.@mlevchin spent "zero minutes" introspecting on his failed companies:
"I kept going because I realized I liked the journey as much, if not more than the destination."
"The day my co-founders and I declared our first company dead, I found myself thinking, 'What will be the next one?'"
"I took exactly zero hours or minutes contemplating, 'Is this the right thing for me to do?'"
Building in consumer is scary because there's no "rational buyer."
You're not selling to a procurement committee or delivering a clear ROI - you're asking people to spend their personal time and money on your product.
And humans are emotional, inconsistent, and terrible at articulating what they want. Everything can look great on paper, but it's over if your product just doesn't "vibe."
Being brave enough to do consumer anyway is a real advantage.
Airbnb CEO @bchesky says the chatbot is a "pre-AI interface," rather than the end-state interface for artificial intelligence:
"We're in the MS-DOS phase of AI."
"The future AI interface will have a reference to chat, but it's probably going to be much more visual. Most people aren't completely text-based."
"The chatbot is really a pre-AI interface that we've plugged onto this incredibly powerful engine."
"I really think the models are even more powerful than people realize, because we have hardly harnessed them."
The best founders are relentless problem solvers. They have founder-problem fit; but more importantly, they have an innate desire to just keep solving whatever the next problem is.
Founder-problem fit matters. But relentless problem-solving wins.
MÉXICO!
19yo Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez, a former Juniors world #1, defeats Aleks Vukic 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(4) in 3h05 to reach the 2nd round in Acapulco.
He becomes the 1st home player since 2011 to win a main draw match in Acapulco and the first since the event moved to hardcourt.
Va sobrado de carisma. Va sobrado de personalidad. Va sobrado de estilo. Va sobrado de seguridad. Y va sobrado de orgullo por representar a México en unos Juegos Olímpicos. Qué viva EL SURF CHAMPAGNE de Alan Cleland Quiñonez. ORGULLO TOTAL.
For every founder that successfully exits, the most common feeling afterwards is that it was pure luck and that this will be the most amount of money they’ll ever make from a product they start from scratch.
So they fall back on their newfound credibility in their industry to do seemingly lower risk things: investing, content creation—like newsletters & podcasts, and taking well paid exec roles at mature companies. And they will justify it to others by either saying it’s less stressful than doing it again or that they’re “scaling themselves out.”
However, while luck certainly played a part in their success, they still are probably the best in their respective field. Not only would it be more fun, rewarding and easier if they tried to do it again, but they are most likely to succeed at it compared to anyone else. Overcoming that doubt is the only thing stopping them.