#Nifty 15712

Today's low 15606. Fibs holding well so far!

https://t.co/qqhdNoWcdo

You want to buy a house.

You take a loan from the bank.

The bank asks you, “what if you don’t pay back?”

You say, “take my home and sell it”.

(Thread)

That makes sense. The bank gives you a loan and in case you don’t pay, the bank will take over your house and sell it and recover its money.

That’s collateral.

Banks also lend money to big corporations. With them, banks don’t always have collateral.

So a loan where the bank has collateral is considered safer for the bank.

In the early 2000s, the banks in the USA were giving out loans to people for buying houses.

The economy had just recovered from the tech bubble in 2000 where many banks had given out loans to businesses that had shut down.

In that backdrop, the banks found giving home loans safer.

1/ The first 18 months of starting a company is often life or death. I must've made 5 different companies that each failed within 9 mo. 😭 Each time the company failed I figured out what I could do better. Eventually startup #6 got to $40K/mo by month 18. Here’s what I learned...

2/ Stay focused! Ignore things that are a waste of time: meetups & conferences, meetings with no clear agenda, fundraising if you're not fundraising, reading lots of tech media articles, etc. Every week should feel like significant progress in the first year.

3/ Your first 5 hires will be the difference between life or death. Choose carefully. Be picky. Many of the things we do at the company still are a result of those early hires' legacy. Have fun as a tight knit team. It will change & evolve as you get bigger so enjoy this moment.

4/ Growth may be flat for the first 9 months. It's gonna be okay. Almost every company has experienced this: Airbnb had to sell cereal in-between, Slack failed as a gaming company first, Tesla sold only 147 cars after 6 years! You probably won't be an overnight success either.

5/ In the beginning, do customer support yourself. You will learn a lot about why your product sucks. I did 5,000+ support tickets when it was the two of us. Delight customers & fix things fast while you learn. It will help you build an amazing intuition about your customers.