FoundryBase @FoundryBase

We've entered the golden era of being an entrepreneur. What used to cost you $100K to get off the ground now has gone to $0. Take advantage of this. Start tinkering. Build something on the side. You won't regret going for it but you may regret never giving it a shot.

Make a decision to start building today

Startup Archive @StartupArchive_

7 months ago

Ben Horowitz on the 1 reason founders fail as CEO The a16z co-founder is asked for the #1 reason founders fail in the CEO role, to which he replies: “I would say the big thing is a lack of decision — hesitation . . . You can be really smart, but if you wait too long before you

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What seems crazy today (but might change the world)?

Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman

9 months ago

A headline from 2007.

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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on why you should hire the divas: “Steve Jobs was a diva” “If you read any management textbook, it says ‘don’t hire the divas’ because they’re nothing but a pain in the ass. And by the way, they are. But the people who are the divas—who believe—are the ones who will drive the culture and company to excellence. Steve Jobs was a diva. I worked with Bill Joy who was my colleague for many years—he’s an example of a diva. And I mean this in the most flattering way: they expect a lot, they drive people hard, they’re controversial, and they care passionately. If you find those people, you’re probably going to work for one so be nice to them.” However, Eric does not mean that you should tolerate arrogant jerks at your company. In his book How Google Works, he uses use the terms “divas” and “knaves” to distinguish between who you should tolerate and who you shouldn’t: “Knavish behavior is a product of low integrity; diva-ish behavior is one of high exceptionalism. Knaves prioritize the individual over the team; divas think they are better than the team, but want success equally for both. Knaves need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. But as long as their contributions match their outlandish egos, divas should be tolerated and even protected. Great people are often unusual and difficult, and some of those quirks can be quite off-putting. Since culture is about social norms and divas refuse to be normal, cultural factors can conspire to sweep out the divas along with the knaves. As long as people can figure out any way to work with the divas, and the divas’ achievements outweigh the collateral damage caused by their diva ways, you should fight for them. They will pay off your investment by doing interesting things.” Video source: @GreylockVC (2015)

Replit CEO Amjad Masad on the “most gangster story in Silicon Valley” In September 2021, Replit founder Amjad Masad tweeted: “The most gangster story in Silicon Valley is Steve Jobs buying Pixar for $5m, investing $50m, operating at a loss for a decade — so much so he had to cut personal checks every month to make payroll and somehow turning it around to exit for $7B to Disney.” He expands on this in his interview on the My First Million podcast: “The thing I like about the Steve Jobs story is when he was lost in the desert for 10 years. He was fired from Apple, and then he created two companies that were failing the whole time. NeXT Computer and Pixar were literally failing, and he was investing more and more of his own money. At that pace he was going to go broke, but he kept going for 10 years. How do you do that?” Eventually the success of Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated feature film, helped make Pixar’s 1995 IPO one of the the most successful of the decade. And Apple used the NeXt operating system as the foundation for macOS. But both ventures took the better part of 10 years. Interestingly, the 12 “wilderness years” between getting fired at Apple and coming back was the most pivotal period of Steve Jobs’s life. His work with Pixar and NeXT helped him grow into the leader capable of taking Apple to unimaginable heights when he returned. Video source: @myfirstmilpod @Replit @amasad (2024)

"There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period." — Brené Brown. Teams that ship fast treat failure as data, not disaster. Make Reversible bets. Being wrong for three days beats stalled for three months.

Define the smallest version of the bet. Time-box it. Ship before the window closes. You'll learn more from three weeks of trying than three months of planning.

"I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying." — Jeff Bezos Regret calculus is simple. It's almost never about swinging and missing. It's about not swinging at all.

Next time your idea sounds crazy… maybe that’s the signal. You’re early-ish. KookyPlan celebrates startups bold enough to look strange today so they can change the world tomorrow.

But here’s the pattern: Every great idea looks ridiculous at first. If it seems obvious, someone else has already built it. The best founders lean into the weird. They test, iterate, and prove what others dismiss.

Airbnb was called “the worst idea ever.” Strangers sleeping on strangers’ floors? Who would do that? Investors laughed. Friends said it would never scale. It sounded impractical, even dangerous.

“If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.” — Charles Kettering (engineer, inventor)

@aakashgupta Interested

"Our marketing team is just me and ~40 AI agents." -Million-dollar founder with no marketing team Want the template? Retweet + Reply and I'll DM you.

It’s never been a better time to build

Alex & Books 📚 @AlexAndBooks_

10 months ago

You’ve consumed enough, it’s time to start creating.

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Start with a small (often ignored) market

Startup Archive @StartupArchive_

10 months ago

Peter Thiel on the importance of starting with a small market “It’s always a big mistake going after a giant market on day 1. That’s typically evidence that you haven’t defined the categories correctly, and there’s going to be too much competition. Almost all of the successful

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Every great startup begins as a little bit crazy. The best ideas never look obvious at first. They look strange, impractical, even impossible. That’s normal.

how can you call yourself an entrepreneur if you dont have a bunch of unused domain names?

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer (2007): “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

“The secret to successful hiring is this: Look for the people who want to change the world.” - Marc Benioff, co-founder, CEO & chairman of Salesforce