Leadership
How founders and managers guide a team, especially through uncertainty or disagreement. It’s tested most clearly not in the good quarters but in the ones nobody wants to talk about.
A founding team is a bet on how people handle conflict
Founding teams get chosen mostly for complementary skills. What actually determines whether a team survives is how its members handle real disagreement.
The advisor who never actually helps
A well-connected advisor with a small equity grant sounds valuable in theory. Many end up contributing far less than the equity they were given assumed.
Running a startup is mostly operations, not vision
Startup narratives focus on bold vision and big bets. The daily reality of actually running one is dominated by unglamorous operational decisions instead.
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.
The pivot that looks like failure from the outside
A well-timed pivot often gets read publicly as a company admitting defeat. Internally, it frequently looks like the opposite: a team finally facing reality.
A founding team is a bet on how people handle conflict
Founding teams get chosen mostly for complementary skills. What actually determines whether a team survives is how its members handle real disagreement.