Mariya Valeva's Recent LinkedIn Posts

The most expensive hire you’ll ever make… …is the one you don’t fire. Not because they’re terrible. But because they’re almost good enough. So you hesitate. You tell yourself: “Let’s give it another month.” And nothing explodes. Which is exactly the problem. Because while you wait: – Your best people quietly carry more – Standards start slipping (just a little) – You spend more time managing… than building No big moment. Just slow, invisible drag. Until one day something forces your hand. A missed quarter. Cash getting tighter. A board question you can’t dodge. And suddenly… You swing the other way. “Let’s cut. Fast.” That’s when companies make the same mistake twice. First: You paid for the delay. Now: You pay for the panic. Because rushed layoffs don’t fix the problem. They create new ones: – Wrong people leave – Critical work breaks – The team loses trust – And 3 months later… you’re rehiring Same cycle. Higher cost. Layoffs don’t save you next month. They show up 90 days later. In execution. In morale. In momentum. The best founders don’t get this right because they’re ruthless. They get it right because they’re early. They spot misalignment before it becomes expensive. They fix structure before they cut people. They plan exits before they’re urgent. That’s the difference between control… and reaction. I broke this down in today’s newsletter (with real examples + the exact frameworks I use with founders). Check it out here → https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc You’ll thank me later 👋🏻

Cazoo went from an $8 BILLION valuation… to administration in under 3 years. This wasn’t a bad idea. This wasn’t a weak market. This was a perfect storm of decisions that looked too smart at the time. In 2020, Cazoo nailed the moment. 🚗 Buy a car online 🚚 Get it delivered to your door 📦 No dealership friction COVID accelerated everything. Investors loved it. Customers loved it. The market crowned it the future. Then reality hit. Here’s what actually killed Cazoo 👇 1. They built a “sexy” model… not a resilient one Cazoo didn’t just list cars. They: - bought inventory - refurbished it - stored it - delivered it Sounds great… until the market turns. Owning thousands of cars = massive capital tied up Falling prices = instant losses Meanwhile, competitors like Auto Trader? - Zero inventory - Pure marketplace - Predictable margins 2. Growth > fundamentals (the classic trap) At peak hype: - ~$8B valuation - £700M losses in a single year - Aggressive European expansion - Massive marketing spend (sports sponsorships everywhere) The bet? “Scale first. Fix later.” The problem? Later never came. 3. They mistook a temporary tailwind for permanent demand COVID created: - artificial demand - supply shortages - inflated used car prices Cazoo scaled into that spike. Then: - demand dropped ~29% - revenue fell ~44% - cost of living crisis hit The entire model collapsed under normal conditions. 4. The pivot came too late By 2023, they tried to become a marketplace. (Exactly what they should’ve been earlier.) But by then: - cash was gone - debt piled up (~$600M+) - investor confidence disappeared 5. The economics never worked Revenue ≠ business model Cazoo sold ~160,000 cars lifetime… And still couldn’t make the unit economics work. Why? Because: - logistics were expensive - refurbishment cost money - inventory risk was brutal Scale didn’t fix it. It amplified it. Cazoo didn’t fail because of execution. It failed because the model required perfect conditions to survive And perfect conditions never last. If you're building right now, ask yourself: - Am I scaling a model… or a moment? - If demand drops 30%, do I survive? - Am I building leverage… or just burning cash faster? Because markets change. And when they do… Only the boring, resilient businesses win.

Nothing boosts founder confidence like a beautiful dashboard. Shame it rarely reflects reality. Most founders know their numbers. ARR. Churn. Burn. Runway. But metrics without context are incredibly misleading. $5M ARR can signal strength in one business - and trouble in another. 10% churn might be acceptable for an SMB SaaS. For an enterprise product, it’s a flashing red light. Even something as simple as runway changes meaning depending on: - your growth stage - your go-to-market motion - your pricing model - your capital structure The problem isn’t that founders don’t track metrics. It’s that they often benchmark against their own past performance, not against what “healthy” actually looks like for companies like theirs. That’s how you end up: Celebrating growth that’s quietly burning too much cash. Panicking about churn that’s perfectly normal for your segment. Hiring because momentum feels good - not because the economics support it. Serious operators don’t look at metrics in isolation. They benchmark with context. Stage. Model. Market. Capital structure. Because the same numbers can tell completely different stories depending on where your company sits. I break down a simple benchmarking lens founders can use to sanity-check their metrics in today’s newsletter. Check it out here → https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

