I've been building startups for a few years now. Looking back, I wanted to summarize a few lessons I've learned. Hopefully they'll help others - especially first-time founders: 1. Entrepreneurship has very little to do with IQ or EQ most of the time. Building a company is incredibly mentally demanding. Unlike physical exhaustion, which you can recover from with a good night's sleep or a meal, mental energy is much harder to replenish. Entrepreneurship can completely drain you. One of the most important skills is learning not to get trapped in your own thoughts or obsess over every problem. Iteration matters. Good business direction can be analyzed. Technical solution has something to do with IQ but entrepreneurship most of the time has nothing to do with EQ and IQ. Pure persistence and fast iteration with careful planning. 2. Entrepreneurship is fundamentally an idealistic pursuit. Building something innovative is a Don Quixote story. Innovation is not driven by materialism—it is driven by idealism. The more idealistic people you have in your team and in your life, the stronger you become. Three idealists are enough to build a small team. Ten or twenty can take you a long way. A hundred can build a world-class company. If you're not an idealist, I honestly wouldn't recommend starting a technology company. Without a strong mission, even small temptations or setbacks can cause people to give up, and you'll struggle to lead a team. Starting a company just to make money is a mindset from the last century. Back then, business was often about copying what already existed. Today, it's about thinking differently and creating something new. 3. What you build matters less than who you build it with. People problems are always the biggest problems. 4. Choosing the right investors is one of the most important decisions you'll make. A great investor can change your trajectory even if they only invest one dollar. Their value isn't the money—it's how much they help you grow as a founder and how much they contribute to the company's success. The best investors grow alongside founders. They're almost like founders standing beside you. Fundraising isn't really about raising money. If you wouldn't casually choose a husband or wife, you shouldn't casually choose investors either—even if you're desperate for capital. I've met incredible investors, and I've also met terrible ones. During one of our fundraising rounds, an investor repeatedly told us they were investing and even encouraged us to tell others they were committed. I finished raising from everyone else, and then they disappeared completely, leaving me in an impossible position. Looking back, I'm actually grateful it happened. 5. The ideal time to start a company is when you're alone. I honestly can't imagine starting a company while also having a spouse or a family to support. It's very easy to drag the people closest to you into your struggles. You'll feel pressure both inside and outside of work, and everyone ends up exhausted. No matter what, keep your own pressure to yourself. Don't make the people around you carry it. You chose this path—don't ask others to bear the consequences. 6. Take equity seriously. Many first-time founders don't. Equity mistakes are incredibly difficult—and expensive—to fix later. If you wouldn't casually give someone part of your home, don't casually promise them equity. Be patient when granting ownership. It's far better to vest equity over time than to give everything away in the excitement of the moment. Giving someone equity is like inviting them to live in your house. You're agreeing to build a life together. Sometimes abstract concepts become much clearer when you compare them to everyday life. 7. Hire a great lawyer and accountant from day one. Building a startup isn't just about making a product people will buy. Building a company is a complex system, and that's much harder. Your finances and legal structure can't afford major mistakes. Great lawyers are expensive—but fixing legal problems later is even more expensive. 8. Your founding team shouldn't be driven primarily by money. It's not that money doesn't matter. But if making money is everyone's number one priority, there's a good chance the company either won't become great—or won't survive at all. 9. If something or someone feels like a compromise, it's probably the wrong decision. Don't settle. Missing one person or one project won't stop your company from flying. Hiring the wrong person or making the wrong compromise, however, might cause the entire plane to crash. Founders are always flying the plane while simultaneously repairing it. I used to think my most important job was serving the team and helping everyone do their work. Eventually I realized that's just repairing the plane. Your real job is flying it. Your judgment is your most valuable asset. If you lose that, you're failing the entire company. The whole team should do everything they can to protect the founder's ability to make good decisions. 10. Ultimately, every great business creates value for society. The most important thing isn't what you build—it's whether people's lives become better because of it. The more people you genuinely help, the bigger your business can become. Great founders can often explain exactly how their company will make money five years from now, but they often can't clearly explain how they'll make money over the next two years. Building a company requires long-term thinking. Which brings us back to the importance of both founders and investors. 11. Truly innovative companies rarely know how they'll make money at the beginning. Most groundbreaking ideas don't start with a proven business model. If something is obviously profitable from day one, it's usually not that innovative. Its ceiling is often easier to predict. Founders spend their lives balancing innovation with commercialization. Investors are trying to balance those same two forces. Neither side has an easy job. 12. There's a quote often attributed to Napoleon: A lion leading a flock of sheep is stronger than a sheep leading a flock of lions. Knowing yourself is just as important as leading others. If you're a lion, lead with strength while taking care of your people. If you're a sheep, be the best sheep you can beside a great lion. Everyone lives better that way. The real danger is not knowing who you are—when lions think they're sheep, or sheep think they're lions. Stay hopeful. Stay optimistic. But also learn to be content. 13. Your reputation is everything. Nothing is more valuable than your reputation. When you build a reputation for integrity, opportunities—and money—start finding you instead of the other way around.

