Fintech start-up junkie. Ex-@AvidXchange. Bootstrapping @barespend. Natural born hacker. My last name has single-handedly taken down a few million web sites.

Charlotte, NC
Joined April 2008
Replying to @can
Having joined 3 startups at seed stages and leaving prior to them exiting/going public, I always take solace in the fact that they'd not have succeeded had I not left
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Aye aye, cap'n.
How to pitch VCs in 2023
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Microservices, a zero interest rate phenomenon. "Moving our service to a monolith reduced our infrastructure cost by over 90%. It also increased our scaling capabilities." - Amazon Prime Video tech team
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😂🤣Brilliant stuff! "If it's absolutely necessary, I will support building new housing to lower prices, just as soon as my own sale clears escrow. Once this snowbird leaves town, they can build a chocolate castle for all I care." - @TheDevinWallace mcsweeneys.net/articles/hous…
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Built a couple features today for customers that did not include any AI. And they still paid us cold hard cash. HELP! Am I doing this right?
Replying to @mattwensing
Being this contrarian is very unpopular.
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Well OK, we were paid via ACH.
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I'll take boring technology to build boring businesses all day every day.
There are two paths diverging: 1. People who feel like @Suhail. 2. A bunch of web2 folks that will keep building boring businesses that make billions of dollars and adopt any useful tech that emerges from the fomovortex that is #1.
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The future of building startups: - MVP speed (1x per month) - AI-accelerated - Superniche is the new niche - Community 1st, software 2nd - No-code 1st, some code 2nd - 10x more automated - Global teams, localized products - 95% dominated by solopreneurs and microentrepreneurs (teams less than 12) - Pop-up digital experiences (apps that only work on certain times) - Needs the marketing holy-trinity to hit escape velocity: 1. product/market fit, 2. content/market fit and 3. community/market fit - Team is half robots 🤖, half humans 👨‍🦰 (cc @youneedarobot) - Accelerated by "boring marketing" (cc @boringmarketer) - Multiple revenue streams - Design matters. The bar is high - Partnered w/ creators (creators are the distribution) - Feels like a game (levels, status, badges, in-app currency, challenges, collectibles/items) - Purpose-driven moonshots: societal impact matters - Productized agencies to generate cashflow (ex design agency @DispatchDesign) - Product studios become the norm - 99% of MVPs won't need VC
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Everyone loves a little bit of monkey business, don't we?
We lived in an era of near-zero interest rates where we could have borrowed virtually unlimited money to fund cool stuff like high-speed rail networks, cancer treatments, and nuclear reactors. Instead we got the metaverse and monkey JPEGs.
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Startup founders rarely feel confident pricing their product 😬
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Be all three at the same time. You're guaranteed never to have a dull day.
Investors complain everyone wants to be an investor and there aren't enough founders to invest in Founders complain everyone wants to be a founder and not enough engineers to hire Engineers say "ok give me more equity"; founders say "I'd love to but my investors won't let me"
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Counter intuitive but 80% of a startup sales process is listening, not selling.
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One of the biggest tax incentives encouraging investment in startups is at risk under a recent Democrat tax proposal. This incentive, the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) exemption, is critical to the angel investing ecosystem has enabled startups in America to flourish
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If I can find a way to pay that power bill now, it might just help @DukeEnergy figure this out.
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Oh, hell no. This is turning into a doctor's visit. #wtf @walmart
It's sad that I wasn't sure he was joking until I got to this question.
Replying to @anothercohen
5/ Tell me 3 different ways of throwing the engineering team under the bus without them knowing about it. Being able to do this is such an important PM skill. If they can't do this, I question their ability to work x-functionally.
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