Samir

explaining things with memes. 🇺🇸🇵🇰

[Paul Mit @pmitu]

Being a startup Founder is really easy:

You just need to know everything about users. And product. And marketing. And sales. And finance. And analytics. And design. And tech. And AI. And legal. And pricing. And positioning. And fundraising. And distribution. And retention.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

We are on the nth @nearbiz market experiment.

I bet the rest of the fun seekers will leave by the time we are ready to rocket 🚀.

Most valuable early employees are the grinders. Who refine and optimize until it’s enough.

[Alfred Lin @Alfred_Lin]

@matanSF Underrated. Early employees at all now legendary companies would probably say the same about when they started, and left when the fun slowed.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

🎯

[Navalism @NavalismHQ]

"Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true."

@naval

[Navalism @NavalismHQ]

Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

@naval

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

🎯
Looking for Elite performers
1. GTM & Sales
2. Scale Infrastructure

No amiability to nonsense tolerated. We expect you to know your stuff and tell us what to do.

@nearbiz

[Adam Shuaib @adamshuaib]

Elite performers are often terrible employees. Many clashed with previous managers, ignored instructions and quickly realised they were smarter than their boss.

In the wrong environment these people are marginalised or ignored. It’s also why previous employer references don’t always show their true ability.

This kind of behaviour doesn’t tend to show up well on a CV. It looks like job-hopping or not being a team player. But in practice it signals someone who is perfectly suited to the unstructured, uncertain nature of trying to solve incredibly hard problems.

Our data on 15,000 companies showed that people who scored highly on emotional stability (not agreeableness or likability) were far more likely to be successful.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

🎯 even better is to fund it with cash flow from an existing, related business.

[Adam Robinson @RetentionAdam]

Every time I feel bad about my business - which is often - I get dinner with a VC backed Founder in the $20-30m ARR range who has raised over $50m. I share my complaints, then they share theirs👇

- They are unprofitable
- They’re either stuck or not growing fast enough for their investors
- Their investors send them all the Clay and AI financing news weekly
- They have 5x the team size I do (and execs)
- They are on planes at least 1x/week (I hardly travel)
- They are being forced to add product complexity
- They face intense new-entrant competition despite superior product
- They are under an incredible amount of stress and don’t see a way out

After they are done… it always kicks off the same dialogue:

CEO: “But you’re making money, right?”

Me: “Yea, we will probably do $12-14m profit this year."

CEO: “That sounds like the absolute dream.”

To which I always get reminded that... Yes, it actually is!

But when you’re in the middle of it all, it’s so easy to lose sight of.

Startups are hard.

Some things get easier, but in my 12 years of experience, it almost always feels like shit.

But if you can last long enough as a bootstrapper:

1. You will end up being enormously profitable (mini exits every year)
2. You will have total freedom to design the life you want for yourself

Raising money is exciting and validating, but most of the time you end up stuck with no way out.

The reality?

$10m ARR is the FU Money of SaaS.

In 2026, it takes fewer FTE’s than ever before.

At RB2B we’re about to cross $9.6m ARR growing with a team of 3.

99% of VC backed founders would kill for that business.

If you can bootstrap, bootstrap.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

That’s the hallmark of people who forget where they come from. They don’t invest in friends. They leave aging parents. They fire long term employees.

My mentors taught me to avoid selling them product on credit

We love LONG relationships that THRIVE together @nearbiz

[Navalism @NavalismHQ]

We feel guilt when we no longer want to associate with old friends and colleagues who haven’t changed. The price, and marker, of growth.

@naval

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

❤️🎯

[Naval @naval]

To love is to gain joy from another’s well-being.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

Peace!

- Mamdani fan

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

Mawlid al-Nabi Mubarak to Muslims in New York City and around the world.

Today, we honor the life and enduring legacy of Prophet Muhammad (May Peace Be Upon Him), whose teachings of compassion, generosity, justice, faith, and service have inspired communities for more than 1,400 years.

Here in New York City, his example reminds us that caring for one another, embracing our diversity, and serving our communities, makes us stronger as we work to build a better New York City for everyone.

Wishing joy, peace, and blessings upon all who celebrate.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

I want to partner

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

One day, Optimus + Grok will provide incredible medical care to all the people of Earth

[Paul Graham @paulg]

17 yo asked what makes a good founder. I said being good at building stuff and being sufficiently fierce. That's about it.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

🎯

the intersection is tiny and easy to miss.

[Alfred Lin @Alfred_Lin]

When people ask for career advice, I tell them to find the intersection of three things:

1. What are you uniquely good at?
2. What gives you energy and purpose?
3. What will drive your economic engine?

Most people optimize for the opportunity. The best careers come from optimizing for the intersection.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

unmistakably the way of life

[Marc Randolph @marcrandolph]

I’m an optimist. I always believed things would succeed. 

Even when everyone else said my ideas were ridiculous. 

Even when we were almost out of money. 

Even when the metrics were all upside down. 

I always have confidence that I'll figure something out. 

That things are going to work out.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

An open marketplace for distributing service software is very much needed!!

Hyper scaler tolls are exorbitantly high. Just MSFT took $100B off the top.

[Beth Kindig @Beth_Kindig]

Microsoft $MSFT stated that Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, while Azure growth accelerated to 43% YoY in FQ4, up from 40% in FQ3.

$GOOG $AMZN

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

Compete with operators under 40?

[Alfred Lin @Alfred_Lin]

@paulg Learning never stops. You learn differently after 40 than you did at 25, but you're still learning. The compounding after 40 comes from knowing which kinds of learning matter and which are noise.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

Looking for GTM Leadership

https://t.co/NrWtT1GrAg

[Paul Graham @paulg]

When starting a marketplace, focus on getting more of whichever side is rarest, which is almost always buyers rather than sellers. (If it's sellers, you've discovered a gold mine.)

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

@nearbiz will switch over to an Open source Anthropic or ChatGPT if they were available.

We currently build our IP only on free open source models.

Building IP on top of paid models is like making upgrades to rented property which investors do not like.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

The most important company in AI is an American open source company.

No federal permission slip required.

[Samir @samirshaikh_]

@nearbiz 💪

Start with property manager work
Then medical work
Then builder
Then…

[Ruben @rdominguezibar]

Sequoia's thesis: the next $1T company sells work🏗️, not software

Sell a copilot and you compete with every model release. Sell the outcome, books closed, contracts reviewed, claims handled, and every AI improvement widens your margin instead of threatening your product.

The insight most people miss: for every $1 spent on software, roughly $6 goes to services.

SaaS chased the software dollar. AI chases the services dollar at software margins.

Not AI for accountants. The AI accounting firm. Not AI for lawyers. The AI law firm

The winners will look like services firms rebuilt on software infrastructure, and most founders are still building copilots.

Which dollar are you chasing?