Unicorn founder tactics:

Step one, sprinkle some pixie dust on your business plan.

Step two, wait for the magical IPO.

Step three, repeat.

Tactics from a 2x Unicorn Founder 

• Why Read:

  • Invaluable insights and practical advice on managing early performance, learning from your users and more.

• Featuring:

  • Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan), Author at Lenny’s Newsletter and Lenny’s Podcast interviews 

    Uri Levine (@UriLevine1), a 2x Unicorn Builder-Waze & Moovit | Author of “Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution”

• Link: 

  • “Lessons from a two-time unicorn builder, 50-time startup advisor, and 20-time company board member | Uri Levine (co-founder of Waze)”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Fall in love with the problem and use it as the North Star for your startup journey.

  • "So when you fall in love with the problem, then what happened is that the problem is going to serve as the North Star of your journey, and when you have a North Star, you're going to make less deviation from the course and you are way more likely to become successful. But also the story that you are about to tell is way more compelling."

• Use retention as the key metric to determine product-market fit.

  • "At the end of the day, product market fit have one metric. One metric. That's it. Retention. That's really simple. If you create value, they will come back. If they're not coming back, that means that you are not creating value."

• When fundraising, start with your strongest point in the first slide and repeat it in the last slide, as these slides will be displayed the longest.

  • "Most people are missing the most important slide of their presentation. The most important slide of your presentation is the first slide, not the one that you think about it. The first slide. The one that says Company XYZ intro. This slide is going to be presented for the longest period of time. The longest period of time in the presentation, this slide is going to be presented on the screen and you didn't say anything there. This is the place that you're going to put your strongest point. Now the second most important slide is the last one. Not the summary. The one that says thank you. That's the time to repeat that."

• When hiring, mark your calendar 30 days after a new hire starts and ask yourself if you would hire them again knowing what you know now. If not, fire them immediately.

  • "If everyone knows within a month and every time that you hire someone new, what I really want you to do is mark your calendars for 30 days down the road and ask yourself one question, "Knowing what I know today, would I hire this person?" At the end of the day, I'd like to nail that into yes or no, right? Because this is where decisions are being made easily. If you ask yourself that question, if the answer is yes, then go to this person and tell them that you are really excited that they've joined, they are exceeding your expectations, and give them more equity, and you buy their loyalty for life. If the answer is no, fire them immediately."

• Watch new users to understand how they interact with your product, and if they behave unexpectedly, ask them why to gain valuable insights for improving your product.

  • "And the way to figure it out is, by the way, two things. Number one, watch new users. Simply watch users and see what they're doing. And number two, if they're not doing what you expect them to do, then ask them why, because this why is the one that is going to make your product successful. You understand the why and the next version you're going to address that."

• Don't be afraid to fail, as failure is a part of the startup journey and getting back up after failing makes you stronger.

  • "Don't be afraid to fail, right? In your journey, you're going to fail multiple times, and when you fail and get up, you get up stronger. This is maybe something that I will tell all the parents in the world. The biggest advice that I can give you is teach your children to fail. Because when they get up, they get up stronger, and when they know that they will get out of their comfort zone and they will eventually discover what makes them happy."

Requirements for 10x Growth

Why Read: 

• Valuable insights on the Lindy Effect and how it relates to startup growth potential, highlighting the challenges of achieving substantial growth and strategies to overcome them.

Featuring:

• Jason Cohen(@asmartbear), Founder at WP Engine

Link: 

• “The Lindy Effect on startup potential”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Understanding the Lindy Effect and Startup Growth Potential:

  • Point: Recognize that on average, doubling from the current point is often feasible.

  • "This general rule is called the Lindy Effect: For certain non-perishable things (like technology, companies, books, and ideas), the expected lifespan is twice its current age. Rewriting the same rule with different language allows us to apply this rule to startup growth: However large you've gotten, you can probably double it. If you've gotten 10 customers you can probably get another 10 in a similar way. Will you ever get 2000? I hope so, but most companies that do get 10 never get 2000. Putting it another way, doubling the size of the company always sounds plausible, because you've done it once, so you can probably do it again, even faster this time. But 10x or 100x is not obvious at all."

• Realizing the Challenges of Achieving 10x Growth:

  • Point: Understand that while doubling is often plausible, achieving 10x or more requires innovation and overcoming hurdles.

  • "One way to understand why 2x is plausible but 20x requires innovation, is to observe that the actions that got you your first 10 customers are probably not sufficient for generating 100, even though they're probably sufficient for getting another 10. You might have scratched and clawed inside your social network to get the first 10, but that doesn't scale to 100, and just because you were successful at convincing customers one-at-a-time to convert through hour-long Zoom calls doesn't mean you can convert 100 no-sales-touch customers via Google ads."

• Recognizing the Need for New Strategies to Achieve Substantial Growth:

  • Point: Be aware that relying on existing mechanisms alone is unlikely to lead to 10x growth without significant time and luck.

  • "So the "startup growth" version of this rule is: You can probably double your size by doing what you're already doing, but 10x will require innovation. Or, instead of innovation, time and luck. Specifically, waiting a long time for the existing mechanism to keep working, and lucky that nothing stops that slow but predictable growth: the channel doesn't saturate and get worse, new competitors don't arise, market conditions don't make the product less desirable, the economy doesn't slow, and so on."

• Proving 10x Potential Through Hyper-Growth:

  • Point: Demonstrate the possibility of achieving 10x or more growth by exhibiting very fast growth at a meaningful scale.

  • "One answer is having very fast growth. If you're doubling every six months, you clearly have line-of-sight for more growth than just 2x. Your trajectory proves intense market demand is getting coupled with an ability to find and service it. If the underlying market is large and/or growing, you have a good case that 10x is already within reach, and innovation could potentially get you 100x or 1000x."

• Expanding into Adjacencies to Break the Lindy Effect:

  • Point: Consider expanding into related areas while leveraging existing strengths to unlock higher growth potential.

  • "Another way to break the Lindy Effect is to change something substantial. I think of this as expanding into an adjacency. As explained in that article, this means keep one foot planted in the areas you're already strong, and expanding into something new, risky, but with much higher upside than incremental improvement on the existing business."

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