10x engineers

Founders if you ever come across this rare breed of engineers, grab them. If you have a 10x engineer as part of your first few engineers, you increase the odds of your startup success significantly.

OK, here is a tough question.

How do you spot a 10x engineer? 1. 10x engineers hate meetings. They think it is a waste of time and obvious things are being discussed. They attend meetings because the manager has called for a "Staff meeting" to discuss the features and status.

Founders:

What should you do when?

After all, you are very busy, working crazy hours, but, you are inundated with what you should and shouldn't do as a founder.

Well here is one more to your kitty. Hopefully, this helps clarify many other things. Q: What activities you should do "before"
Product-Market-Fit (PMF):
1. Do every critical job in the startup
from customer acquisition to ensuring customers are using the product and paying.

B2B/SaaS Founders:

What it takes for your startup to

GROW

and become a

GENERATIONAL

company? 1. Most of the generational companies are massive in terms of brand and profits.

The scale itself is a powerful moat because of the brand, customers, and profits.

Yes, when you start, you are a small fish, but,
the goal is to be the big dog in the category you operate.

Startup Conferences:

Why do founders attend these startup conferences, across the globe? What outcomes that they want to get out of such conferences? Just saying "networking" is too broad.

Love to hear from other founders, whether the list below reflects their reasons: 1. Founders at the idea stage or early in their journey:

A place to discuss your ideas and challenges with other founders. The goal is to explore what resonates and what doesn’t with others who are in a similar boat, before jumping.

Founders, you know the importance of hiring Product managers. How do you recognize bad product managers after hiring, especially, when they looked good during the interview process? Few signs to watch. 1. They have a massive ego about the role and power. They demand respect v/s earning respect from others.

My favorite questions to tech-oriented founders:
- who haven't spent much time on customer/problem world
- who have jumped on solution and stuck on solution cycle.
These questions force the founders to think more on the problem... Q1: Who is your customer for your product or service?
The surprising thing about this question is that the founders continue to refine the answer every few months as they spend more time with their customers. It starts with know-all -> know-things -> know-a-bit -> I know.

Dear Angel Investor:
Please INVEST in software-driven product startups when you see the following:

1. Founders can explain why their product is needed in the market in less than 30 seconds (elevator-pitch). If they can't do, help them refine before investing. 2. The product website is well-crafted with a good UX sense. The pitch on the website or the app matches their 30-second pitch. In fact, the digital version should be better than their elevator pitch. Help them until they get this right.

Lots of startups get stuck
before they get to Product-Market-Fit.

What would be the reasons?

Here are some, I see on a daily basis. They are related to issues with founders or market (in no particular order): 1) Founders haven't studied or trained on basic things of startups: idea validation, market validation, customer value-proposition, team-building, product building, basic finance, and total money required to do few iterations.
A: Work for a startup for a few years and learn.

How one can go about building a large global B2B/SaaS business from India? One of the ways as follows: 1. Pick a problem that you are passionate. The passion has to be sufficiently deep to help you drive 24x7 for at least 3 years with the mental strength to drive through lots of obstacles. If you find success, you should be ready to put an additional 7 years, at least.