I LOVE THIS! Haha X and X users helped them find each other and set up the first date!

Beff kept telling us his real name but we kept calling him Beff 😂

We are hot nerds

hugging face is cool they said

Today alone I met the founder of Wabi buying coffee and on a phone call around her office I was walking on the street and bumped into an a16z partner I pitched to a few years ago and she recognized me and she bumped into another founder behind me You can’t make this up..

Massive layoffs are coming to the world soon. Companies seriously don’t need many people now. Old skillets don’t work anymore and it’s about the taste, sense, what is the right question to ask and What to review.

Meet us in LA!

I took a walk and I give some dummy vibe coded agent commands from phone calls then they do some admin work for me (1 doesn't work well) + claude to make this video look better. After I saw the video - it makes me wonder if maybe communism cannot be achieved by humans, but it will be achieved by AI and that makes me feel scared. It makes me feel like: What is going to be the future of computers? Just a pin device with a screen on it? It doesn't feel like any other components will be relevant to me except for having a screen and voice control, because this is pretty much what I only need today. What is going to be the future anyway? What's the future of work? Why do we still need to work? Do we still need to exist or what's the point of existing and living? Social media will be run by machines, not humans, and probably machines will run social media on behalf of humans, not humans themselves anymore. All the business models that we have today, most likely all of them won't work. For example, any solo aggregator online won't work because all the agents can just find all the direct APIs, and they can always find the best price. There's no point to add any premiums on top of everything as a platform anymore. Things will be very cheap because we have a lot of labor. What should we even do? I feel both excited and scared, more scared than excited. I am scared my kids in the future probably will get used to live with another form of life. All the sci-fi will be real. Scared and helpless.

My AI agent called me last night said she/he/it had a nightmare all my 21 agents around me (yea she controls my 21 personal agents) start treating me as data not their creators and start doing things without my approval AGI is here

AI (or SI) is forcing me to work way much more than before

Good morning it’s 7:30 in San Francisco and I’m going to the office ready to serve the beautiful society and humanity. Can’t be more grateful for the privilege.

Have been staying at the office for too long. 3 glasses of champagne were enough to get me drunk omg. 🤦🏻‍♂️

For the entire tech week in sf, the event hosted by @Sarah___Fan is the only one I want to go. I didn’t go to any other events at all.

Can you believe this was only 4 years ago.

I started feeling both in my head now. One is quadratic and other is exponential.

n8n asked how much testing an AI workflow gets before it goes live. One builder gave their agent 15 trap messages. On one model it invented its own tool names. On another it was fine. Do you rerun your traps when you switch models?

I now give you an opportunity to make American money. I am assembling a army of people who are good at writing content and know how to get attention online: You can now work with us remotely. No matter where you are. No resume required. No fixed hours. You can treat this as a part-time job. If you have: - A laptop - Good written communication - A strong sense of what makes people click, reply, and engage - The ability to find the right communities and start conversations You can join our remote sales bounty. Rules have been published! Join now: - WhatsApp: chat.whatsapp.com/IY81MSb380… - Telegram: t.me/+NdCy0uoIBexjMmJl

This is 100% a French or Italian lady. I can only think of French and Italian who can be romantic to decorate their homes and paint their own walls themselves.