For the so-called “roll-up” acquisitions, it’s easy for companies to only think about the horizontal acquisition model, i.e. merging with or acquiring competitors within the same industry. The goal is often to expand market share/top line revenue and reduce cost by consolidating resources and eliminating redundancies. But keep in mind that’s only one way of … Continue reading Horizontal Acquisition vs. Vertical Acquisition
A company that I recently found had a very interesting PMF journey; before building a fully baked product, they did consulting/service work for almost a year, helping 100+ clients. This helped them find common problems their clients were going through, and define the v1 feature sets to address those common problems. Another benefit was to … Continue reading Doing Consulting Work before Building Product
After a 3-way meeting (myself, a founder starting a new business, and a VC who used to be a founder himself), the VC told me: (Speaking of the amazing enthusiasm of the founder) “See the energy? I don’t have it. I’m too old. That’s why I’m not starting another company.” Well – turned out, the … Continue reading Age Is Just a Number
Quick thoughts from Consensus (late posting): Continue reading Quick Thoughts from Consensus 2023
I like how Alex Kwon is developing his current product. I call it a two-track product development. There’s the main product, Perl, which is a social journaling and microblogging tool for startup founders. (The product hasn’t been publicly launched yet.) And then there’s this awesome Telegram group he runs, where the initially invited users hang … Continue reading Two-track Product Development
“Some things just take time to build. Look at Figma and Notion. Took years to build the product first, before seeing the traction taking off.” – wise words of Kgosi Diphokwane It’s a refreshing reminder, when the world can’t have enough hackathon-style products built in 2 weeks on GPT API. Thousands of projects popping up … Continue reading Some Things Just Take Time to Build
How do you build a unicorn? In summary, the numbers you have to go for: 10M+ total active users10%+ freemium conversion1M+ paying users$10/mo+ ARPPU Of course there are so many other factors (e.g. market environment, churn/retention, CAC and unit economics, etc), so the above is just a back of the envelop math, at best. But … Continue reading How to Build a Unicorn
I shouldn’t generalize, but when I see a management consultant leaving their position and immediately starting a new startup, I get concerned. My recommendation is, try to get a job at a high-growth startup and learn from good founders and management team by working side by side with them. Or, if there’s an industry you’re … Continue reading Consultant to Founder
Sometimes, founders postpone layoffs because they care about their team and want to protect them as much as possible. This is understandable because layoffs are the most difficult, gut-wrenching decision. Just be aware, this deliberate (hence slow) approach often backfire. When a company considers layoffs, people at the company usually get a sense of what’s … Continue reading Postponing Layoffs = Doubly Sucks
For founders who had to shut down their company recently — Again, just keep yourself super busy physically – that’s my #1 tip. Continue reading For Founders Who Had to Shut Down Their Co’s