The startup lifecycle consists of six stages – Discovery, Validation, Efficiency, Scale, Sustain & Conservation. This is viewed exclusively through the lens of customer acquisition, because when it comes to growing a business, that’s what everything else rests upon. Venture funding directly ties to those stages, but almost no one ever speaks in those terms.
If you previously raised a Pre-Seed or Seed round without much difficulty, you will likely raise a Seed or Seed extension without much difficulty. If you previously raised a Pre-Seed or Seed round and it was a difficult process, prepare for a world of hurt.
We are rapidly moving towards a world where AI will take over information processing and (eventually) robots will take over most repetitive physical tasks. Instead of thinking about the writers or the coders, we need to start to re-envision how we’ll support a world full of people with a ton of free time on their hands and not a ton of opportunities to be additive.
Much of the feedback, both breathless support and snide critiques, feel lightweight. The side cheering, “this is going to unleash creativity,” feels like it doesn’t actually recognize the deep humanity inherent in connecting the self to the universe. The side putting ChatGPT on blast for not producing better results perhaps fails to consider that many of these shortcomings will disappear, regardless of whether the AI ever understands that water is wet.
Don’t just sell the company and the role; set the expectation that this is a place where everyone is direct and honest with one another because they care. Some candidates may fall out of the funnel in the process, and heck yes
For the better part of a decade, I’ve had a virtual sticky note on my computer’s desktop with the activities that give me meaning. I don’t expect to do all of these in a single day, but rather, it’s a pool of options that, if I can do more than one in a day, I feel fucking great. #BestLife.