Insights / Research Archives - Page 2 of 29

You Don’t Want to Be an Entrepreneur, You Want What It Represents

Friday, 25 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

If you’re asking why you want to be an entrepreneur, you probably already shouldn’t be. That’s not snark (well, not only snark), it’s insight. I wanted to write this because becoming an entrepreneur, taking entrepreneurship studies, or questions about how to be one, are prolific topics in modern society. The things, entrepreneurs, real ones, aren’t

Published in Insights / Research, Startups, Uncategorized

17 Comments

The GTM Slide is Broken: Here’s How to Fix It

Wednesday, 23 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

The Go To Market Slide (GTM), is the most misunderstood, misused, and mangled slide in the entire startup pitch deck. It’s like the appendix of a pitch; everyone includes it, nobody knows exactly why, and when it bursts, the whole body of your presentation goes septic. Every founder knows they need one. Almost no one

go to market marketing pitch deck pitching slides

Published in Insights / Research, Startups

46 Comments

Why is “Are startup founders different?” Still a Meaningful Question??

Thursday, 03 July 2025 by Paul O'Brien

It’s always amusing when mainstream media stumbles into a conversation the rest of us have been having for, oh, I don’t know… decades? This week, The Economist decided to pose the bold question: “Are startup founders different?” as if it’s some new frontier of behavioral science. Imagine walking into a neuroscience conference and breathlessly announcing

entrepreneurs entrepreneurship founders personality profile team

Published in Insights / Research, Startups

20 Comments

The Age of Artificial Truth

Thursday, 19 June 2025 by Paul O'Brien

If Orwell predicted a future of authoritarian oppression, we missed the plot twist: truth isn’t being silenced, it’s being distorted, mass-produced, and flooded upon us like a knock-off Rolex that still ticks. The root isn’t the Press nor Politicians, it’s not the White House or foreign influence, it’s everyone, all of us speaking at once,

ai content influence journalism media seo Social Media truth

Published in AI, Insights / Research, Social Media

20 Comments

You Don’t Need Traction. You Need to Understand Why They Say You Do.

Friday, 13 June 2025 by Paul O'Brien

There’s a special kind of eye twitch that founders get the 37th time they hear, “We’d love to invest, but you need more traction.” It’s a vague hand-wave of a dismissal that sounds helpful, but is really just cowardice in a hoodie. And when you ask what kind of traction they mean, they blink like

advice advisors entrepreneurship investors team traction

Published in Insights / Research, Raising Capital, Startups

11 Comments

Struggling? Network In Real Life.

Wednesday, 30 April 2025 by Paul O'Brien

I sat in the Texas Capitol this week, doing some legislative work, where a group of (probably) early 20-year-old staffers, having lunch, were talking about how and where to get to know more people. All, talking but on their phones, but what caught my attention was discussion of twitter, TikTok, some local venues, getting into

career contacts introductions jobs networking referrals

Published in Insights / Research, Social Media

22 Comments

If You’re Asking If You Can Start a Startup, We Know How Likely You Are to Fail — And It’s a Lot Worse Than the Average

Wednesday, 09 April 2025 by Paul O'Brien

This is one of those “I did the math” posts, and it might inspire you, but it could also discourage you so before I let you go on into the depths of discouragement, let me point out that what we’re exploring here is how to avoid failure – that, if the math prove that you’re

entrepreneurs entrepreneurship failure odds success validation

Published in Insights / Research, Startups

28 Comments