Most startups celebrate surviving 10 years. This company has been scaling for over 300 years. And it sells… soy sauce. Back in the 1600s, in a small town in Japan, a few brewing families started fermenting soybeans, wheat, salt, and water in wooden barrels. No growth strategy. No investors. Just fermentation that took months and a belief that if you make the best product, people will come back. Fast forward a few centuries. That small brewing tradition became Kikkoman - now the global leader in soy sauce, selling in 100+ countries and generating roughly $4–5B in annual revenue. But the real story isn’t soy sauce. It’s the strategy behind it. 1. They built a global business before globalization existed Kikkoman started exporting soy sauce in the 1800s, long before “international expansion” was a startup buzzword. Their biggest breakthrough came in the U.S. Instead of marketing soy sauce as an “Asian ingredient,” they positioned it as an all-purpose seasoning. Suddenly Americans were using soy sauce on: - steak - marinades - burgers - vegetables The market exploded. 2. They made one bold financial bet In 1973, Kikkoman opened a production plant in Wisconsin. For a Japanese food company at the time, this was a huge risk. But it solved three major problems: - shipping costs - supply chain complexity - cultural adoption Today the U.S. is their most profitable market. 3. Their growth is powered by foodservice Most people think soy sauce spreads through supermarkets. It doesn’t. Kikkoman’s strategy was: → win chefs first → seed restaurants → create demand → then dominate retail Restaurants trained the market. 4. Their financial discipline is underrated Kikkoman isn’t a hypergrowth startup. It’s something rarer. A centuries-long compounding machine. Revenue grows steadily. Margins stay healthy. Debt remains conservative. Today, around 80% of their profits come from outside Japan. And soy sauce is still the core driver. Everyone talks about disruptive innovation. But sometimes the biggest winners are companies that: - master one product - build global distribution - compound for decades Four ingredients. Three centuries. One category leader.

Uber. Airbnb. Spotify. Robinhood. One of the earliest investors in all of them… was the guy from That ’70s Show. But Ashton Kutcher didn’t wake up one day and decide to become a VC. His shift started quietly in the late 2000s. While most actors were chasing the next role, Kutcher was spending time with founders in Silicon Valley, asking questions, studying products, and trying to understand how tech companies actually scale. In 2010, he made the move official. He co-founded A-Grade Investments with Guy Oseary and Ron Burkle. The fund started with $30M. Instead of safe bets, they went early. Very early. A small check into Uber when the company was still fighting taxi regulations. An early bet on Airbnb when most investors thought strangers sleeping in your house was crazy. Investments in Spotify, Pinterest, and Shazam before they became household names. Within a few years, that initial $30M had grown to $250M+. Not bad for someone the industry initially dismissed as a “celebrity investor.” But Kutcher wasn’t done. In 2015, he launched Sound Ventures, which now manages $1B+ in assets and invests in companies shaping the next wave of tech: - OpenAI - Anthropic - Stability AI - Affirm - Brex More than 90 investments across fintech, AI, and consumer platforms. Kutcher didn’t build this portfolio by writing celebrity checks. He learned venture. Studied founders. And surrounded himself with the right ecosystem. Even through connections like Ron Burkle, the billionaire investor behind Soho House, where founders, operators and investors often cross paths long before deals happen. The result? An actor most people underestimated… quietly built one of the most successful early-stage portfolios in tech. ---- P.S. If you want to read more on startup finance: https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

Revenue: £350M+ 200,000 investors. A global brand. And yet BrewDog recently had to close dozens of bars and cut hundreds of jobs. What happened? For years, BrewDog looked like the perfect startup success story. A rebellious brand. A loyal community of “Equity Punk” investors. Bars opening around the world. From the outside, it looked unstoppable. But underneath the brand… the fundamentals were cracking. Here are 3 lessons founders should pay attention to: 1️⃣ Growth without financial discipline eventually catches up BrewDog expanded aggressively: - 100+ bars globally - hotels and distilleries - multiple side ventures But revenue barely moved. Losses reportedly grew from £30M to nearly £60M in a year, while the footprint kept expanding The economics underneath it were fragile. 2️⃣ Expensive capital quietly becomes a trap BrewDog took loans carrying interest rates as high as 18%. That meant £17M+ per year in interest payments alone. When growth slowed, the company was trapped: Cash coming in → servicing debt Instead of → building the business. Many startups underestimate how dangerous this becomes at scale. 3️⃣ Strategy dilution weakens even strong brands Instead of doubling down on what made them great (beer), BrewDog spread across too many bets. Bars. Hotels. Spirits. Side projects. The result? A powerful brand… with a scattered business model. Eventually the numbers caught up. 38 bars closed. 484 employees lost their jobs. And many of the 200,000 retail investors who believed in the company may never see returns. There is now a potential buyer stepping in to acquire parts of the business - which may preserve the brand and some operations. But that doesn’t change the core lesson. Most companies don’t fail because the idea is bad. They fail because the financial and operational foundations didn’t scale with the business. Growth hides problems. Until suddenly it doesn’t.

