The First Customer Was Never About the Sale
Founders have always known that getting the first customer requires uncomfortable, unscalable manual work. AI now lets you skip that work, and many founders are. The problem is that the discomfort was never the obstacle; it was the education.
The Companies That Change Industries Don’t Beat the Leader at Their Own Game
Cerebras didn’t try to out-Nvidia Nvidia. They built something nobody else would touch, held the position for seven years with no traction, and were ready when the market finally caught up. The IPO wasn’t a sudden arrival. It was the visible end of a very long bet.
The Product Gets You to the Table. Distribution Decides Everything Else.
Allison Ellsworth built a $1.95B exit not by having the best product, but by understanding that every great product has a ceiling — and deliberately finding the partners who could break it.
15 May 2026
The Only Thing That Separates Legends From Quitters
Most people stop one attempt too early. Here is what four legendary failures say about that.
Internships after a $500 million exit?
Julia Hartz sold Eventbrite for $500 million and is now eyeing internships. When you have nothing left to prove, curiosity is the only honest answer to what comes next.
The Hardest Market to Sell Into — And Why That’s the Point
Finland has world-class health data and a system that won’t let private companies sell into it. The smart play: use the data to build, validate locally, sell globally.
Start With Why — the 18 minutes that changed how we talk about leadership
In September 2009, a marketing consultant stood on a small TEDx stage in Puget Sound and drew three circles on a whiteboard. Thirteen million views later, the talk endures — not because Simon Sinek said something new, but because of what he did with the eighteen minutes themselves.
Steve Blank: How to Build a Great Company, Step by Step | 8.14.12
Steve Blank explains that startups are not smaller versions of large companies but are temporary organizations designed to “search” for a repeatable business model rather than execute a pre-determined plan. He emphasizes the “Customer Development” methodology, urging founders to “get out of the building” to transform their initial faith-based hypotheses into facts through direct interaction and listening to potential customers.