Sarah (.’s Post

What is being frugal....practically? Consider these critical questions: 1. What's your strategy for sustainable growth? 2. Have you analyzed your unit economics? 3. Are you generating positive margins on each unit sold? To build a solid foundation: - Create a detailed, bottom-up budget. - Calculate your execution costs precisely. - Develop key metrics to keep yourself accountable. Essential metrics to track: - 13-week cash runway - Default alive/dead status (Will your current funding carry you to break-even?) Remember, frugality isn't about cutting corners—it's about maximizing efficiency and ensuring every dollar spent drives real value. #StartupStrategy #BusinessGrowth #UnitEconomics #EntrepreneurshipTips

Accountability to plan and purpose is very essential to business success.

Build an audience before a startup, create a distribution before a product. Many a times founder's make this mistake especially tech startup founders. Most of the new age "Founders" are very obsessed with the product that they are building (which is a good sign indeed) but here's the thing having a good tech in the product without even getting that idea to the market before hand leads the entrepreneurial journey no where and in majority of the cases such founders create a bubble in their mind of their product. Point to keep in mind : Distribution > Fancy product. Here are few things that i personally believe and follow : 1. Dream Bigg 2. Be resilient 3. Work really hard in early days of building your company. 4. Have the humility to fail everyday. Starting the year with High energy and focused mind. Here's 0 to1 of building a startup . If you are founder wanting to explore boundaries as i am , hit me up for a conversation. #GetupandStartup 🚀

day 3: startups are hard Salt + Light will be my 4th startup. Employee 4 or and less. The 2nd I co-founded. (Unless you count my wife and I doing our 1-time pop-up shop, Cupbop Spot) The first where I've had a strong enough conviction over a specific problem (loneliness) that I am deciding to go all-in with the team to solve it. There's plenty of reasons why they're so difficult. One reason I'd like to shine a light on is the uniqueness of skill and personality that's required to do a startup. Someone who can go above and beyond. Sort of. I say sort of because often it's not about a lack of desire to go above and beyond... It's more about the lack of know-how and resourcefulness to overcome a problem you feel ill-equipped to solve. You have to be excellent at navigating the unknown. I'd also say you need to genuinely care about why you're doing what you're doing. Something like experience + believing in the why. People that do this well: · They are relentless. · They are resourceful. · They manage to seek help and answers in the most uncanny places. · They seek guidance/mentorship. · They read/listen. · They use their own product. · They use other people's products. · They network and join communities. · They do the dirty work. One thing I'm learning is that our problems usually aren't all that unique. I sometimes don't know what I'm doing. It's hard. It's lonely. Thankfully, there's millions of other people who have been through the valley's and have experienced light at the end of the tunnel. Find them and ask them to speak into what you're doing. What's something you do to help overcome problems you haven't faced before?

Seen too many examples of expansive/unreasonable spending by founders in the last funding gold rush in Pakistani ecosystem a few years ago. Founders need to respect investors cash like it's their own... and that tends to happen generally when you have put in either cash OR significant amounts of cash equivalent (your time) in the company. #startups #investors #funding

Here is the one thing I wish did right every time I thought about starting a startup. Since my first year in college, I was caught up with this fantasy of having my own startup. And I did try my best. I started Currsive in the first year and scaled it to 2000 WAU and three paying users. I could only stick because I was solving a problem for myself (I am not that good at reading, so we built a solution) Post Currsive, I worked on three more major ideas to date and ended up loose before we could even get started. I soon started wondering what stopped me from building something and sticking to it. Given I had the technical and soft skills to at least get started, the cause was difficult to figure out. But after months of analysis, I found out I was never deeply attached to the idea/ problem/ mission. They were legit problems, sure. They could have been good startup ideas, sure. But what would make me stick to them every single day? Things as simple as liking your ideas and believing in them make a huge difference. During this period of figuring things out, I came across this video that validates as well as tells founders on how they should deal with this problem. I hope this helps other people stuck in a similar loop.

