Startups
Early-stage companies and the specific, often unglamorous challenges of building one. Most of what actually determines survival looks nothing like the story eventually told about it.
Legal paperwork that quietly decides who owns what
Contractor agreements and IP assignment paperwork rarely feel urgent early on. Skipping them can leave a company’s ownership of its own work genuinely unclear.
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.
When a small, loud user base fools a whole team
A handful of vocal, enthusiastic early users can convince a team that fit exists broadly, when the enthusiasm may not extend past that small, unusual group.
The unremarkable habits that keep a company alive past year three
Companies that survive their first few years rarely credit a single brilliant decision. They tend to credit a handful of boring habits, kept consistently.
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.
