4 things I learned from an early stage founder this week

A founder shocked me this week. 

An investor asked me to meet with this founder, and I was happy to help. The context was this founder had started a business, the investor was interested in putting some cash in but first, the founder could use some advice from someone who had raised capital.

The investor followed up with a link to his site. 

It was not pretty. 

I didn’t judge it too much—we all start somewhere. But I figured the business was really early. 

I showed up to the meeting to help. We quickly got into a fundraising conversation, and it’s tough to give advice when you don’t know anything about the business. I asked how much revenue they were doing, and was shocked to hear it was a seven figure business in year two. 

This guy was killing it.

The longer we talked, it was clear he’s crushing it for a few reasons:

Incremental improvements

His team is constantly experimenting. They’re watching margins across the board, and are getting creative with trying new ways to increase margin and overall volume. They’re aligning their product to new categories and new audiences, betting on the winners of these tests, and scrapping what didn’t work or failed to make significant improvement.

Lean team

The team started with a white labeled product so they didn’t have to hire any in-house development. They outsource a few roles, and are running the whole business with just three full time employees. 

True Minimum Viable Product

While they are reaching the limitations of this white label product, that path allowed them to get rolling with minimal investment. They learned exactly what they need before investing hundreds of thousands into a tech platform. Now they understand how to scale, and know what they need.  

Zero vanity

Maybe the most impressive thing about this founder was he’s running a seven figure business, and had a deep understanding of what worked and what didn’t. I told him the platform looked rough, and admitted I was surprised to hear how much revenue they’re doing. He said he knew it looked rough, and to date, they just had been focused on growing the business. In a world of glossy tech brands, it was actually refreshing to hear someone say “yeah, but ugly has worked.”

I’ve kept this company’s identity purposefully vague. I’ll test the founder—he said he’d sign up for my email list. If he did, and wants me to share his company with my newsletter next week, I’d be happy to. I’d love to brag on you, specifically.

As for the rest of you, use this as a reminder to keep it simple this coming week, and to run with what works. Forget the rest. 

I realize this is a lot shorter than my normal posts, but I don’t intend to be wrong. I just write until it’s done. And just as I learned a lot from this sharp founder in 30 minutes, I hope you’ve been inspired by a thing or two here.

Content idea for this week

Have you built anything from the ground up? Did any of these reasons listed here resonate with you? Share your story of how starting lean, making incremental improvements, building MVPs or having no ego worked for you. 

Who I’m listening to: Maggie Rogers

What I’m reading: “Zero to Sold” by Arvid Kahl

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