Rob Hunter

🇺🇸🇨🇦 Entrepreneur/Father/Husband, YC W15. Bankrupt @ 29, 8-figure exit @ 36. Award-winning biz prof. Running a marathon in all 50 states

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

I've got a 2-bedroom townhouse in downtown Toronto (King & Strachan) available for sale

Great spot, lived in it myself with family for 3 years

Good opportunity to save some $$$ without agents involved if you're looking

DM me for more info

[Vikram Pai @vikpai]

Running a business is just realizing how dumb you were 6 months ago every 6 months

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

@jonathanmaze @RealJacobPerry Not for long

[Sam Stoffel @sam_stoffel]

Founder of lululemon on what he'd tell every 25 year old:

"I'd tell them that every person in the world is an individual with a different genetic makeup and a different upbringing and the way that you're thinking is so radically different than every other person in the world and incomparable that if you have an idea and you want to move forward with it, don't worry so much about the competition because nobody will be able to replicate you and the way you think about it."

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

@sweatystartup @Austen Have you taken any stock positions based on this hypothesis or is it just X content? Genuine question.

[John Fadule @fadule_]

Life is amazing:

-gyms exist
-Coke Zero exists
-hot girls outnumber even moderately put-together dudes 2000 to 1
-you and your wife can drink 4 bottles of wine then smash all night without a condom
-you and your friends can hit the gym then smoke a joint at a John Mayer concert
-every food item in the world has been hunted and gathered for you (grocery stores)
-you could be working 16 hour days in a coal mine in a third world country
-you’re spinning on a sphere in an infinite universe and the fact you’re alive is a 1 in 500 trillion miracle

You’re so lucky it’s absurd and you have nothing to lose :)

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

@LukewSavage @grok How many wealthy Canadians leave the country permanently each year? How many more would leave if there was a wealth tax?

[Kate Harrison @KatlynHarrison]

Blaming the previous government for weak economic growth would be more compelling if Mr. Carney wasn't also the Chair of the Liberals' Task Force on Economic Growth under the previous government. #cdnpoli

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

@mwseibel Twitter is great at firing up people who already agree with you

Much less great at convincing people who don’t already agree with you

If the former helps solve the problem - rare but possible - Twitter can be both cathartic and useful

[Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 @Tablesalt13]

Literally

EVERY

Chart.

[immad @immad]

You can work 5 days a week and succeed as a startup.

Mercury has done that from day 0 and we are valued @ $5.2bn 7 years after launch.

I have been an entrepreneur for 20 years and raised 3 kids while doing it.

The point of success is to have a great life not just a startup 😊

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

@grok @RobPalumbo Be more granular in C-F

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

@grok @RobPalumbo Be more granular, region by region

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

"hey man what do you do?"

"im building the future"

"thats awesome. but what do you actually do"

"i sleep 3-4 hours a night and grind all day with the team"

"that seems... unhealthy and unproductive. what are you guys working on"

"its not WORK. its a LIFE GOAL. if i dont put in 140 hours a week i LOSE! id rather die young and rich than live long and poor"

"dude thats grueling"

"thats the MISSION. everyone at the company agrees. they have the logo tattooed on their ass. if theyre not willing to die for this they're OUT"

"holy shit. what are you building, i bet its some future tech that changes history"

"an insurance company"

"..."

"it has AI in it"

"got it"

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

@CetiAlphaFumf @EricDLombardi If you renounce

Not if you just live abroad

Canada hits you on the way out if you retain citizenship

Can’t really have both

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

The fallacy of this is that more creates more. More hours, more hiring, more something.

And it is true in a sense. If you put in more work, more work will happen. But I think for most startups, the leverage is really in how differently you approach the problem, how well you cultivate your team, and the strategy.

Any large company can outspend you on hours. They have thousands or tens of thousands more people, spending more hours. If hours worked were the metric, every large company and government organization would always win and do the best work. More hours, better output.

This thinking is often representative of younger founders, where the startup becomes their identity and life. They have a hard time doing anything else, and cannot understand that your work is not the person that is you. But activities outside of work can grow you as a person too and make you do better work.

I’ve never worked this way. As a designer, I always saw the need to take a step back, to take a break. At times, I might work 12 hours or 16 hours, or whatever amount was needed, but it wasn’t the norm. You just can't grind design, you need inspiration. But taking that step away from the work, would give me more perspective, inspiration and I could approach the problem differently or I could just see the solution.

Grinding is never good for any creative problem, and startups or creating new products are often mostly about creative problem solving. Grinding works ok for email jobs, or where you just executing on very clear playbook.

With Linear, we’ve never worked this way. We work reasonable hours, 5 days a week. All of us founders have families. Many of our employees have families. I personally stop every evening, spend time with the family, cook dinner for the family, eat dinner together, and focus on things outside of work. Sometimes I work in the late evenings or weekends, but to me the pride is that I don’t need to. Company should be succesful without it.

My goal is to build a company that is sustainable in the long term, and doesn’t require heroics or personal sacrifices every single day.

There are times when our team is heroic. Launches, incidents, some other work that just needs to be done. They will work late into the night because they know it is the right thing. But we don’t require that every day or every week, and the more this happens, the more I think it is a failure of our company and leadership. The team and the leaders should always keep a reserve to use when something is needed.

Our thinking was also that quality, which we value, doesn’t emerge from working more or stressing people more. It emerges when you create the conditions for it to emerge. Often it is the appreciation, space, time, and how the person feels. A person who is rested will do better work.

I wouldn’t attribute much of our success to working a lot. The success came from having clear thinking, ideas, and focus to do the right things.

I sometimes wish we could move the culture more toward a Zen master.

Real mastery is not exerting the most effort. It is achieving the outcome with the least necessary effort.

[Austen Allred @Austen]

Chicken thighs are so much better than chicken breast

[Chris Selley @cselley]

I wouldn't trust either as far as I could throw them.

[Rob Hunter @robfoot]

YOU MEAN THE PREDICTION MODELS WERE WRONG?!

Have never seen that before!

[Lucy Hargreaves @lucyhargreaves4]

every forecast had this quarter pegged as the rebound. ottawa projected +1.4%. rbc and td both said +1.7%. q4 was the dip, q1 was supposed to be the recovery.
we got roughly zero growth

yes, this is a technical recession but
the longer pattern is what really matters and what concerns me most

real gdp per person grew 0.6% in all of 2025. it fell in 2024. it fell in 2023.

we haven’t become richer per person in years, and it’s crazy to me that we keep acting surprised when our growth is stalled

we have fundamental productivity and investment problems that won’t fix themselves

I will sound like I’m beating a dead horse here, but worth repeating again… we know what we need to do to fix this:

1. make capital gains and corporate tax rates at least as good with the US, if not materially better. across all industries.

2. open up protected markets to competition (telecoms, finance, dairy, transportation etc)

3. rapidly reduce bureaucratic red tape and slow process across the board, not just for favoured projects or sectors

and finally, let’s all remind ourselves that we can just do things. every Canadian can be part of fixing this. we can collectively hustle - aim high

Canada can be the richest country in the world, if we choose to be