Thread by @bilalmahmood

As @Amplitude_HQ nears its IPO, it is the end of my startup journey which began with @clearbraininc five years ago.

And so I wanted to shared the many lessons I learned along the way, and the many people who helped me learn it.

The most consistent lesson: people > products.

1 / Surround yourself with good humans

The first couple months of a startup can be rough. Failure, rejection, stress.

What got me through it were my roommates. And their dog. And lots of pizza.

Thank you @thisisgrantlee, Sandy, and Bernie for the unconditional support.

2/ Optimize for serendipitous relationships

I met my cofounder at a random ex-Googler lunch. Neither of us planned to show up till the last minute.

But we pushed ourselves to attend, and hit it off.

Thank you @ericpollmann for taking a chance on me.

3/ The best founders are parents

When I started my startup journey, I thought it was a game for the young.

My cofounder was a dad of two. He'd pick up his girls every day at 5pm. Read to them till 9pm. And then code till 1am.

Thank you @ericpollmann for proving me wrong.

4/ Diversity will raise you

It took us 30 investor pitches to get our first check. It was from an immigrant woman.

It took us one more year to get our second major check. It was from a gay man.

Thank you @MarHershenson and @mcgd believing in us when no one else did.

5/ Hire for aptitude, not experience.

Hiring is hard. Hiring the wrong person is harder. Hiring an uncoachable person is the hardest.

The best hires we made didn't have the most experience. They had the most growth mindset.

Thank you @JasonShen for teaching me this.

6/ Personalize kindness

To welcome each employee we hired, we bought them an individualized Funko Pop.

Each Funko Pop represented a show, movie, or character they loved. It'd show them we listened, we were all different, but also similar.

Thank you Theo Chao for inspiring us.

7/ Manage by radical candor

Give strong feedback. But take strong feedback as well.

Every 1:1 I had, every employee spent half the time telling me what I was doing wrong.

It's how I became a better manager and leader.

Thank you Scott Kramer for holding me accountable.

8/ Compliments are free

Positive reinforcement is a powerful tool. It can motivate your team to accomplish wonders. It helps them understand what to continue doing. And makes them feel acknowledged.

Plus, it doesn't cost a thing!

Thank you @dsiroker for the sage advice.

9/ Own your weirdness

Our team was humble, reserved, geeky. We didn't party much if at all.

So when we went to Vegas for a conference, we spent most nights playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Thank you Cindy Rogers for being the best Dungeon Master ever.

10/ Bond over lunch

We ate lunch together everyday.

We'd geek out over Banh Mi. Or discuss the most recent episode of GoT.

The discussion brought social cohesion. Every day we learned something new about each other.

Thank you Theo Chao for the hot sauce challenges.

11/ Bring in speakers to expand horizons

We regularly brought in guests to teach us new languages, bizdev, investing, design principles.

Its important to break routines, and bring in new ideas.

Thank you @cjc @Wayne @calvinfo and many more for expanding our thinking.

12/ Documentation controls the narrative

We documented everything

Meeting notes, whiteboard sessions. Someone was always the note-taker.

Whatever is written controls perception. So fight to be the notetaker.

Thanks @ericpollmann and Cindy Rogers for setting the example.

13/ Celebrate authentic values

Our values weren't represented by an acronym

They were represented by characters. Forrest, Kermit, Hermione, and Deadpool

Go the Extra Mile, Honest to a Fault, Always Helpful, and Have a Little Fun

Thanks @thisisgrantlee for keeping us authentic

14/ Set the outcome, not the path

The goal of a leader is to define the what, not the how.

Let your team decide on the path to get to the outcome you want. Less micromanagement. More ownership. Leads to more innovation.

Thanks @ajaykam for the powerful lesson.

15/ Reward failures, and learn from them

Our software broke. A lot.

But we didn't penalize people for it. We learned from it. Held postmortems. Set guardrails for the future.

Made sure to continuously improve.

Thanks @mustpax for always coaching us on a better path.

16/ Be generous with the things needed to do the job

We were generous with computer setups, commuter benefits, healthcare necessities.

