there’s a relatively common idea in startup world that a company “ships its org chart”. this is called Conway’s law: in effect, it means that a given company will end up shipping a product that reflects their org chart. for example, we have 6 people in online marketing at kettle & fire. that means that – relative to our competition – K&F is going to…
stranded ideas
today i learned about “mastery learning” – basically, a process where students study a concept until they can pass test showing 90% proficiency, then they move onto the next concept. not only that, but it appears to be empirically validated. from wikipedia: Mastery Learning has been one of the most highly investigated teaching methods over the past 50 years. While it has been the subject…
quick idea – a tax policy that supports high-growth small business
one of the biggest things i’ve learned over the last 2.5 years growing kettle & fire 300%+ per year is the importance of cashflow… and how growth can actually kill you when you’re dealing with a physical product. in our case, we were bootstrapped for the first 15 months of the company’s history, and were growing like crazy. every month we had record sales growth,…
my talk at crypto refactor camp
a few weekends ago, i attended and spoke at ribbonfarm’s crypto refactor camp. the event was fantastic, and had a ton of amazing, thoughtful people. i loved it. i figured i’d share the (very rough) slides for my talk, on how i think crypto has the potential to help humanity solve our next class of problems.
contrarian thought – ideas are (almost) everything
the more i’ve done in my career, the more i’ve come to believe that it’s more important to come up with a unique, great idea than it is to choose a thing blindly and execute at an A+ level. that may work for agencies, sure, but not startups. personally, had we started Kettle & Fire just 18 months later, our journey to an 8 figure…
the 4 kinds of side businesses you can start
ah, the side hustle. i’ve become somewhat of a (self-proclaimed) expert at doing random things on the side over the course of my life. in the last few years i’ve created udemy courses, launched a self-published book (under a fake name – not proud of this one), done marketing consulting, launched an email course (with a paid back-end), airbnb’ed my apartment, traded stocks, bought cryptocurrency (my best investment…
are emotions important?
One of the biggest realizations I’ve had this year is that my emotions are not important. Not that I should control them, or manage them better… but that they literally do not matter. At best, they’re useful feedback tools. At worst, they can destroy your life, your relationships, and everything you care for. Think about how many emotions you experience on a given day. You’re…
books that have changed my life
over the last 5 years, i’ve read 348 books – that’s an average of 1.3 books per week. of the 348 books i’ve read, below (categorized) are the most impactful. books i return to time and time again, and can recommend with full confidence: business mastery deep work influence antifragile the hard thing about hard things zero to one crucial conversations philosophy meditations total freedom…
questions for performance reviews
since launching kettle & fire, i’ve been thrown into a role where – for the first time – i’m managing more than 5 people. as the team has grown, i’ve had to learn how to hire, manage and help team members grow and thrive. it hasn’t always been easy or smooth. as part of working on this, i’ve hired an executive coach, meditated, read ~10…
startups i’d invest in today
at some point in the next 10 years, i plan to start an angellist syndicate. until then, i’ll be writing occasional (timestamped) posts detailing the companies i would invest in today, and why i’d invest in them. the goal is to build a track record of predictions around startup success before it’s happened. most companies i’ll look at will be in the tech and food…