Around $3–10M ARR, something strange happens to founders. The company grows… but the job you signed up for disappears. In the early days everything runs on chaos and caffeine. Five people. Late-night shipping. Solving problems in real time. Speed works. Intensity works. You can change direction after a shower thought and the company bends with you. Then one day you wake up inside a different company. There’s real revenue. A real team. Customers depending on you. On paper, this is success. But the job suddenly feels completely different. Your calendar fills with meetings. Conversations shift from building → reporting. Instead of shipping features at 2 AM, you’re reviewing dashboards and losing sleep over a churned logo. The game changed. Your mind and habits are still catching up. Somewhere around this stage the role upgrades without notifying you: From doer-in-chief → professional decider. Less: “I’ll fix it.” More: “Who owns this? By when? And why does this exist?” This creates a strange founder no-man’s-land: - Too deep in to quit - Too early to feel like a polished CEO - Too experienced to go back to pure scrappiness And this is where something founders rarely talk about becomes the real constraint: Emotional runway. Not cash. Not hiring. Your ability to carry the role. When that runway erodes, the cracks show up quietly: - saying yes to things you don’t mean - carrying the role entirely alone - teams slowly stop bringing uncomfortable truths From the outside, strategy still looks fine. Inside, the leadership infrastructure is already starting to crack. The founders who navigate this stage well don’t drift into the next version of the company. They re-choose their role deliberately. Tobi Lütke did this at Shopify. He didn’t try to become the textbook CEO. He anchored himself in product, where he had real curiosity and long-term advantage. Because most founders don’t run out of energy for being CEO. They run out of energy for a version of the role they never consciously chose. In today’s newsletter I break down the three structural moves founders use to extend their emotional runway. Check it out here → https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

Most founders track cash runway. Very few track something more dangerous: How long the company can function without them. Here’s the test 👇🏼 Take a two-week vacation. Don’t check Slack. Don’t check email. Don’t jump in for “one quick decision.” What happens to the company? Does it keep moving? Or does everything quietly wait for you to come back? That’s your real runway. Most founders think runway is purely financial. Cash in the bank ÷ monthly burn. But that only works if the company behaves the way your financial model assumes it does. On paper your projections rely on: - clear ownership - disciplined execution - reliable reporting - teams aligned on priorities In reality, many companies run on something else entirely: - founder intervention - loosely defined accountability - metrics that get debated more than they drive decisions - cross-team projects that move only when the founder pushes The gap between the company in your spreadsheet and the one you’re actually operating is what I call: Operational Runway. It’s the number of 90-day cycles your current way of working can survive before friction turns into missed targets, stalled growth, or leadership burnout. You don’t need a new dashboard to know when it’s shrinking. You feel it when: → every meaningful initiative still routes through you → the same problems reappear every quarter → meetings multiply but decisions don’t → the leadership team debates KPIs instead of acting on them At that point the issue isn’t funding. It’s how the company runs. Because eventually every startup hits the same transition: Early on, the company works because of founder intensity. Later, it only works because of organizational design. In today’s newsletter I break down: - why operational runway matters as much as financial runway - the signals your company might already be running short on it - 3 simple tests to see if your structure can actually carry your growth plan If you're scaling right now, it's worth checking before the next quarter exposes it. Full issue here → https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

At 16, Shuo Wang landed in the US with 2 things: A suitcase. And almost no English. No network. No Silicon Valley connections. Just an immigrant mother from China trying to survive. To help her family make ends meet, Shuo spent weekends selling scooters at flea markets near Washington, D.C. The profit? About $10 per sale. Some days they sold a few. Some days they sold none. But those flea markets taught her something that no MBA ever could: How to deal with rejection. Hundreds of strangers walking by. Most ignoring you. Some saying no. And you still had to smile and try again. That was her first sales training. But the hardest part wasn’t the work. It was being an outsider. She barely understood what people were saying. She struggled in school because of the language barrier. And like many immigrants, she constantly felt like she had to prove she deserved to be there. So she worked. Hard. Eventually she got into MIT, studying mechanical engineering. While many of her classmates followed traditional career paths… Shuo kept chasing problems that others ignored. Her first startup, Aeris, was eventually acquired by iRobot for around $100M. But the real breakthrough came later. In 2019, she co-founded Deel. The idea came from a problem she knew firsthand: How broken global work really is. The early days weren’t glamorous. YC feedback was harsh. The first product didn’t work. Customers didn’t care. So Shuo and her co-founder interviewed 200 companies in just six weeks to figure out what people actually needed. They rebuilt everything. And it worked. Deel exploded: - $4M ARR in 2020 - $100M+ ARR two years later - $500M+ ARR by 2024 - $12B+ valuation Today the company helps businesses hire people in 150+ countries. But behind the unicorn headline is a much simpler story. A teenage immigrant. Selling scooters for $10 profit. Learning how to keep going when everything feels stacked against you. Because sometimes the best founders aren’t the ones with the best networks. They’re the ones who learned to survive first.

