Village Post
Post from the Village.
Short pieces on building a business with people around you.
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How Do You Build a Business That Doesn't Depend on You?
There's a strange irony in being a founder. At the beginning, the business is you. You sell it. You deliver it. You answer the emails. You solve the problems. You make the decisions. You know every customer. You know where everything is. And that's exactly how it should be.
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How Do I Know What My Biggest Business Problem Actually Is?
Founders are usually pretty good at identifying problems. The trouble is identifying which one matters most.
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AI Is Making It Easier to Build Alone. Should You?
AI is changing the economics of starting a business. One person can now do things that previously required a team. Write. Design. Research. Code. Analyse. Market. Automate. It's incredible. And I think it will create a generation of businesses that look completely different from the ones we have
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The Smallest Business That Can Work
Before you build the company, build the thing. It sounds obvious. But somehow we often do it backwards. We get the logo. Build the website. Rent the office. Hire the team. Create the org chart. Then we start looking for the customer.
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Don't Become So Strong That You Betray Your Character. Don't Become So Kind That You Betray Your Boundaries
Being a founder changes you. It has to. You have to become more decisive, more resilient and more comfortable with uncertainty. You have to learn to have difficult conversations, to say no, to make decisions that people won't like and to keep going when things go wrong.
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Who Do You Talk to When You Can't Talk to Your Team?
There are certain things you can't tell your team. You can't always tell them you're worried about cash flow. You can't tell them you're questioning the strategy. You can't tell them you're exhausted. You can't tell them you're wondering whether you've made a terrible decision.
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Not Every Business Needs to Be a Unicorn
Somewhere along the way, we decided that every business should become enormous. Raise money. Grow fast. Hire aggressively. Open an office. Raise more money. Grow faster. Then eventually become a unicorn. But what if you don't want that?
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What Problem Are You Actually Trying to Solve?
One of the easiest things to do as a founder is solve the wrong problem.
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Why Small Might Be the Smartest Way to Build Big
We've become obsessed with big. Big funding rounds. Big teams. Big offices. Big valuations. Big launches.
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Nobody Talks About How Lonely Building a Business Can Be
Nobody really prepares you for the loneliness of being a founder. People talk about the freedom. Being your own boss. Choosing your hours. Building something that's yours. And all of that can be true.
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Everyone Had a Village
When you actually look at the people behind some of the biggest ideas, there’s usually another story sitting underneath it. Franklin had the Junto, Einstein had the Olympia Academy and Pixar had the Braintrust.