How to speak? A game changer!
I found this 60 minutes video and it has changed how I communicate.
For all entrepreneurs reading this newsletter: EMBRACE THE STRUGGLE!
Hello everyone,
Another week in paradise. I’m super happy to be alive.
Quick note: This past week I started the book Never Split the Difference…. an wow! An amazing one - super recommend.
Today we will cover the State of Flow, Web3, Atomic Habits, Entrepreneurship, How to Speak with MIT professor Patrick Winston, and an entirely new section [The best of Linkedin].
I hope you enjoy it.
FLOW
We have talked about the State of Flow - Popularized by positive psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura, flow state describes a feeling where, under the right conditions, you become fully immersed in whatever you are doing. - and I continue to explore it. Do you want to be 500% more productive?
In a 10-year study conducted by McKinsey, top executives reported being five times more productive in flow. Think about that for a moment. This means, if you can spend Monday in flow, you’ll get as much done as your steady-state peers do in a week.
Read the complete article here
More….
Web3
Decrypt - Common Raises $20M to Build DAO Management Platform - Here
Business
McKinsey - The Future of B2B os Hybrid - here
First Round - A Manager’s Guide to Helping Teams Face Down Uncertainty, Burnout and Perfectionism - here
YCombinator - Building Culture: Leadership, Culture
Atomic Habits
It’s one of my all-time favorite books. It’s a true game-changer for anyone who is conscious of oneself and looking for lifelong improvement. (apparently, you can become 37.78better at anything)
[NEW SECTION] The Best of Linkedin
The highlight of the Week (please turn off your phone for this one)
How to Speak with Patrick Winston
Now let me get back to work and continue to support all the fantastic founders I work with.
Much love. Stay Hungry Stay Foolish.
DMS
Oppsssss Before I go, let me share the YC letter to all founders about the challenges ahead.
Greetings YC Founders,
During this week we’ve done office hours with a large number of YC companies. They reached out to ask whether they should change their plans around spending, runway, hiring, and funding rounds based on the current state of public markets. What we’ve told them is that economic downturns often become huge opportunities for the founders who quickly change their mindset, plan ahead, and make sure their company survives.
Here are some thoughts to consider when making your plans:
No one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don’t look good.
The safe move is to plan for the worst. If the current situation is as bad as the last two economic downturns, the best way to prepare is to cut costs and extend your runway within the next 30 days. Your goal should be to get to Default Alive.
If you don’t have the runway to reach default alive and your existing investors or new investors are willing to give you more money right now (even on the same terms as your last round) you should strongly consider taking it.
Regardless of your ability to fundraise, it’s your responsibility to ensure your company will survive if you cannot raise money for the next 24 months.
Understand that the poor public market performance of tech companies significantly impacts VC investing. VCs will have a much harder time raising money and their LPs will expect more investment discipline. As a result, during economic downturns even the top tier VC funds with a lot of money slow down their deployment of capital (lesser funds often stop investing or die). This causes less competition between funds for deals which results in lower valuations, lower round sizes, and many fewer deals completed. In these situations, investors also reserve more capital to backstop their best performing companies, which further reduces the number of new financings. This slow down will have a disproportionate impact on international companies, asset heavy companies, low margin companies, hardtech, and other companies with high burn and long time to revenue. Note that the numbers of meetings investors take don’t decrease in proportion to the reduction in total investment. It’s easy to be fooled into thinking a fund is actively investing when it is not.
For those of you who have started your company within the last 5 years, question what you believe to be the normal fundraising environment. Your fundraising experience was most likely not normal and future fundraises will be much more difficult.
If you are post Series A and pre-product market fit, don’t expect another round to happen at all until you have obviously hit product market fit. If you are pre-series A, the Series A Milestones we publish here might even turn out to be a bit too low.
If your plan is to raise money in the next 6-12 months, you might be raising at the peak of the downturn. Remember that your chances of success are extremely low even if your company is doing well. We recommend you change your plan.
Remember that many of your competitors will not plan well, maintain high burn, and only figure out they are screwed when they try to raise their next round. You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive.
For more thoughts watch this video we’ve created: Save Your Startup during an Economic Downturn