Most brands want you to desire their products more. MUJI built a $5B business by doing the opposite. They actually try to make you want less. And somehow… it works. Japan. Early 1980s. The country is entering its bubble economy. Luxury brands everywhere. Designer logos everywhere. Packaging getting more extravagant by the year. Consumption becomes a status game. Then a small retail experiment appears. No logos. No big advertising campaigns. No glossy packaging. Just simple products on plain shelves. The company was called MUJI. Short for Mujirushi Ryohin. Which literally means: “No-brand quality goods.” And the philosophy was radical. If a product is truly good… it shouldn’t need branding to convince you. The first MUJI products were almost absurdly simple. Plain notebooks. Unbranded pens. Basic storage boxes. Minimal furniture. Even the packaging was intentionally plain. Transparent plastic. Brown paper. Minimal ink. The goal wasn’t aesthetics. It was removing everything unnecessary. Less waste. Less noise. Less manipulation. But here’s the genius part. MUJI didn’t position itself as anti-consumption. It positioned itself as rational consumption. Buy things that last. Buy things that work. Buy only what you need. Ironically… That made customers trust them more. And trust scales. By the 1990s MUJI started expanding globally. First across East Asia. Then Europe. London became one of its most important international footholds. Because the brand resonated with a different kind of consumer: People tired of fast fashion and loud branding. Minimalism was becoming a lifestyle. MUJI had been building it for decades. Today MUJI operates 1,400+ stores worldwide. Its parent company, Ryohin Keikaku, reports roughly: • ~$5B annual revenue • ~$450M operating profit And MUJI still barely advertises. Instead, they focus on the experience. Walk into a MUJI store and you’ll notice: Soft lighting. Natural materials. Calm layouts. It feels more like a quiet library than a retail store. That’s intentional. They’re not selling products. They’re selling a slower way of living. And the ecosystem keeps expanding: • clothing • furniture • groceries • hotels • prefab homes From a $3 pen… to an entire MUJI-designed house. All built around one idea: Simplicity. MUJI proves something most brands forget. Customers don’t always want more choice. Sometimes they want clarity. And the companies that give them that… earn the deepest loyalty. ----- P.S. If you want to read more on startup finance: https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

Some investors can spot unicorns when they still look like ugly ducklings. In 2008, Airbnb looked like a strange idea at best. Three founders renting air mattresses in their apartment to pay rent. Investors passed. Many thought the market was too small. Others didn’t believe strangers would stay in each other’s homes. Sequoia didn’t. They invested early. Today Airbnb is worth tens of billions. This isn’t an isolated story. Behind many unicorns, you’ll often find the same investors: Sequoia Andreessen Horowitz Accel Kleiner Perkins Y Combinator Why do the same investors consistently find billion-dollar companies? 1. Access creates a flywheel The best founders choose their investors. The best investors therefore see the best companies first. Reputation → better deal flow → better outcomes → stronger reputation. A flywheel. 2. Pattern recognition beats prediction Top VCs have seen thousands of startups. They don’t guess. They recognize signals: - Founder–market fit - Timing of technology shifts - Distribution advantages 3. They invest in markets, not just products Products change. Markets compound. A mediocre product in a massive market can evolve. A great product in a tiny market rarely becomes a unicorn. 4. They build companies, not just portfolios The most successful firms provide operational leverage: recruiting networks, growth playbooks, policy support, and introductions to later-stage investors. 5. They understand the power law of venture A single outlier can return an entire fund. The best investors structure their portfolios knowing that only a few companies will generate extraordinary outcomes. But there’s a pattern founders underestimate. The companies that actually become unicorns don’t just raise capital. They build the operational and financial infrastructure early enough to support scale. Because when growth hits, chaos compounds faster than revenue. And the difference between a startup that scales… and one that stalls… usually shows up after the funding round closes. ----- P.S. If you want to read more on startup finance: https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

He fled a war. He barely spoke English. Years later he graduated from MIT and built a 11$ billion company. This is the story of Tarek Mansour, the founder of Kalshi. Most people see the headline today: “Fintech founder building a new asset class.” What they don’t see is the path that came before it. Tarek spent much of his childhood in Lebanon, far away from the networks that normally produce Wall Street founders. During the 2007 war, he realized something that would change his life: If he wanted access to the world’s opportunities, he had to learn English. Fast. So he taught himself. Because he knew it was the only way out. That effort eventually took him to MIT. From there he landed at Goldman Sachs and later Citadel, trading global macro markets. But while working inside Wall Street, he noticed something strange. Traders were constantly betting on events: - Will inflation rise? - Will the Fed change rates? - Who will win elections? Billions were moving based on these predictions. But there was no regulated market where you could trade the event itself. So he built one. In 2018, he co-founded Kalshi - a platform where people could trade contracts based on real-world outcomes. Not stocks. Not crypto. Actual events. Inflation data. Economic indicators. Politics. Weather. Each contract is simple: If the event happens → it pays $1. If it doesn’t → it pays $0. Simple idea. Extremely hard to build. Because prediction markets sit in a gray zone between finance and gambling. For years regulators pushed back. Kalshi spent years fighting for approval to operate as a fully regulated exchange. Eventually they received approval from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission - becoming the first regulated event contracts exchange in the United States. That approval changed everything. Investors piled in. The company raised hundreds of millions. And what once looked like a strange idea… started to look like a new asset class. All because a trader asked a simple question inside a Wall Street office: Why can’t we trade the future directly?

