Incidents of alleged founder misconduct, like lying about metrics and mistreating staff, are not isolated events. They are symptoms of a market bubble where excess capital fuels arrogance and unprofessional behavior, serving as a key warning sign for the wider industry.
As AI automates jobs, widespread unemployment will compel individuals to start their own small businesses to survive. This shift marks a return to self-reliance and entrepreneurship driven by necessity rather than ambition, echoing a past economic structure.
Relying on a single bank is a major vulnerability. Maintaining accounts with at least three banks—one primary and two backups—provides critical redundancy. This strategy protects against institutional failure, account lockouts, poor customer service, and provides leverage in disputes.
1Password's growth illustrates the 'land and expand' model. Start with a B2C product individuals love, which they bring into their workplace. This creates organic internal demand, allowing you to then approach the company with an enterprise solution offering management and compliance.
A huge Series A before clear product-market fit creates immense pressure to scale prematurely. This can force 'unnatural acts' and unrealistic expectations, potentially leading the company to implode. It challenges the 'more money is always better' mindset at the early stages.
An IPO at a valuation that's flat compared to the last private round suggests the company is distressed. It implies the private markets are tapped out and the company is being forced to go public out of a desperate need for capital, rather than from a position of strength.
When capital flows in a circle—a chipmaker invests in an AI firm which then buys the investor's chips—it artificially inflates revenues and valuations. This self-dealing behavior is a key warning sign that the AI funding frenzy is a speculative bubble, not purely market-driven.
Gamma's success ($100M ARR with 52 employees) proves an 'AI-first' approach can challenge giants. By rethinking core products like presentations from the ground up with AI, startups can create delightful, hyper-efficient products and achieve massive scale with a tiny headcount.
Forget what executives say publicly. The massive capital allocation for AI data centers is the real evidence of impending job displacement. This level of investment only makes sense if companies expect significant cost savings from automating human labor, making capital the truest indicator of intent.
This visceral analogy reframes product-market fit as an uncontrollable, overwhelming demand from the market. It's not just positive metrics; it's a state of being swarmed by customers. If you don't feel this intense 'market pull,' you haven't truly achieved it and must keep iterating.