0/ This week on the pod I chatted with @hnshah about his “billion dollar mistake” - finding lightning in a bottle and letting it slip away.

We disagreed at times, but he came with punchy hard earned lessons that I appreciated - painful and applicable.

These were my favorite:
1/ Optimizing your startup for speed is the only way to keep your head above the water.

The key to optimizing your startup for speed? Learn how to make rapid—but thoughtful—decisions.
2/ The trick to better decision-making is to be strategic about your decision making

Here’s how to do it:

- Break down a decision into a series of questions
- Use the questions to challenge assumptions & learn
- Validate what you’ve learned by running lightweight experiments
3/ Great leaders are consistent, they help provide a direction and get the team focused on doing what’s best for the business, at all times.

They are unbiased, focused on execution, developing a vision, helping prioritize and getting alignment from the team.
4/ Transparency can only be achieved through clarity of communication

If you don't have a process to communicate your message and the rationale behind it clearly, you muddy the waters.

Lack of clarity destroys information flow.
5/ You don’t know what your team is thinking unless you ask

A lot of root cause failure in startups is bad communication. Co-Founder conflict, Management team conflict - it’s death by 1000 cuts.

When in doubt, ask. Ask what people are thinking/why.

Process. Reflect. Act.
6/ Growth brings 6 competing forces

Existing Customers - how do we keep them happy
Sales - what acquires more customers
BoD - what drives the largest return
Future Investors - what drives growth / velocity
Ourselves - what do we want to build
Competitors - what's the reaction
7/ Speed to product-market fit isn't important; speed once you have product-market fit is imperative

Once you have product market fit, your competitors will see it, hear about it or know it. That's when the market starts to chase you. You have to be ready for the chase.
8/ Getting to Product Market Fit and maintaining Product Market Fit are different games with different rules

Product Market Fit is a function of:

- Intuition
- Research
- Iteration

Scaling is a function of:

- Process
- Systems
- Cadence
- Repeatability
9/ As a Founder, you earn the right to realize your vision.

Focus less on the vision in the early days. Focus more on the milestones required to earn the right to build against the vision.

As it is, if you're on the right path, your vision will tweak over time.
10/ Servicing your customer better than anyone in the market is how you win.

Too often Founders focus on the wrong thing. They play the game they think they should be playing (fundraising, press, vanity metrics)

What do your customers think about you? That's all that matters.
11/ Iterate on Your Self-Awareness

Reflect on your insecurities with yourself and your business, and use them to drive you to be more self-aware. To learn more about your blindspots, consider the opposite of some of your firmly held beliefs.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Romeen Sheth

Romeen Sheth Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @RomeenSheth

5 Feb
I went deep with Jonathan Hsu, Co-Founder of Tribe Capital this week. He debunked a lot of the conventional thinking in startups and we talked about developing edge:

10 Lessons on data science, venture capital, startups and investing:

[THREAD]
1/ Units of time are the new currency

While businesses were valued for the dividends they paid out, the “impenetrable” moats that let companies spit off excess cash are dwindling.

A moat today is a buffer that helps a company get ahead of the next innovation cycle.
2/ To create a defensible business today, your product needs to be a utility.

You have to build something that solves a user pain, and then scale until it’s so fundamental that it becomes a feature of other products.

This is even more true for apps with 100M+ users.
Read 11 tweets
1 Feb
India is on the verge of a once-in-a-generation explosion in edtech.

I've invested in 2 co's that are growing like wildfire and want to do more. Let's talk if you're building in this space.

Here's what's going on and why you should pay attention now, if you weren't before:
1/ There are 5 factors that are simultaneously driving the rapid rise of edtech in India.

- Favorable demographics
- At scale internet adoption
- Deteriorating incumbent quality
- Declining budget / capacity
- Cultural relevance

Let's talk about how all 5 are interconnected.
2/ The quantum of "digital first" Indians that will need to be educated is like nothing the world has ever seen.

India has:

- 500M+ people under 25
- 125M+ English speakers
- 250M+ people that will be added to its population over the next 40 years (est. peak is 1.6B)
Read 14 tweets
31 Jan
Over the last 2 years, I’ve grown a bootstrapped business by 8 figures in revenue.

Sounds awesome right? It wasn’t pretty. There was a LOT of failure, misstep and doubt along the way.

Here are 20 (non-fortune cookie) lessons that made me a 10x better leader

[THREAD]
1/ There are 3 types of trust: Intent, Competence and Judgement

- Intent: heart is in the right place
- Competence: head is in the right place
- Judgement: heart and head work together

In any situation of disagreement, identify which type of trust is in question.
2/ Everybody wants authority, less want responsibility, few want accountability

- Authority puts you in a position to fulfill your responsibility.

- Accountability is owning the outcome of your responsibility.

Accountability is the #1 metric I judge my leaders by.
Read 21 tweets
27 Jan
0/ THREAD: The story of the week is Gamestop.

How it all went down has been very well covered, so let’s talk implications.

The TLDR is: The establishment just got punched in the mouth and a new investing dynamic is here to stay.

This isn’t a new chapter, this is a new BOOK.
1/ First some quick context if you’re not up to speed.

Gamestop - the iconic video game retailer has been struggling for years.

Why? All the same reasons why other brick and mortar retailers are struggling - long term leases, digitization laggards and no e-commerce capability
2/ The opportunity in e-commerce is what made one of the most gutsy entrepreneurs (@ryancohen , Founder of @Chewy) take an interest in the business.

For those who don't know - when Ryan sold Chewy, he took ALL his earnings ($1B+) and poured them into 2 stocks: $APPL and $WF.
Read 23 tweets
27 Jan
0 / I love what Miami’s doing. TBH though I’m WAY more bullish on Atlanta.

In the last 6 months, we've had 5 ATL 🦄 (@OneTrust, @Calendly, @SalesLoft, @GreenlightCard, @KabbageInc)

This ecosystem going to explode. Time for a thread on what is driving all this activity 👇👇
1/ Atlanta has historically been a Fortune 500 town. Today Atlanta is home to 26 F1000 companies (16 F500) - household names like @UPS, @Delta, @CocaCola. All have been instrumental to “increasing the size of the pie” - these companies cumulatively do $500B+ in revenue annually.
2 / Over the past 30 years, Atlanta has had tech success stories - but they’ve been few and far between. But in that timeframe, something deeper has been happening. Specialized industry expertise has been sewed into the city’s fabric - logistics, retail, manufacturing, payments.
Read 18 tweets
23 Jan
0/ [THREAD] Over the last 4 years, I’ve interviewed 100+ of the most successful Investors, Founders and Executives in the world.

Here are the 20 "must have" lessons that most stuck out to me.

Lessons on life, career advice, entrepreneurship and startups 👇👇👇
1/ Having a billion dollars is great, having a billion seconds is priceless.

Interesting thought experiment: If you had the opportunity to switch places with Warren Buffet, would you do it?

You would be a billionaire, but you would also be 90.

Time > Money.
2/ Always strive to simultaneously be overrated and underrated.

Contrary to popular belief, being overrated is good. It opens doors and gives you credibility.

But don’t let this go to your head. Stay hungry, humble and hardworking.
Read 22 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!