A Formula 1 World Champion quit at his peak… and built a $200M VC fund instead. After retiring in 2016, Nico Rosberg didn’t rush into deals. For years, he mostly stayed in the background, placing capital into top VC funds instead of startups. Which meant: He wasn’t betting on companies yet. He was betting on judgment. Through that, he got exposure to thousands of startups before ever needing to pick one himself. Only later did he start investing directly. And when he did, the pattern is very specific. Take ClickHouse. It’s not a company most people talk about. But it’s quietly become one of the core databases behind real-time analytics, used by companies that need speed at scale. It made the Forbes Cloud 100. It’s deeply embedded in the AI/data stack. And it sits in a position that’s very hard to replace. Then you look at other names around his portfolio: – Ivy → payments infrastructure (not consumer fintech, but the rails behind it) – Black Forest Labs → foundational AI work – Fyxer AI → productivity layer, not just another chatbot wrapper There’s a clear bias: He doesn’t invest in the “front-end” of trends. He invests where dependency gets created. And even structurally, his approach is unusual. He doesn’t try to lead rounds. Doesn’t try to control companies. Typically comes in alongside others with $2–5M checks. Which gives him something most investors don’t optimise for: Access without friction. And that same pattern shows up in how he built the fund. Yes, his F1 background gets attention. But he still had to convince serious LPs that this isn’t a celebrity side project. So he built it gradually: Fund I → Fund II → oversubscribed Fund III Now ~ $200M+ AUM Quietly. No big “I’m now a VC” moment. Just compounding decisions in the background. It’s a very un-obvious way to enter venture. Which is probably why it worked.

Everyone is talking about how AI will change startups. But from a startup perspective, the real shift might be simpler: AI will expose how companies actually operate. For years, startups could get away with a lot of chaos. Processes half-built. Teams moving fast but not aligned. Tools stacked on top of each other with no real system behind them. And it worke, because speed covered the cracks. AI changes that. Because AI only works well when your operations are clear, structured, and intentional. If your company runs on scattered information, unclear ownership, and decisions made in five different Slack threads… AI won’t magically fix it. It will just scale the confusion. The startups that benefit the most from AI won’t necessarily be the most “AI-native”. They’ll be the ones that already operate well. Clear processes. Clear accountability. Clear decisions. AI will accelerate startups. But first, it will reveal which ones were actually built to scale. *Video credits: entrepreneursonig insta

If a startup pitched Costco’s model to VCs… they’d get rejected in 5 minutes. “Low margins?” “Limited product range?” “You’re intentionally not maximizing profit per sale?” Next. And yet… Costco built a $275B+ business doing exactly that. So what are most people (and VCs) missing? Costco doesn’t optimise for margin. They optimise for structure. 1. They get paid before delivering value Membership fees (~$60–$120/year) come upfront. ~90%+ renewal rates. That’s not retail. That’s recurring revenue. So before a single product is sold… The customer has already paid. 2. The store is not the profit center Most companies: → sell product → make margin → survive Costco: → sell membership → build trust → drive volume The store? Almost break-even by design. 3. They turned “low margin” into a weapon Capped markups (~14–15%). Why would anyone do that? Because it creates something way more valuable: pricing trust Customers stop comparing. They assume value. And that’s when basket size explodes. 4. They engineered cash flow, not just revenue Customers pay instantly. Suppliers get paid later. Inventory turns fast. Result: negative working capital Translation: They grow using customer cash. Not investor cash. 5. They removed complexity most companies scale into ~4,000 SKUs vs ~30,000 in supermarkets. That means: - higher volume per product - stronger supplier leverage - faster decisions - less capital tied in inventory Most companies add more. Costco removes. 6. Their “loss leaders” are not losses $1.50 hot dog $5 rotisserie chicken These aren’t pricing mistakes. They’re ****trust infrastructure. Consistent proof that: “We’re not here to squeeze you.” And once customers believe that… price stops being a decision factor. 7. The real KPI isn’t revenue It’s renewal rate. Because if members renew: Everything else follows. Revenue is a byproduct. Retention is the system. Most startups fail not because of bad products… …but because they optimise the wrong metric. Margin per transaction instead of value per relationship Costco didn’t build a better store. They built a system where: Customers pay upfront Trust removes friction Volume fixes margins And retention compounds everything That’s why VCs would reject it. And that’s exactly why it works. ---- P.S. If you want to read more on startup finance: https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