If something is necessary to do the job, there is no reason to be thrifty with it.

Thanks @ericpollmann for always reinforcing this.

17/ Be conservative with office space

A certain amount of scarcity breeds innovation. And reinforces humility.

We took phone calls in bathrooms. Hung out with puppies and kids in the hallway.

Thank you @mwseibel for advising on where to spend, and not spend, our money.

18/ Stick to salary bands to ensure parity

Enforce pay bands and never deviate.

This allowed us to ensure pay was set to impact, not negotiating capability. And ensure we had gender parity in salaries.

Thank you @TessSaville for the guidance.

19/ Incubators are a great network

Joining @ycombinator was an inflection, predominantly for the other founders.

It gave us people to commiserate with, who could empathize with our struggles.

Thank you @ericajersin @amyleechiu @lynnetye, Spike, for the friendships.

20/ Investors are like doctors

To get the best advice from your investors, you need to describe your problem.

Only if you're candid about your struggles, can an investor provide advice on how to solve it.

Thank you @hollyhliu @harris @gustaf for being the best startup doctors.

21/ Deadlines need context

You can't motivate a team with an arbitrary deadline. It needs context.

Provide that context with a demo day, a customer sale, a fundraising event.

Without context, you lose purpose. And trust.

Thank you @ericpollmann for always reinforcing this.

22/ Telemetry will find needles in the haystack

Measure everything. In your infra. In your product.

By measuring metrics, you can find the unknown unknowns that are causing outsized damage or impact.

Thank you @cyen for teaching our team how to do this.

23/ Optimize for the believers first

Your first customers will believe in you irrationally. Rational actors wouldn't believe in an outsider.

Accept them, work with them, and hold them close.

Thank you @ryanstuczynski and @svistnuli for believing in us first.

24/ Crawl, walk, run

Don't build the most complex solution. Solve the simplest problem first, then expand to more advanced use cases.

You have to grow with your customers as they do. Jumping ahead will lead to a box for no one.

Thanks @justinjbauer for always reinforcing this!

25/ Build sequentially

You have a fixed deadline or a fixed scope.

But you can hack this framework. Break the scope out by what is necessary for your customer on day 1 vs day 2.

Create multiple deadlines. And build in that order.

Thanks Scott and Cindy for teaching me this.

24/ Invest in design for inspiration

Design is an investment and asset. Not an afterhtought.

It makes the complex accessible. It inspires the customer and your team.

Brands represent your quirkiness, kindness, and fun.

Thanks @annadzee @jeffseibert @knurture for teaching us

25/ Make things free

Free products bring accessibility to everyone.

Building for everyone forces you to innovate on the customer experience.

Innovating helps you learn faster, and build a better product.

Thank you @jeffseibert for reinforcing this many times!

26/ Always build the harder thing

During our journey, we were faced with many pivots.

Every time, we were served better by solving the harder problem.

Harder problems lead to more defensibility, more patents, more differentiation.

Thank you @avichal for explaining this!

27/ Have founder angels

In the earliest stage, always have other founders as investors.

They've been where you are. They can give advice on hiring, product development, culture, that most investors can't.

Thank you @max @jeffseibert @koomen @ndrewlee @dsiroker

28/ Optimize for Plan A & B

Startup ideas fail. So build products that can succeed in multiple scenarios.

In our last pivot, we built a product differentiated in the market, but unique enough to be acquired as well.

A year later, we were right.

Thanks @yinyinwu for the tip.

29/ Culture > product > money

At the end we had multiple acquisition offers.

We chose the one with the least cash. Because we realized culture & product alignment have higher longterm liquidity. 2 years later, we're IPOing.

Thank you @paladin314159 @spenserskates @justinjbauer

30/ Embrace the pranks

Startups are hard.

Humor brings levity, amusement, and cohesion.

We had tons of dad jokes. Many slack quips. Tons of puns.

And I was notorious for "Gandalfing" anyone who left their computer open.

Thank you to the entire @clearbraininc team.