Here are all the businesses I’ve tried:

(Half of them failed)

👇

For those of you asking me if I bought my wework equity—I did not. But, not because I didn’t choose to buy it. Despite joining the company very early on, I was not offered options. Here’s a thread about what happened and my feelings about it now. /1

I joined wework in 2011 as the ~17th employee when we had 4 buildings. I was 23, naive, and didn’t know what equity or options were—I certainly didn’t know how much it could impact my financial future. When I, and the first hundred or so joined the team, /2

equity options weren’t a part of the deal and I thought nothing of it. As the company grew and we brought in more funding, the executive team decided it was time to allocate equity to its employees. It was mid-2013, about 4 years after the company started. /3

We had ~120 employees and I had been there for ~2 years. I don’t know much about what went on behind the scenes to determine who would get equity and how much, or quite frankly, why they did it at all. /4

In the process, they did a couple of things: First, the way in which they chose to allocate equity, to whom, how much, etc. was… interesting. I’ll get into that more soon. Second, for the people who were given equity options, wework made the choice *not* to backdate. /5

I'm doing an AMA on @IndieHackers.

Drop some questions in there! Happy to answer anything, esp around building side projects with a full-time job :)

https://t.co/da4Ael9TnE

My high level plans for Starter Story.

On almost quitting

cc: @daviswbaer

@daviswbaer How I find so many businesses to interview

@daviswbaer On balancing different projects

1/ Someone emailed me asking how to break into VC, so I wanted to answer on Twitter where others could see and contribute to the conversation.

2/ “Being a VC” can mean a lot of different things, so it’s worth asking:

What actual activities do you want to do?

- Deep market analysis?
- Be in the flow of information and people?
- Make deals?
- Work closely w/ founders over time (e.g take board seats?)
- Manage capital?

3/ It’s worth specifying what type of VC you might like to become — as there are different archetypes. E.g.

- Benchmark (Lead series A/B - couple investments a year)
- First Round (Lead seed rounds, partner w/ a few companies a year)
- SV Angel (Make lots of seed investments)

4/ Continued:

Expa - Incubate companies

YC / Village Global - Build a platform to help entrepreneurs at scale

Do you want to join a firm or start one? There’s a lot to consider.

Different paths will require different skillsets & sets of experiences.

5/ Since the person who wrote the email is a young person trying to break into VC by joining a firm (and who doesn’t want to start a company), I’ll tailor this tweet storm to that goal. There’s some overlap.

10 fast-growing companies you've (probably) never heard of.

Thread 👇

1/ @Cubii

Ultra-portable elliptical trainer.

Why the 📈?

-Part of growing workout @ home trend
-Super small (fits under a desk or table)
-Proprietary tracking app
-Smart "fit while you sit" branding
-Sizable community of Cubii users

2/ @undraw_co

Open source illustration library.

Why the 📈?

-1000s pro-level illustrations
-As illustrations replace stock photos, demand for illustrations=📈
-Part of growing open source media libraries (music, images and icons)trend

@unDraw_co 3/ @flodeskinc

Email service provider that focuses on design.

Why the 📈?

-No-frills UI
-Appeals to Shopify stores
-Attractive email templates
-Designed for ecommerce marketing

@unDraw_co @flodeskinc 4/ @pushpay

Venmo for church donations.

Why the 📈?

-7900+ churches use it
-Disrupting cash donation baskets
-Taps into cashless payments meta trend

How to create a successful SaaS from scratch.

Steal the process I've used to build 5 $10k+ MRR SaaS's.

🧵 THREAD 🧵

#1 Find a problem

Problems are everywhere.

Everyone has one:

>> Agency Owners
>> Coaches
>> Freelancers

All you have to do is Investigate, ask Qs and deep dive into a niche.

Then find a painful problem that people wouldn't mind paying money to get rid of.

#2 Find an existing solution

This one is the easiest part of the process.

Here's what to do instead:

Go to Google and search for "[Problem] + software".

Compare the available solutions.

Pick the best one.

#3 Reverse engineer how it works

Break down the solution in it's core components.

Most SaaS are structured this way:

>> Database
>> Back-end
>> API
>> Front-end

This is easier if you already know programming.

But if you don't, you can pay someone to break it down for you.

#4 Make it better

Think of ways to make it better.

See what the current solution is lacking and fix it:

>> Is it too slow? Make it faster
>> Is it too ambiguous? Make it simpler
>> Does it lack features? Add them

The thing is to add VALUE to your solution.