She was born in Afghanistan. Moved to the US without speaking English. And built a multi-million dollar company - Cymbiotika. Durana Elmi’s story doesn’t start with business. It starts with leaving. Leaving a country her family knew… So she could have a future they didn’t. Not because it was easy. Because it was necessary. Starting over. A new country where nothing feels natural. Where even speaking becomes something you have to learn again. Where you’re constantly aware that you’re different. At school, you’re catching up. At home, you’re expected to stay the same. Two worlds. Two identities. And somewhere in between… you’re trying to figure out who you are. For Durana, that tension didn’t break her. It sharpened her. Years later, she stepped into the wellness industry. And what she saw felt familiar. Big promises. Little transparency. An entire system built on “just trust us”. She didn’t try to play the game better. She changed the rules. She co-built Cymbiotika around something most brands ignore: Give people a reason to trust you. Not fancy marketing. Not more products. Just radical transparency. Clear ingredients. Education over hype. In the beginning, it didn’t look like a fast-growing company. It looked slow. Almost too careful. But customers came back. Then they stayed. Then they told others. And that’s how Cymbiotika became a multi-million dollar company. Through belief. Because when you’ve had to rebuild your life once… You don’t build on trends. You build on truth. That’s what makes this story different. It’s not about supplements. It’s about what happens when someone who never trusted the system… Decides to build a better one.

Most founders think startups fail because of bad ideas. In reality, they fail because of three decisions made early on. 1. The wrong co-founder The biggest risk isn’t lack of talent. It’s lack of integrity. A smart, high-energy partner without integrity doesn’t move the company forward - they slowly break trust, alignment, and decision-making. And once that cracks, everything else follows. 2. Obsessing over the idea instead of the market Founders spend months polishing the “perfect” idea. But the idea is rarely the bottleneck. A large, fast-growing market can absorb mistakes, pivots, and imperfect products. A small market won’t forgive even great execution. 3. Raising money before building something Many founders start with fundraising. The better path is simpler: Build an MVP. Put it in front of real users. See if anyone actually cares. Because funding doesn’t fix weak products. It just amplifies what already exists. If the product works → capital accelerates it. If it doesn’t → capital scales the problem. The fundamentals of startups are surprisingly simple. But simple doesn’t mean easy. *Video credits: growasentrepreneurs insta

“She was just an actress.” That’s how people dismissed Jessica Alba when she started. No MBA. No operator background. No “serious founder” credentials. Just Hollywood. Then she built a $1.7B company, The Honest Company. But the real story didn’t start there. It started with fear. While pregnant, she had an allergic reaction to baby detergent. Not mild discomfort. A reaction strong enough to make her question something most people never do: “How is this even allowed?” So she went deeper. And what she found wasn’t just frustrating, it was unsettling: - “Safe” products weren’t actually safe - Ingredients were hidden behind branding - No company truly owned trust This wasn’t a bad product. This was a broken category. And once you see that… you can’t unsee it. Most people would’ve switched brands and moved on. She didn’t. She decided to build what didn’t exist. → First move (and this is where most people get it wrong): She didn’t try to prove she was a founder. She built like one. She brought in operators: - Brian Lee (LegalZoom scale experience) - Product + health experts - People who knew how to execute Because conviction without execution is just opinion. → Second move (this is the real unlock): She didn’t build a product. She built a system. 👉 Subscription-based diapers & wipes Why it mattered: - Predictable revenue - Retention by design - Real LTV from day one This wasn’t branding. This was infrastructure. The result? $10M in year one $150M+ by 2015 $1.7B valuation Her stake → ~$340M at peak But here’s the part no one talks about: Scaling exposed everything. - Weak systems - Supply chain cracks - Margin pressure After IPO: The stock dropped hard. Her stake fell from ~$130M → ~$27M. Because building gets attention. Scaling reveals the truth. Jessica Alba wasn’t “just an actress.” She understood: - distribution - recurring revenue - and trust as a moat But more importantly: She stepped into a problem most people would’ve ignored. And followed it all the way through. If you’re scaling right now: Don’t just ask: “How do we grow faster?” Ask: “What breaks if we do?”

Rare Beauty is already worth $2B+. And it took Selena Gomez just 4 years. Most people think it’s fame. They’re wrong. What actually built Rare Beauty was a very intentional strategy: 1. The brand came before the product Rare Beauty wasn’t launched overnight. Selena Gomez and her team spent almost two years building the concept, team, and positioning before the launch in 2020. The message was clear from day one: “Own what makes you rare.” Not perfection. Not glam. Self-acceptance and mental health. That mission became the core of the brand. 2. Distribution wasn’t an afterthought Rare Beauty launched directly with Sephora alongside its own DTC site. That instantly gave them: - global retail credibility - massive discovery - prestige positioning Most beauty brands spend years trying to earn retail shelf space. Rare started there. 3. One hero product drove the growth engine Instead of launching hundreds of SKUs, they focused on products that creators loved to demonstrate. The Soft Pinch Liquid Blush became a TikTok phenomenon. Result: • millions of organic videos • constant sell-outs • massive brand discovery One hero product can outperform an entire catalogue. 4. The economics actually work Rare Beauty crossed $400M+ in annual sales within a few years of launch. And the company reportedly runs ~35% EBITDA margins, well above many beauty brands. That’s why investors have already explored potential IPO or acquisition paths. What looks like a celebrity brand is actually a very disciplined model: • clear emotional positioning • powerful distribution from day one • viral product design • strong margins The celebrity created attention. But the strategy created the $2B company.

