Lacking full knowledge of a startup's immense difficulty can be an advantage for first-time founders. This naivete allows them to commit to ventures they might otherwise avoid if they knew the true challenges ahead, similar to a child fearlessly skiing down a mountain.
The belief required to start a company that solves a massive, complex problem like communication isn't confidence, but a form of delusion. This mindset allows founders to persist through challenges that a more realistic person might abandon, especially when a problem seems fundamentally unsolvable.
Maintain a running list of problems you encounter. If a problem persists and you keep running into it after a year, it's a strong signal for a potential business idea. This "aging" process filters out fleeting frustrations from genuinely persistent, valuable problems.
Optimal product leadership structures separate the long-term, visionary role from the tactical, execution role. One person focuses on the big picture and selling the future ("the house"), while the other translates that chaos into immediate, actionable work ("fixing the walls").
Focusing solely on making communication faster or shorter is a mistake. Communication ultimately fails if the recipient doesn't interpret the message as the sender intended. The true goal is creating shared understanding, which accounts for the recipient's personal context and perspective, not just transmitting data efficiently.
Instead of setting early revenue targets, new products should focus on a more telling metric: getting a small cohort of sophisticated users to become obsessed. This deep engagement is a leading indicator of product-market fit and provides the necessary insights to scale to the next 50 users.
The biggest initial hurdle for a new product isn't getting the first dollar of revenue; it's crossing the chasm from a user trying the product once to becoming a truly engaged, repeat user. This "penny gap of engagement" is the most critical early milestone to overcome for long-term success.
A one-size-fits-all approach to internal communication fails. To create shared understanding, tailor updates like release notes to each department's unique goals. Sales cares about revenue features, customer success about bug fixes, and marketing needs to know what's coming next for planning.