Want to support your founder friend? Don't say: • "I'll use this product" when you know you won't use it because it's not useful to you •⁠ "Let me know when it's launched" when you know you don't really care • "Your idea is interesting" when you know it isn't solving your problem Instead, say this: • "I'm not facing this problem, who is your target audience?" • "I'd pay to use it only if your product has..." • "I won't use this product, here's why..." There's too much noise when building a startup. It's tough. The last thing you want to do is to add more noise. So give them the signals, don't sugarcoat things. Being "nice" is not as being "helpful". Being "nice" sometimes is bad for founders because they might think your sharing is an insight when it's just a noise. TLDR, if you want to support your founder friend... Give direct and honest feedback. Signal > Noise Thought? *** Enjoy this? ♻️ Repost to share with others and follow Admond Lee for more in future. 📌 Interested in learning from startup mistakes? Join 1,300+ others who get my free newsletter: www.therunway.ventures 🤝🏻 #startups

Paul Graham: the secret to growing really fast is starting with a “small, intense fire” “You’ve got to find people who want what you’re making A LOT. And that's necessarily going to be a small number at first. But that's ok. That’s how these giant things get started… You don’t have to do any better than Apple and Facebook.” Apple started by selling just 500 Apple I computers. Today Apple is the largest company in the world. "You have to know who those first users are and how you're going to get them. Then you're going to sit down and just have a party with those first few users and focus entirely on them and making them super super happy." He gives another example of a startup in a Y Combinator batch with a beta group of just one user: Sam Altman. This startup was building a new mobile email client and their goal was to just make Sam happy. Sam uses email a lot on the go, knows all of the other email client options, and is super demanding. So they know that if they build a product that makes Sam happy, odds are it will make lots of other people happy too. "One of the things we tell startups in these extreme cases where they can make just one user happy is to act like a consultant. Act like Sam has hired you to make an email app just for him. All you have to do is make Sam happy--it can say 'Sam Altman' at the top of the screen. That's ok! Just so long as Sam would feel bummed if you stopped working on it. That's the test." Ultimately the secret to building a great product that grows really fast is to build something a small group of people love so much that they'd be really disappointed if you stopped working on it. There are lots of important steps to get right after this, but this is the foundation for growth. Source: This Week in Startups --- We curate the top 1% of startup advice from the world’s best founders and investors. Join 5,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org

I believe in honesty and transparency. That’s how we learn and connect. Last week, I had several opportunities to share my experience in the startup world. I met with three young startups. I honestly shared my experience with everyone. Three coffees, four founders. Hugs at the end ❤️ I believe the hardest thing is to stay consistent, maintain your integrity, not get discouraged when things don’t go well, but understand why and keep going.(keep going on repeat😎) I’m thinking of creating a support circle where we could meet regularly. If anyone is interested, write/leave a comment ☺️ Photo description: if you can close your eyes and clearly see you goal, you will “shoot it” ☺️ #startup

I’ve been a MIA from Linkedin for a while... Because I've been heads-down, building a new startup 🚀 with Dan Perry, PhD While we’re not ready to make any official announcements, I can share some high-level details: - We’re building an agentic AI in the proptech space - We have fully automated several labor intensive tasks in a sandbox environment - Early impressions of the tech demos have been very positive But that’s not why I’m posting today. I’m posting because I wanted to announce... Antler has funded our startup! (It seems they were just as excited about our idea as we were.) HUGE thanks to everyone at Antler, and a massive shoutout to Shambhavi Mishra, Naman Budhdeo, Daphne McLarty, CPA, CA, and Alex Wright, CPA, CA for the incredible support you've given us over the last few months. We wouldn’t have moved this quickly, this confidently without it. Excited to share our progress with the world -- but first, a lot of work needs to be done :) P.s. If you haven’t heard about Antler – let me save you a trip to Google: - Antler is a global “day-zero VC” (they engage with entrepreneurs as early as the idea stage) with a chapter at Toronto’s OneEleven. - Twice a year, they find 50 - 60 of the best entrepreneurs in Canada, and give them 3 months of office space, coaching from some of the best founders in the world, and access to a vast network of entrepreneurs and investors. - While the selection process is quite competitive – I think every entrepreneur (or dissatisfied corporate worker with big ideas) owes it to themselves to apply. If you have the entrepreneurial itch and want to build something cool (even if you don't know what it is) -- I strongly urge you to apply to the program. Applications are now open for the September cohort (will post a link in comments). What are you waiting for?