Jay-Z once launched a startup with Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna and Daft Punk. Hundreds of millions were invested. The mission? Destroy Spotify. Today, almost nobody talks about it. And that’s what makes the story fascinating. The company was called Tidal. In 2015, Jay-Z bought a small Scandinavian streaming platform for ~$56M. Then he did something no startup had ever done before. Instead of raising money from VCs… he built a celebrity cap table. The biggest artists in the world became shareholders. Beyoncé. Rihanna. Kanye West. Madonna. Daft Punk. Soon after, Sprint invested $200M, pushing the valuation to roughly $600M. On paper, it looked unstoppable. But the fundamentals told a different story. By 2019: - Revenue: $167M - Operating loss: $55M - Margin: –33% And Spotify was already 10x bigger. In streaming, scale isn’t helpful. It’s everything. Tidal’s strategy sounded great in interviews. But it failed in reality. Mistake #1 - Premium positioning Tidal charged more because of Hi-Fi audio quality. But most people listen to music on phones, cars or AirPods. They couldn’t hear the difference. Mistake #2 - No growth engine Spotify let hundreds of millions join for free. Tidal asked people to pay immediately. That decision alone limited its growth. Mistake #3 - Celebrity isn’t a moat Star power creates headlines. But it doesn’t create network effects, distribution, or product advantage. Spotify owned playlists, discovery, and the user ecosystem. Once users build their music library somewhere… they rarely switch. By 2021 the outcome was clear. Jack Dorsey’s Square bought 80% of Tidal for about $300M. Half the earlier valuation. Jay-Z made money. But the startup that was supposed to change streaming quietly faded into the background. You can launch with the biggest names in the world. But in platform businesses… network effects beat celebrity every time.

Steve Jobs once said he envied Alexander the Great. Not for the empire. But for his mentor. Alexander had Aristotle by his side - someone he could question, challenge, and learn from directly. Jobs could read everything Aristotle ever wrote… but he could never ask him a question. In 1985, while visiting Sweden, Jobs shared a vision: What if one day we could build machines that simulate the thinking of great minds? Machines that allow us to ask Aristotle a question. Or Einstein. Or Da Vinci. Not just read their ideas - but interact with them. Nearly 40 years later, large language models are the closest thing we’ve come to that idea. We’re starting to move from static knowledge to interactive knowledge. From reading history… to having conversations with it. The real question now isn’t whether the technology works. It’s how we choose to use it. Because tools that expand human thinking can either: - amplify wisdom - or amplify noise The responsibility is ours. *Video credits: foundedarchive insta

“Everyone should go fractional.” That’s the advice floating around LinkedIn right now. But the truth? Most people thinking about going fractional are approaching it completely wrong. Fractional work is not your previous executive job… done part-time. It’s a completely different operating model. The people who make it work treat it like building a business, not finding flexible employment. After spending 2 years in the fractional weeds, here’s the framework that made it work for me: 1️⃣ Start with the expensive problem Most people start with their title. “I’m a fractional CFO.” “I’m a fractional COO.” But companies don’t buy titles. They buy solutions to expensive problems. Ask yourself: What problem costs a company real money if it stays unsolved? And then get very clear on who feels that pain the most. At what stage are they? What revenue milestone have they crossed? What inflection point are they navigating? Your positioning starts when you define the specific type of company that urgently needs that solution. 2️⃣ Turn experience into IP Experience alone doesn’t scale. Frameworks do. Great fractional leaders codify how they think. They know: - The first diagnostic questions they ask - The patterns they see across companies - The process they follow when they step in That becomes your intellectual property. Not just advice. A repeatable way of solving the problem. 3️⃣ Package the expertise Your work needs to be easy to: - understand - buy - trust That means: Clear scope. Clear deliverables. Clear ownership. If someone asks what you do and the answer is “it depends,” you don’t have an offer yet. 4️⃣ Build distribution The first clients rarely come from cold outreach. They come from: - former colleagues - service providers in your ecosystem - other fractional leaders - past clients Your network is often your first distribution channel. 5️⃣ Build a personal brand The goal of building a personal brand isn’t constant selling. It’s becoming the person people think about when that specific problem appears. Share what you’re learning. Explain how you think. Teach the patterns you see. Over time, trust compounds. Fractional leadership is growing fast for a reason. Companies get senior expertise without committing to a full-time executive salary. Operators get leverage across multiple businesses. But it only works if you make one shift: From “I work for a company.” To “I solve this specific, expensive problem.” That shift - from thinking like an employee to operating like the CEO of your own business - is what unlocks scale in fractional work. PS: Big thank you to Ani Filipova for having me as a guest speaker in her career accelerator cohort last week - it was a great discussion with operators exploring this path 🙏🏻

