We grew to $1B ARR faster than Stripe, Salesforce, and Palantir, while being 100% remote This was a combination of a lot of luck, focus and an excellent team Looking back, I can our team's success boils down some key principles I'm sharing in a 700-word long post: I hope that it will help every startup as much as it helped us: 1. Everything is sales. Recruiting is sales. Fundraising is sales. Retaining your best talent is sales. Dating is sales. And sales is sales. A founder’s effectiveness = (technical skill × ability to sell). 2. You need to be in the details. The best founders can zoom all the way in and out. If someone tells you to “scale yourself” by pulling back too early - they’re wrong. Being in the details is important to understand what org structure best fits your company's goals. Every 'in the weeds' founder designs their org structure from first principles. Jensen: 40 direct reports, Elon: Engineers in charge of everything, Jobs: Creative Dictatorship with Directly Responsible Individuals. Zuck: The first growth-hacking team with @chamath Founders not in the details forget what makes their products great and eventually recede into designing a standard org with standard departments which lead to standard results. 3. Your company's fate is 70% sealed by the first 20 hires Ben Horowitz: "I got this advice like 27 times. They said 'Look, here's the key: Hire A players:' and I was like ok yeah, my plan was to hire a bunch of morons but now I'm going to hire A players" The hard part isn’t intent, it’s judgment. The problem is you can't spot a top 1% engineer if you're not a top 10% engineer yourself. This applies to everything. Your definition of great is just what you've seen. Founders have some blind spots. Technical founders usually build bad marketing orgs. Sales-focused founders sometimes build mediocre product teams. You need the right eyes to be able to spot genius. Ego aside, bring on a technical expert and have them vet talent for you. Your first hires are your culture, your standard, your work environment. They are the company. Get the first 20 hires right. 4. Live with your customers. You can’t know what’s working if you’re not talking to them - all the time. Be where they are: WhatsApp, calls, DMs, in person. The closer you are to customers, the fewer mistakes you make. "The customer is the boss. They can fire everybody by choosing to spend their money elsewhere." - Sam Walton 5. Be extremely responsive. If I reply in 30 seconds, what usually takes a day gets done in hours. What takes hours gets done now. Speed compounds. 6. Your TAM is limited by your imagination, not by the market. Constantly rethink the pod, find other big issues that need solving and are valuable, and solve them exceptionally well. We went from contracts ($100M) to Employer of Record ($300M) to Payroll ($200M). Each 3x'd the TAM. 7. Never run out of cash. The only way a business dies is by running out of cash. Profitability = power. You call the shots, not investors. You can always act in the company's long-term interest because you know you are safe. We reached Series A after spending <10% of our seed. We have been profitable for the last 3 years. Cash discipline buys freedom. 8. Over-index on angels early. Angels are your best shot at making important people care - when it matters. They might not be involved day to day, but when you really need help, they’ll show up. If you don't know how to solve a problem, you should know at least a person who knows the person who can. Pick the right ones, and time your asks well. 9. There's always something out there that can kill your company. Your job is to de-risk the company. Capital, talent, and products are all a small part of a larger effort to de-risk your startup and build an enduring business. Covid-induced work from home grew our payroll and EOR business. And it seemed like RTO might kill it. But we were prepared. If you worry, you won't have to worry. 10. Stay focused. Fundraises, competitors, headlines - all noise. Focus on your customers. Focus on your product. Keep executing. In the long run, the most relentless team wins. 11. Trust your instinct. If something feels off - it probably is. Dig deeper. Courage in your convictions matters, especially as the team grows. Don’t let “performative democracy” slow you down. As long as you’re in the seat, lead decisively - and unapologetically.