Productivity for Entrepreneurs
“Every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.” - Neil Armstrong
Most entrepreneurs start a business because they crave the freedom of having their own schedule, being their own boss, and enjoying the work they do, but many get so “busy” that they can’t enjoy any of the freedom they wanted in the first place.
Their input is needed every day and they don’t have the discipline to let things go, so they’re stuck on a treadmill of doing without producing real results.
The problem is not that these struggling entrepreneurs need more time, but that they need to use the time they have more effectively.
So this week, I put together a 3000-word accounting of all the productivity practices I've picked up over the years. I don’t think you have to be a productivity czar just to run a successful business, but if you want to capture more free time while building a company, these practices will put you on the right path.
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Startups
YC’s $500,000 Standard Deal
Y Combinator is now offering a larger chunk of change to founders in exchange for a bigger slice of their companies. The upside is that founders will get more money early, but the downside is that raising a round off YC could get harder.
Why Marketing Management is so Hard in Startups
"Like most leaders at a startup, marketing managers must wear multiple hats. They’ll need to perform tasks outside of their comfort zone but are still crucial to the startup’s survival...It’s easy to lose focus and this can be a fatal mistake for a startup."
First impressions of web3
"One of the surprising things to me about web3, despite being built on “crypto,” is how little cryptography seems to be involved!"
The Great Organic-Food Fraud
"The real difference between a ton of organic soybeans and a ton of conventional soybeans is the story you can tell about them. It's not like asking if a cup of coffee is decaffeinated. It’s more like buying sports memorabilia or like trying to establish if a used car has had more than a single, careful owner."
Software Engineering
Data to engineers ratio: US vs Europe
"Only 50% of US companies have more data people than designers compared to 80% of European companies I looked at. This doesn’t mean that Europeans invest less in design; they just invest more in data."
Building handwriting robots
Aaron Francis (@aarondfrancis) has an amazing thread about the most fun project he's ever worked on. I cannot imagine this was worth the effort, but he says it was.
Leadership
How to Write Technical Thought Leadership
"While you can research a topic, interview experts, and sink a lot of time into thought leadership pieces, there is no substitute for real-world experience."
9 multipliers for boosting your team’s productivity
"Teams that rely on a few sages are bottlenecked on those same sages. A hallmark of a fragile team is the extreme reliance on a few chosen guardians; these custodians know the arcane intricacies of the system; however, their invaluable knowledge is locked up in their memories."
2021: The Year I Delegated Everything
It's interesting to see what other business owners do with their time once they can unplug. Definitely something on my radar for the next few years.