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Arvid Kahl

@arvidkahl

26 Nov

When you're starting with your business idea, you will be looking at how successful businesses have accomplished their success. You will see a lot of different sizes, markets, and business models. But they all have one thing in common: they've built a system that works.

Their long-term and short-term goals may have changed through the years, but the system that has kept them running never has. That system is the core of every business.

A sustainable bootstrapped business is successful when you have found a repeatable, reliable, and resilient system to continuously provide a value-producing product to paying customers at a profit.

Read 7 tweets

Arvid Kahl

@arvidkahl

25 Nov

A product is not a business—just yet. That's an important thing to understand, particularly when you're a technical founder. It's the reason the book The E-Myth exists: the entrepreneurial myth is that if you build it, they will come.

But they won't unless you put in the effort to create a reliable system to sell the product at a profit continuously: a business.
A business is more than a landing page, a product, and a bank account. A business is a complex system of processes.

Building a product may come easy to you if you're technically inclined, but turning it into a value-generating machine is a whole different kind of challenge.

Read 9 tweets

Arvid Kahl

@arvidkahl

23 Nov

As technical founders, we're supposed to choose the technology that works best for us and our business. But we often let the cargo-culting around the newest, hottest tech stack get to us.

Many technical founders see a new startup as an opportunity to figure out a modern tech stack. That is a dangerous move.

Not only do you have to deal with the inherently hazardous nature of creating a new business, but now there is also the chance that the new and mostly untested tech stack may not be able to solve the problem you're trying to solve.

Read 6 tweets

Arvid Kahl

@arvidkahl

23 Nov

Building in Public has limitations. In fact, Building in Public itself has an effectiveness ceiling. Even more, its effectiveness decays over time.

The culprits? Oversharing, overpromising, and disconnection.

A few somber thoughts on these three potential problems👇

Oversharing happens when you are pushing the same message into an already satuated channel — with no content diversity.

People don't subscribe to a podcast because they want to listen to the same episode every week.

They expect to be surprised. Not too much, though. Just enough to learn something new every now and then.

But just as sharing the same thing all the time induces boredom, sharing different things all the time creates confusion.

Read 14 tweets

Arvid Kahl

@arvidkahl

23 Nov

First impressions matter. When someone checks out your social media profile, and they see a picture of a real human being that's accompanied by a meaningful description and a few well-selected links, they will be intrigued by who you are and what you're trying to accomplish.

If they find a default avatar picture and a half-assed description, they'll quickly move away from your profile.
When you're new in a community, people expect some level of initial effort after you join. Make it easy for people to get to know you. The real you.

Don't hide behind a pseudonym. Own your name and use it for your public work. Some communities might allow pseudonyms, but the chances are high that members expect you to show your face and use your name if you're in a professional community.

Read 7 tweets

Arvid Kahl

@arvidkahl

22 Nov

Most products that you will see staying on the market have something in common: they do one thing very well—and not much else. Weber sells grills that are fantastic at grilling. The furthest they have strayed into new territory so far has been adding an app-readable thermometer.

Still, that gimmick and anything else about their products is focused on making using their grills a great barbecuing experience. That's what it is about: having a barbecue that grills.
In the SaaS space, Stripe is a great example.

They provide a clean, well-designed, programmer-friendly service that allows you to charge your customers. While Stripe, as a company, offer a few adjacent services, their focus is always on making getting paid by your customers as comfortable and low-friction as possible.

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