When small business owners onboard a new vendor/partner, the instinct is to get a “deal.” They ask to get 10-15% off, cut something out, etc. I've done this and with good judgement it works, but it cuts both ways. Smaller, cash strapped companies say yes to win the deal and then cut corners. Two other levers you can pull: 1) If cost reduction is most important, offer them better payment terms (e.g. quarterly payment upfront) for a reduced rate. 2) Flip the question - what would this look like if you paid more and became a larger or their largest client? Often, paying 30-70% more can take you from an average client that may get lost in the shuffle, to a large client who gets white glove service, staffed with their top people. In absolute terms, it may be a relatively small dollar amount. Important to ask if squeezing out every last dollar is more important than getting the absolute best outcomes.

If you’re only going to measure someone’s ability on one thing, make it persistence. Just about every person i’ve worked with who consistently shows up and persists through challenges has done exceptionally well.

Ryan is a beast. 4 years ago, we met because I haphazardly tweeted that I want to give a first time founder $10k + a monthly stipend to build a business with me. I had 80+ people email me. Ryan stood out because he created a video, had a great pitch and we immediately hit it off. 6 months later (or more?) we created Spacebar Visuals - a B2B video agency focused on product launches, event videos and customer testimonials. But, it didn't start that way. We started off making low budget animated explainer videos. We made just enough to keep the lights on and figure out what made us great. 2 years ago, Ryan and now a team of ~15 people figured it out. We went from something like $50k in rev in the first half year we worked together, to now having months of $100k+ in revenue. We'll make our second million 5x faster than the first. We're still small. We're not an AI breakout company. But we're doubling YoY, very profitable and have a killer team. 🧑‍🚀🚀

The biggest advantage of my career has been starting young. I started my first business at 15 and have been a full-time entrepreneur since I was 21. Two things followed: 1) My breakeven cost of living was close to negligible. It's far easier to start with little to cover than with real overhead and responsibilities. I had a small studio apartment, a laptop and a bed and couch from Bob's discount furniture. 2) My whole identity formed around entrepreneurship. I never considered doing anything else, so when tough times inevitably came, I never considered doing anything other than solving the issue at hand and moving to the next challenge.

The little things often matter more to me when interviewing. Did they show up on time? Ask good, well-thought-out questions? Did they send a thank you follow up? A bit of extra effort goes a long way, and it's unfortunately much rarer than it should be.

A telltale sign one of your founder friends is about to go on a tear is they stop doing things they normally do. They slowly stop participating in a group chat, you don't see them for dinners as much, no random catch up calls. Check in first, and be ready to invest if you can and believe in them. Have had several friends do this and then build 8-9 figure businesses rapidly. Being an investor, at worst, is an excuse just to keep up with them. Worth it imo.

We get 4-6 really good leads a month from our newsletter, which is all about media brands and B2B companies who have benefited from building/buying their own media brands. Without fail, these leads tend to read us for 4-6 months with very high engagement rates before they ever reach out to us. Then, we still have a 30-45 day sales cycle from there. Often more. Everyone wants leads now. The best deals take time (and it's a huge reason why we have only 1 company/qtr that churns) and we will continue to double YoY.

My team looped me in on an email where the founder of a (former) vendor was way out of line over a minor issue, if I'd even call it that. Never heard of him or his company. Looked him... Forbes 30u30. Checks out.

This should be a top 5 metric you track MoM as a founder. Don't let cash in the bank mask this. Your growth and survival is dependent on cash collected on time.

Our GTM math within our companies is dead simple. Take avg annual deal size and divide by 10 then multiply by your gross margin. Spend that or less to acquire a customer. Example: Spacebar Studios avg annual deal size is $54k. Divide by 10 and multiply by gross margin (65% in this case) which = ~$3,500. We are happy to acquire clients for $3,500 or less. As a lean, profitable business we happily sacrifice growth to stay within these KPIs. And we have gone from $0-$750k ARR in 13 months profitably doing this.

3 reasons I don’t Angel invest anymore: 1) founders quit. I’d get the pitch, the founder is seemingly mission-driven and convincing. A year or two later, they’re off to something else while the company quietely withers away. Failure is ok and expected. Quitting while the company is still alive is not. 2) Most of my $$ is illiquid as it is. I’m a majority owner of several profitable small businesses. Why add more uncertainty and illiquidity at this stage? 3) I don’t have a competitive advantage. I asked myself, would I raise a fund to invest in X number of deals a year based on what im doing now? The answer was of course not. So why then why do it at all? It’s unnecessary risk. The exception is id back my friends companies 10/10 times. That is fun, and actually is a competitive advantage at a small scale. I have a handful of friends id back no matter the product, market or valuation. Instead, ive chosen to back a few funds i believe in, and that’s well worth it to me as an LP.

We are in need of a good Beehiiv designer. Our agency, Spacebar Studios, launches approx. 2 net new newsletters/mo. Our media businesses is creating new brands as well. Who should we connect with? DMs open.

Sometimes you need to kill off projects that don't work. In 2023, we bought a small B2B data business that we never really had a dedicated resource run. Always was on the backburner. Today, we finally put it to bed. At it's peak, it was probably worth ~$200k. MRR was growing. Micro SaaS multiples were steadily rising. Now, none of that is true and the business would have needed another $50k-$75k of product re-investment for it to really be worth anything. Easy decision to move on and not spend any more resources on it.

Finally got to use @Starlink on @united. Best in-flight wifi experience ever, and it’s free. I cannot believe people routinely take time out of their day to hate on Elon Musk.

The brand: legacyvector.com We think we will bring on 2-3 sponsors at $2,500-$5k/mo to build up through EOY.

Fun to think about this... the company we created from this tweet was Spacebar Visuals, a B2B video agency. Last month, we did $88k in revenue, have a team based in Austin, TX + globally, and 100+ happy clients. @ryansatkinson is a force of nature. We need to do this again.