How startups should position their product: Be like Lululemon’s day 1. Lululemon is now a general athletic brand for everyone, but when they started they were about one thing only – yoga pants for women. The key here is not to see yoga pants as they’re worn today. You should go back to the late … Continue reading Lululemon’s Day 1
Some observations from a recent Asian American businesspeople gathering (This is a light posting, so please don’t take this too seriously 🙂 These were just my random observations, but if anybody wants to see some real posts on the topic, follow Dave Lu – he has really thoughtful posts, including his seminal essay “How the … Continue reading At a Recent Asian American Gathering
I always recommend founders consider doing a secondary transaction and taking some money off the table, if they can: Continue reading Taking Some Money Off The Table
Some people asked about my sabbatical experience, so I created a quick slide. Feel free to share/forward. Also please share your own experience, learnings, and tips if you recently took some time off! Continue reading On Sabbatical
Imagine you’re meeting a VC today and pitching your company. Now, also imagine the VC goes home tonight and tells his or her spouse about the meeting with you. How do you think the VC would (or should) describe your product to the spouse? Remember, this is for someone who doesn’t have any context, and … Continue reading How They’ll Explain To Others
What I’ve seen over the years is, early stage companies rarely grow beyond their founders’ capabilities; or at least, companies model after their founders really closely. If the founder is unfocused, chances are the whole company is unfocused. If the founder is incapable of making decisions, the company is likely to have meetings after meetings … Continue reading Sharpen The Tooth
When we think about technologies that change the world and help the humanity, we think about things like curing cancer, solving the climate crisis, or sending people to other planets. Those are great, but what’s massively underrated is Technology That Just Works – as anyone who has been frustrated with tech failure would know. Just … Continue reading Technology That Just Works
There’s a reason why only 1% of the population is rich. The formula to rich is, and has always been, there in plain sight: That’s what Warren Buffett did; That’s what Masayoshi Son did; That’s what Nvidia is currently doing on a corporate level. The list goes on and on. But only 10% of people … Continue reading Cashflow + Investing
Yes, early stage startups must go super narrow and deep, and solve one problem only. Absolutely true. But sometimes I see founders misunderstanding this as skimping on critical features, without which the product cannot deliver its proper value. Consider Uber v1. It was a narrow service – all it did was hailing limousines in SF. … Continue reading Don’t Skimp
I started using Pilot.com recently and was blown away by their product (simple yet super intuitive) and their service (from onboarding to the customer success journey). Turns out, Pilot is built on top of Quickbook Online. They didn’t reinvent the SMB accounting software. They provide a nice “wrapper app” experience to the existing software. There … Continue reading SaaS on Existing Platforms