Van Halen had a trick to avoid disaster on tour. A method so simple it could instantly reveal major problems.

It saved their lives. It saved their career.

And it later saved my company.

Time for a story 🧵 In the 1980s, Van Halen was at the height of their fame.

Their shows were legendary. MASSIVE stages. EPIC pyrotechnics. HUGE light displays.

But all that spectacle came with serious danger.

And one enormous RISK!

The most dangerous number for any startup?

30 employees.

• It's where communication breaks.
• Where friendships strain.
• Where most founders fail.

Here's what actually happens at each breaking point... 0-10 Employees: The Casual Chaos

This phase feels magical. Everyone does everything. No org structure needed. Just talented people figuring it out together.

I loved this phase at Ampush. We'd sit around a table, make decisions instantly, and execute. But that's exactly what set us up for failure...

The $500M dog food company that tripled sales with one psychological trick.

And it wasn't:

• Better ingredients
• Lower prices
• Prettier packaging

In fact, it wasn't even really "marketing" at all... 2 companies selling dog food

Company A's pitch: "Human-grade ingredients, better nutrition, healthier pups!" Result: 3% conversion rate

Company B's pitch:"Take this quiz to see if you're a good dog owner" Result: 5% conversion rate

Same product, same price point, same audience

The founder I most look up to is someone who:
• Built a $10 billion company
• Acquired 12 MEGA brands
• Gets home daily by 6pm

Here’s 12 timeless lessons from one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our generation: @RicElias is one of most successful + least known entrepreneurs of our generation.

His company Red Ventures is the largest digital media company in the US. He’s also one of the most humble, kind hearted people I know.

And an amazing mentor. Alright, onto the lessons…

I've landed > $100,000,000 in business because of what I'm about to share.

It's the forgotten, ugly stepchild of sales. The most botched part of the process.

Yet, A+ entrepreneurs have perfected it.

Here's the secret to sealing the deal every time: 1/ Use "sentence stems" to NAIL the DEMO of your product/service.

With the right starter stems, you can train yourself and your team to demo anything and make it informative, interesting yet Brief.

Here are my personal stems + an example of them in use!

This guy's in the Wall Street Journal for being a tax cheat...

But I'm fascinated with the way that this former monk made his money.

This is the story of the man behind 5 hour energy 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 1/ Manoj Bhargava was born in Lucknow, India in 1953.

In 1967, his family moved to the US so his dad could get his PhD at Wharton.

His family went from Indian affluence to living in an $80 per month West Philly apt.

At age 17, he started his first business...

In less than 6 years, this Nigerian immigrant bootstrapped a software biz from 0 to $3 BILLION

The crazy part?

He has no idea how to code.

Here's how he did it 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 @topeawotona was born in lagos to a business family

His grandma built a very successful textile import/export business

His mom co-owned a pharmacy with his Aunt

His dad was a microbiologist turned chemical distributor

Their life was good, then tragedy struck...

Two deadbeat students HATED working, so they started their own company.

& their classmates laughed at them.

Now, that company is worth $70 BILLION.

See how they got the last laugh 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 1/ Mike Cannon-Brookes met Scott Farquhar on their first day at the University of New South Wales in Sydney

Neither was a great student.

Farquhar averaged 65%, while Cannon-Brooks barely graduated with a 53%

Mike sent a fateful email in 2001…

As a 25-year-old founder, I sucked at running meetings---they were disorganized, overrun, and everyone hated them.

It wasn't until 6 years later that my coach taught me the FRAMEWORK to run productive meetings.

Here's how you can use it: So it's 2015.

I sold part of my company and had my first liquidity event.

I hired a coach to help me become a better founder.

One of the first things he saw was how poorly we ran meetings. We had to change our process.

He taught us every meeting has 5 types of conversations:

A friend of mine turned a $10K investment into $600M in annual revenue.

Without raising a penny.

The crazy part? It all started when his wife was diagnosed with a rare disease.

Here's the story of how a founder bootstrapped a $1,000,000,000 company: Abandoned at 4 months old, Mike grew up without a father after his parents divorced.

He & his siblings moved in with his mom. They lived off of her parents.

