution, or no one who can do sales when you’re an enterprise tech company)

You’re still aiming high, but that doesn’t mean you should burden yourself with an astronomical burn rate.

“Game plans will have to vary depending on your market or product. Key fundamental traits that increase the probability of failure will always be present. It’s important to identify which ones matter most in relation to the game plan,” says Alex. “A tough defense or go-to-market means being more focused on identifying which channels to pursue and then doubling down if it works out.”

On the flip side, “an aggressive defense or burgeoning industry might mean taking more chances but setting up plays wisely to take advantage of their aggressive, risk-taking nature. This will force the defense to settle down and play you more honestly. In startup terms, that might mean steady progress and growth with a few deep shots to achieve escape velocity from your competitors.”

Not to get forget about winning

You’ve probably heard of the saying, “If you want your company to truly scale, you have to do things that don’t scale.” Especially in the zero to one phase. From idea to product-market fit. Many of us in venture break down the early life cycle of a company by zero-to-one and one-to-infinity. The first “half” is doing things that don’t scale. Figuring out what frustrations your customers are going through. Getting that pedometer up on the street yourself. Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, “Acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions.”

Here are a few examples:

In the early days of Airbnb, Brian, Joe, and Nathan used to visit early Airbnb hosts with a rented DSLR to photograph their houses.

For Stripe, the founders manually onboarded every merchant to deliver “instant” merchant accounts. Of course, the Collison brothers took it a step further to mint the term “Collison installation”. Usually when founders ask early leads “Will you try our beta?”, if people say yes, then they say, “Great, we’ll send you a link.” Rather, Patrick and John said, “Right then, give me your laptop” and set it up for them right then and there.

At Doordash, they found restaurant menu PDFs online, created landing pages, put their personal number out there for people to call, and personally executed deliveries within the day.

To get his first 2000 users, Ryan at Product Hunt wrote handcrafted emails to early users and reporters to grow what started off as an email list.

Similarly, in football, teams often spend the first half of the game feeling out their opponents. Their strengths, their weaknesses. And the back half, doubling down on where your opponents fall short on. While not your opponents, founders should be spending the first half feeling out their market. Be scrappy. Nothing that’ll make you lose in the first quarter, but make mistakes. Give your team and yourself a 10-20% error rate. One of your greatest superpowers as a small team is your ability to move fast. Use it to your advantage.

Paul Graham once wrote, “Tim Cook doesn’t send you a hand-written note after you buy a laptop. He can’t. But you can. That’s one advantage of being small: you can provide a level of service no big company can.”

In closing

Alex said, “In order to be a dominant offense, you have to force the defense to cover every inch of the field.” If you only throw long, then your opponents will only need to cover long. If you only throw to the left, they only have to cover left. But if you have a diversified strategy, your opponents will have to cover every inch of the field. And to win, all you need is for your opponents to hesitate for half a second. And with a laser-focused strategy, that’s all you need to break through against your incumbents. Your incumbents often have bigger teams, can attract more talent, have deeper pockets, and the list goes on.

As a small team, you’re on offense. You can’t cover every inch of the field, and neither do you need to. You just need to be a single running back who makes it past a wall of linebackers. To do that, you need focus. As Tim Ferriss recently said on the Starting Greatness podcast, “the biggest risk to your startup is your distraction.” And it’s not just you and your team, but also the investors you bring on. Sammy Abdullah of Blossom Street Ventures wrote that the question you need to be asking yourself about your investors is: “Are you going to distract me from running the business and will you be candid with me when I have a problem?”

Focus. If you’re focusing on everything, you’re focusing on nothing. You have no room to hesitate, but it’s exactly what you want your competitors to do. That half a second on the field is about two years in the venture world. Or until you can find your product-market fit. Until you reach scale. Until you reach the “one” in zero-to-one. ‘Cause once you’re there, you just need to put your head down and run. And it’s the beginning of something defensible. Of something you can win with.

If you’re curious about taking a deeper dive on product-market fit, I recommend checking out some of my other essays:

Photo by Joe Calomeni from Pexels

Thank you Alex for helping me with early drafts of this essay!

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