PinnedMember-onlyHow to write a great startup surveyAnd what to do instead Don’t use surveys. Please. Your goal as a founder is to learn. Learning in the most efficient way possible means balancing learning deeply and moving quickly. Surveys achieve neither. It sounds like a small effort: create a survey, send it out. But it takes more time and effort…Startup8 min readStartup8 min read
Jun 22, 2022Member-onlyFacebook won’t help you get your hacked account backThey have zero incentive to stop account hackers — On 18 May my partner’s Instagram account was hacked. It was a sneaky attack. They used a hacked account which was familiar to my partner, and asked for help getting an access code from Instagram. This access code ended up being the 2-factor authentication code Instagram sends when you forget…Instagram4 min readInstagram4 min read
Feb 16, 2022Member-onlyYou have 10 seconds to pitch a startup via emailHow VCs review an emailed pitch deck — When you think “startup”, you probably picture a charismatic CEO in a branded t-shirt standing in front of a big screen, pitching their story in five minutes or less. Pitch nights, demo days, showcases. Startup founders pitch a lot. And when it comes to finding the right investors (if a…VC6 min readVC6 min read
Mar 30, 2021Member-onlyNew research on Lean Startup: hypotheses good; MBAs badHow we learn to learn has a big impact on success — New research on the Lean Startup methodology finds that a business school background (i.e. an MBA) can hinder a founder’s ability to adapt to new evidence in an early-stage lean startup context, if they don’t embrace the hypothesis-testing approach through customer discovery interviews. …Startup6 min readStartup6 min read
Mar 28, 2021Member-onlyArticulating how I thinkTrying to explain my mental frameworks to others — Johnny Carson once told Steve Martin: “You will use everything you know.” In his book Born Standing Up, Steve Martin details how this came true throughout his career. One example is that he learned rope lasso tricks while working at Disneyland as a teenager, and performed them in ¡Three Amigos…Management Consulting4 min readManagement Consulting4 min read
Feb 12, 2021Member-onlyWhat I learned about business from Will Ferrell’s SNL auditionWatching a comedy giant before he was great is like seeing a startup’s first pitch — Two things happened to me today: I discovered Will Ferrell’s audition for SNL (“Saturday Night Live”), and I had first meetings with four early stage startups. If you could predict Will Ferrell’s success from his early work, how might we apply lessons from this audition to early stage businesses and…Business12 min readBusiness12 min read
Aug 13, 2020Member-onlyCoronavirus and the Three Laws of RoboticsIs inaction better than action if either outcome will cause harm? — Way back in the 1940’s, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov started developing his Three Laws of Robotics through a series of short stories and novels. …Covid-197 min readCovid-197 min read
Jul 9, 2020Member-onlyReflections on Launching 12 Startups During COVIDAnd comparison with a pre-COVID cohort — We just launched 12 startups in ten weeks in a Masters elective subject at the University of Sydney Business School in Australia. As this semester was during a COVID isolation stage, how does it compare to pre-COVID performance and experience for the same class? While I think the learning experience…Startup Lessons6 min readStartup Lessons6 min read
May 31, 2020Buying a house in NZ while living in Australia: Catch-22Untangling knots in the IRD number application process — Niche content alert. This post is about my journey through bureaucracy to meet the requirements to buy a house in New Zealand. It contains humour, of sorts, but unless you’re an Australian citizen or resident and you want to get a New Zealand IRD number — or you design processes…New Zealand7 min readNew Zealand7 min read
Apr 14, 2020Member-onlyGoal achieved! I lost 7kg this yearWhile selling a house, moving, working two jobs, and the world collapsed — A few months ago I wrote about the Captain Mal-from-Firefly diet, which is a mindset I adopted recently to change my habits. My goal was to lose the 5kg (11lbs) I gained doing an MBA, with a goal weight of 73kg (161lbs) by my birthday earlier this month. I did…Weight Loss2 min readWeight Loss2 min read
