David Aviles

looking for a technical cofounder and advising startups. formerly @mintlify @amplitudeHQ, @Optimizely, @UCBerkeley alum

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

I journal for 5 minutes every morning. All just sort of free form, brain dumping.

Helps me clear my head to start the day and reduce my anxiety from looking at all of my notifications first thing in the morning as I lie in bed (working on this too).

None of these mattered before and now it's all I can think about to stay sane.

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

The founders I respect aren't the most decisive.
They're the most diagnostic.
Read fast. Gather real data. Swing big.
A tweak doesn't give you signal. A swing does.
When they're wrong, they know. Because the swing was big enough to give feedback.

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

You can't fake industry knowledge.
Best advice for ramping in a new space: walk in and say "I'm new here. Tell me what everyone outside this space gets wrong."
Every expert I've asked has given me their time.
Vulnerability and genuine curiosity are the cheat codes.

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

Nick Huber makes a point about how the leading cause of men's death is heart disease and by like 10x. I'm not saying your should be like Bryan Johnson, but you should ask your physician what your options are for additional heart testing. Just did mine and all good.

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

asking claude to come up with a prompt for itself is meta lazy

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

I heard about "rules" on a podcast recently and so I stopped saying "I should probably eat better."

Instead, I create rules that I live by that I say to myself to concrete them:
- I always eat as healthy and balanced as possible
- I do a workout/activity/move for at least 20 minutes everyday

"Should" is a decision every time and we default to the easy thing (the bad decision). Rules are the rules. And yes, sometimes they are broken, but far, far less than "should".

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

Books I've read/am reading/want to read:
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel
- Sweaty Startup by Nick Huber

Grit makes me want to grind. Zero to One is older but gotta get it in. Sweaty Startup is anti silicon valley which is great perspective.

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

Daily skills that actually matter for a sales-focused cofounder:
- Asking one more question to find real pain
- Translating that super cool tech the cracked engineer built into customer value speak
- Translating customer feedback into product actionables

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

https://t.co/3V4GyCV9xo

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

I haven’t slept through the night since deciding to start a company. Is this normal 🥴

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

The thing nobody tells you about being the revenue person at a startup:
when the number is good, it's a team effort.
when the number is bad, it's your fault.

but this is how it goes and can be a love/hate role.

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

A demo that closes and a demo that doesn't are 80% the same demo.

The difference in getting that next call vs not is if you learn their real pain points and get them to envision your product solving said pain points. Been a while since I've seen a great demo tbh

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

https://t.co/JraRf8sSES

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

3 weeks since I announced I was starting a company.
38 calls. 3 ICP interviews. Pitches to be a tech cofounder. Recruiting offers to BE one. Founder friends. Consulting leads. A golf outing.
The support has been wild. Time to actually build 😅

I put together a cofounder memo too. Sharing in the thread

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

i genuinely thought i deserved less equity, less credit, because i wasn't coding. there's shitty tech with massive user bases. great software with no distribution dies and nobody notices.
code ships the product. everything else determines if it matters. from my recent chats, technical folks are realizing this more and more too.

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

Last 7 days data ^^^

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

My LinkedIn connect message is almost too generic. That's why it works.
136 invites → 43 accepted (31.6%) 23 follow-ups → 6 real conversations
Specific enough to feel relevant. Highly targeted list. 🧵

[David Aviles @avilesdm]

A few days after they accept, the follow-up. Still no ask:
"Let me know if I can ever help — connections, hiring, referrals."
Then I mention what I've actually scaled (Optimizely, Amplitude, Mintlify, $0→$80M ARR). Door's open if they want it.