Founders
The people who start companies, and the specific challenges that come with that role. Much of the actual job turns out to be operational and administrative, far from the vision that got the company started.
Product-market fit doesn’t arrive as one clean number
Product-market fit doesn’t arrive as one clean number. It shows up as a handful of quieter signals — and only together do they actually mean something.
What a founder owes a team during a bad quarter
A genuinely bad quarter tests founder communication more than any other stretch of company life. What gets said, and left unsaid, tends to matter enormously.
Recognizing when the team, not the product, is the risk
Founders default to diagnosing struggles as product or market problems. Sometimes the actual constraint is the founding team itself, and that is harder to admit.
Hiring the first ten employees changes the company forever
The first ten hires set norms that persist long after those specific people have moved on, whether or not founders are deliberate about shaping them.
Hiring the first ten employees changes the company forever
The first ten hires set norms that persist long after those specific people have moved on, whether or not founders are deliberate about shaping them.
The co-founder breakup nobody saw coming
Co-founder splits often look sudden from the outside. Nearly all of them were visible, in hindsight, for months before anyone acted on the warning signs.
Splitting equity fairly is harder than it sounds on paper
An equal equity split feels like the fair, conflict-avoiding choice at the start. It can quietly become a source of resentment once contributions diverge.
