Why Nobody Understands Startup Growth
Wednesday, 30 July 2025
Startups don’t grow like businesses. Not in the traditional sense. They don’t scale by adding headcount, expanding inventory, or renting more retail space. They grow by discovering, and then systematically proving, a revenue-generating system that works before it collapses. And yet, here we are, in 2025, with startup advisors, development organizations, investors, and even policymakers
- Published in Insights / Research, Startup Ecosystems, Startups
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Why AI Agents Will Build the Next Wave of Startups: The Death of Marketing Teams
Thursday, 05 December 2024
For decades, startup experienced professionals, researchers, and classically trained marketers, have been reinforcing as best we can that it is well established, proven, and certain, that marketing (aside from team) is the single greatest cause of a startup’s success or failure. We’ve been trying to explain this for the sake of the economy, of founders,
Entrepreneurs Struggle Beyond Startup
Tuesday, 08 June 2021
Highly risk tolerant and constantly fixated on doing things better, entrepreneurs tend not to be found running companies. That’s not remotely a knock against entrepreneurs. Operating a company is a management skillset, it’s operational, it’s project based, it’s plan and execute…. and these are skillsets that, while valuable to a founder, are not typically consistent
- Published in Startups
Is ‘Blitzscaling’ Choking Innovation – And Wasting Money?
Thursday, 11 July 2019
WIRED and Executive in Residence and faculty member at Columbia Business School, Leonard Sherman, published a great look today at the implication of substantial rounds of investment going into young companies. The idea behind the intent, known as Blitzscaling, is to fuel such innovations substantially enough that they can establish a global market share and
- Published in Startups
Growth Hacking for Investors
Sunday, 27 November 2016
I had the honor of sharing, with Austin Pre-Accelerator DivInc, some thoughts about Growth Hacking. The startup program fostering diversity in tech asked for some insight to the idea of growth hacking and I’ll admit, I struggled with how to make an hour talk about such a thing relevant to startup founders. Luckily, I find myself in
- Published in Startups
The Tale of Two Founders
Tuesday, 24 March 2015
Yesterday, famed New York Times cartoonist Kaamran Hafeez featured a sketch that has garnered quite a bit of attention in the startup community. Implied by one “faction” (a term I’m using not to be critical but to distinguish) to offer a tongue-in-cheek jab at founders and investors who arguably embrace market share and scalability over
- Published in Startups
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