Aayush Kumar

Hustle = f(Code, Coffee, Customers) | Building @OpsLyft | Previously @indix | Engineer By Heart :)

[tobi lutke @tobi]

https://t.co/6i6h3sKi3x

[Bhavin Turakhia @bhavintu]

Premature Founder Boredom is a recipe for failure amongst Startups. The goal of a business is to become boring, and until the business becomes boring a Founder cannot afford to get bored.

A non-exhaustive list of Deliverables for a business to qualify as Boring - (1) Sustainable Profitability (2) Playbooks for every Process across every Function (3) Structured and continuously evolving training processes for industry, products and functions (4) Exploration of multiple traction channels (5) Sizeable and growing market share (6) Identification and realtime measurement of critical KPIs and relevant input metrics (7) Right Leadership (8) Effective Governance for keeping track of the critical KPIs

Founders fall in love with chaos, ambiguity and uncertainty (because variable rewards release dopamine) and can begin to detach themselves from their core business prematurely before it becomes Boring, resulting in distraction, lack of focus, inefficient use of capital, and inefficient use of the best people

Learn to relish the journey to becoming Boring

[Jen Abel @jjen_abel]

Early-stage startup sales is high-touch sales.

[Jen Abel @jjen_abel]

your customers want to understand if you understand them

where you dig, what you question, how you position yourself in accordance to their risk exposure -- it's all being evaluated and assessed, esp. up-market

no surprise, there is a lot of risk in working with an early-stage company, and the way you derisk it is by becoming an expert on a very specific and contained problem

you don't have the resources to own the full, large-scale problem -- in fact, many organizations won't want to open it all up to you until you prove yourself over a period of time -- their job is to protect the golden goose

- if you go in trying to remove/rip the incumbent, they'll balk
- if you go in speaking jargon and startup lingo, they'll balk
- if you stay too high-level on the problem, they'll balk
- if you go in with a deal size that's not in their known strike zone (too big or too small), they'll balk
- if you try to skip steps in their buying process, they'll balk

it's such a balance, it's so, so hard -- and, they want to know you understand them and their problem better than they do, that's what they're buying access to

in short: starting contained is critical when you're small

[Orange Book 🍊📖 @orangebook]

You can avoid a lot of drama by simply avoiding people who have no goal in life: those with too much free time have a tendency to create problems out of nowhere.

[Vaibhav Domkundwar @vaibhavbetter]

your MIS is your best mirror as a founder. embrace it. it’s how everyone else sees your business as, too. and it never lies. mixpanel cohorts, daus, maus, roas, etc dont mean much in isolation.

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

In AI at least, the real 30 under 30 imo you have never heard of. They are 5 layers down the org chart from the CEO. They are usually not on Twitter, they have an unmaintained LinkedIn, they don’t go on podcasts, and they maybe published at one point but don’t do so anymore. They are today’s Einsteins and directly invent and build miracles. I wish they weren’t hidden inside big tech and startups in return for very large paychecks but here we are.

[Vaibhav Domkundwar @vaibhavbetter]

founder grit is the only sustainable leverage at a startup.

[Aayush Kumar @_iameveryware]

The trick is to take your work more seriously than yourself, all the time!

[Orange Book 🍊📖 @orangebook]

The goal isn't happiness. The goals are:

- living in a place where you feel safe

- supportive friends with whom you can regularly meet up with, share perspectives, enjoy deep conversations

- a family you can fully be yourself around, with whom you can laugh about the simplest things in life

- enough stability to maintain a healthy routine, compound your learning, maintain the clarity of your mind

- time to read, write, truly connect with your thoughts in order to avoid groupthink

- enough financial security to invest longer term, in yourself, in your vision of a better society

- opportunities to connect with ambitious, independent-minded people, and be ready to build together a story you will be proud of telling the next generations

- enough tranquility to reconnect with your creative self, that has been suffocating because of your busy lifestyle

- younger people to remind you how genuine and bold you used to be

- older people to remind you how you have less time than you think

- being kind with people who struggle with problems you never had

- being grateful every day for the food you didn’t grow, the home you didn’t build, the clothes you didn’t tailor, the sacrifices your parents made for you, the hard work of all the people without whom society wouldn’t function, the peace you didn’t fight for

[Vijay Shekhar Sharma @vijayshekhar]

Some people are really privileged to call, nearly non-issues as their life problems.

[Sam Altman @sama]

How To Be Successful
(At Your Career, Twitter Edition)

[Kunal Shah @kunalb11]

Those who are deeply invested in being interesting often lose the need to be skilled.

[Aayush Kumar @_iameveryware]

@godardabel @awscloud @G2dotcom Hey Godard, I'm at re:invent and would love to meet if you have some time!

[Aayush Kumar @_iameveryware]

@caro_milanesi @awscloud @amazon Carolina- Twitter is not letting me DM you due to Twitter premium issue, I've dropped you a connection request on LinkedIn if it works!

[Aayush Kumar @_iameveryware]

@caro_milanesi @awscloud @amazon Sure let me do that

[Kunal Shah @kunalb11]

Most successful parents take away one gift from their kids which made them successful in first place : struggle

[Jen Abel @jjen_abel]

Startups:

Customer problems that are obvious (i.e., truisms) are likely still unsolved for a reason.

The largest opportunities are in problems where symptoms are felt but market doesn’t fully understand the problem yet.

[Jen Abel @jjen_abel]

Startup Founders: I can't stress this enough.

Be very, very careful who you learn from.

Many folks are marketing on Twitter as a ruse for reps/experience.

They share obvious insights (typically generated via ChatGTP) and when you dig into their experience they have none OR worst, 1-2 years of blind confidence.

The best litmus test is folks that share non-obvious insights and stories --- this is only earned through making many, many mistakes and understanding something at a far deeper level.