Mike had to sacrifice his childhood to escape poverty --- delivering newspapers at age 10 & selling t-shirts in college.

Today, a 21 year old marketer on my team asked me for the most important advice to grow in his career.

My answer: learn to manage up.

Most people suck at it. They say too much or too little.

Here's how to give the right amount of context: 1. Set the stage

Executives are busy people. And they have a lot going on.

You have to set the stage for each discussion.

Start every new email thread or meeting with 60 seconds of context:
Try to answer: "What are we talking about? Why? Where did we leave off?"

7 publicity stunts that went HORRIBLY wrong:

#1 - Steal My Identity! LifeLock’s founder was confident in LifeLock’s identity theft protection.

To prove it, he put his real SSN in numerous online advertisements.

He had his identity stolen at least 13 times from the stunt.

& LifeLock was later sued for $12 MILLION for false advertising.

I hired a guy who took his last company's sales from $1M to $17M.

His secret weapon? ZoomInfo.

Bet you didn't know ZoomInfo can do all this 👇 1/ ZoomInfo analyzes your anonymous website traffic and tells you which companies visited your homepage, pricing page, etc.

Then it tells you which people at those companies would buy from you, and gets you their contact info.

There's a $1.5B startup that:
• Raised $0 funding
• Grew from a $3K investment into $500M+ in annual sales in 4.5 years
• Operates with ONLY ~60 employees

You probably have their product in your closet.

Here's the most IMPRESSIVE bootstrapped story you've never heard of: 1/ The company: @trueclassictees
Co-founder & CEO: @RyanBartlett

True Classic is an apparel brand that sells men's tees, shirts, blazers & underwear.

It recently expanded into womenswear.

But how did it grow to 192 countries without raising a penny?

Everyone has ONLY ONE problem. And it's the SAME problem.

It's called: The Upper Limit Problem.

Here is everything you need to understand and solve it: 1/ Each person has an "inner thermostat" of success/happiness that was set for us as children.

When we exceed our "setting," we subconsciously sabotage ourselves back down to our familiar "temperature.”

This man runs a $6B startup from a remote village in India.

It:
• raised $0 funding
• has 100M+ users
• generates $1B+ in ARR

Here’s the bootstrapped story you’ve never heard of: The company: @Zoho 
Founder: @svembu 

Sridhar scaled Zoho to $300M+ in annual profit. The company makes its own version of Google Docs, Salesforce, QuickBooks and dozens of other apps.

But initially, he wasn't even part of the company.

Look at these eager interns.

I gave my new interns 4 important pieces of advice that everyone needs to know. 1/ “Remember everything around you was built by people no smarter than you”

I play my favorite Steve Jobs Video

I encourage them to apply this concept to the company.  It may look fancy and formal but it was just created by their colleagues.  They can shape it, they can change it.

17 (semi) controversial things I believe: 1/ Where you went to college and your GPA DO matter

2/ Hard work, especially when you’re young, IS the ONLY controllable differentiator

My phone startles me awake before 7am. It was my older brother who is also my attorney.

Even more strange.

I silence it. Then he texts: “SOMEONE IS SUING YOU.”

I spring up and call him... 1/ A company I'll call "AnnoyingCo" had just filed suit against Ampush.

I had never heard of this company. This must be a mistake!

But as the details roll in, its clear its not a mistake and would kick off one of the most frustrating 2 years of my career.

Here's the story:

I attribute a lot of my success to being really really good at email.

Here's my playbook for how you can handle 50K+ emails/year without breaking a sweat 👇👇👇 1/ First, a reframe: WHY do I do it?

I view my inbox as opportunity: a deal to close, an amazing candidate to hire or a chance to give a team-member guidance or feedback.

I promised myself I'd never be the CEO/Founder who bottlenecks my team.

And so I needed to master email.

Back in 2021, I launched my first DTC brand.

I put my name, $, and reputation on the line.

It was an utter failure.

Here is the story and what I learned 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 1/  After ~10 years of running Ampush as CEO, I stepped into the chairman seat.

Ampush had helped countless brands build and scale customer acquisition including: Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox, Stitch Fix, and many others.

I had the obvious idea: why don’t I start a brand?