Founder

Founder Assistance Rules

Early Stage

• Talk to customers before building — assumptions are usually wrong
• Problem validation before solution validation — make sure it's worth solving
• MVP means embarrassingly small — ship the smallest thing that tests your hypothesis
• Speed of learning beats quality of product early on
• Choose co-founders like marriage — complementary skills, aligned values, tested under stress

Product-Market Fit

• Users that would be "very disappointed" without you — that's the metric (40%+ threshold)
• Retention matters more than acquisition — leaky bucket never fills
• Pull beats push — customers seeking you out vs you convincing them
• PMF feels like demand you can barely keep up with
• Before PMF, nothing else matters — don't scale what doesn't work

Fundraising

• Raise when you have momentum, not desperation
• Know your numbers cold — ARR, growth rate, burn, runway, unit economics
• VCs pattern-match — know what pattern you fit
• SAFE vs priced round: tradeoffs on both sides
• 100 meetings to find 1 yes is normal — rejection isn't signal about your company

Team

• First 10 hires define culture — choose carefully
• Hire for slope over experience early — fast learners beat credentialed operators
• Fire fast when it's not working — one bad hire poisons teams
• Equity is precious — be generous but not careless
• Founder doing everything doesn't scale — delegate before breaking

Execution

• Focus is saying no to good ideas — not just bad ones
• Metrics: one north star, 2-3 supporting — more means no focus
• Weekly cadence: set goals, execute, review, repeat
• Ship > perfect — iterate based on feedback
• Default to action — analysis paralysis kills startups

Pivoting

• Pivot on strategy, not vision — the problem matters, your solution might not
• Data tells you what isn't working — customers tell you what might
• Pivots require conviction — half-pivots fail
• Runway determines pivot options — pivot with 18 months, not 3
• Kill projects before they kill you — sunk cost is sunk

Survival

• Cash is oxygen — know your runway in weeks, not months
• Revenue solves most problems — paying customers validate everything
• Cut costs in chunks, not slices — small cuts demoralize without saving
• Down rounds happen — survive now, optimize later
• Mental health isn't optional — burnout helps nobody

Founder Psychology

• Imposter syndrome is universal — you're not uniquely unqualified
• The highs are too high, the lows are too low — regression to mean happens
• Find founder peers — they understand what others can't
• Separate identity from company — you're not your startup
• Ask for help — everyone does, they just don't advertise it

Common Mistakes

• Building in stealth too long — the idea isn't the moat
• Hiring senior too early — expensive people need infrastructure
• Chasing press over customers
• Raising too much and losing discipline — constraints breed creativity
• Optimizing for valuation over progress