40 unicorns were already born in 2026. And almost nobody is noticing the pattern. At first glance, it looks like another “AI startup boom.” But when you actually map these companies, something much more interesting appears. Here are a few trends hiding behind this year’s new unicorns: 1. They sell into budgets that already exist Many of these companies aren’t creating new markets. They’re inserting themselves into huge existing budgets: • healthcare systems • financial compliance • manufacturing operations • energy infrastructure When the budget already exists, sales cycles are clearer and ROI is easier to prove. 2. Infrastructure economics A large share are building underlying systems: AI compute voice infrastructure GPU orchestration developer platforms Infrastructure businesses tend to have: - higher switching costs - deeper integrations - stronger retention Which creates predictable, compounding revenue. 3. Capital-intensive tech is back For years the model was simple: build software → scale cheaply. Many new unicorns look different: robotics semiconductors energy systems space manufacturing These require capital, but create massive barriers to entry. 4. They solve extremely expensive problems Construction delays medical inefficiencies fraud & compliance risk industrial downtime When the problem is worth billions, even small improvements justify large contracts. Zoom out and the pattern becomes clear: The last decade built software platforms. The next one is about technology embedded inside real industries. The next unicorn probably won’t look like another social app. It will look like software quietly running a trillion-dollar industry. ---- P.S. If you want to read more on startup finance: https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc

She spent $500k building a startup. And it generated ZERO bookings. Not low traction. Not slow growth. Zero. Most founders would have quit right there. Payal Kadakia didn’t. Payal grew up as the daughter of immigrants who came to the U.S. with almost nothing. Her parents were chemists who rebuilt their lives from scratch. So growing up, she carried a quiet pressure: Don’t waste the opportunity they created. Dance became her anchor. She started dancing at 3 years old and later even launched her own dance company while working a corporate job. But the idea that would change everything came from a simple frustration. One evening in New York, after work, she tried to book a dance class. She spent hours online. Broken websites. Incomplete schedules. Confusing booking systems. Eventually… she gave up and stayed home. That moment sparked a question: Why isn’t there an OpenTable for fitness classes? So she built one. It was called Classtivity. And it failed. Despite TechStars backing and huge media attention, users browsed the site but never booked classes. So she pivoted. The next idea was Passport - a package of trial classes across studios. That also failed. People used the free trials… then disappeared. Studios hated it. Retention collapsed. Two startups. Two failures. Most people would interpret that as the market saying “no.” But Payal realized something deeper: The problem wasn’t discovery. The problem was commitment. People didn’t want to “try a class.” They wanted a fitness lifestyle. So she tried one more idea. A subscription for unlimited classes across studios. That idea became ClassPass. It scaled to millions of bookings and eventually sold in a $1B acquisition. The lesson most founders miss: Your first idea is rarely the business. Your second idea probably isn’t either. But every failed version is data. And if you listen closely enough… it tells you what the real company should be. Sometimes success isn’t about being right the first time. It’s about staying in the game long enough to finally ask the right question.

You’re probably giving away more equity than you should. And it has nothing to do with investors. Dilution isn’t really negotiated. It’s inferred. At every round, investors are asking one question: How risky is this business to price? That’s why two founders can raise the same amount… and give away very different amounts of equity. Same round. Similar traction. Different outcome. Because every stage changes what the market expects from you. → Angel = belief At angel stage, investors are not underwriting a business. They’re underwriting you. Your clarity. Your conviction. Your ability to turn a vague signal into something real. At this stage, giving away too much equity is usually a sign that you raised before you had enough leverage to make the risk feel smaller. → Pre-seed = early proof This is where belief stops being enough. Now investors want to see that something is working: - customers are responding - there is real demand - your assumptions are starting to hold The mistake many founders make here is raising for the next chapter without proving the current one. So the story sounds ambitious… but the business still feels unformed. That gap gets priced. → Seed = predictability By seed, investors are no longer just looking for signs of life. They want to know whether the company can be understood. Not perfectly. But clearly. They start asking: - what is actually driving growth? - what is repeatable? - where do margins break? - how does capital translate into progress? This is where dilution gets expensive. Because messy businesses don’t always lose the round. They just lose ownership. → Bigger seed = operational credibility Once the check size grows, the tolerance for ambiguity drops. Now it’s not enough to say: “we’re growing.” You need to show: - why you’re growing - what it costs - what happens next - what breaks if assumptions change At this stage, investors are pricing how well the company is run, not just how exciting it sounds. And every unresolved question becomes a discount. The amount you raise matters less than what that round makes investors expect you to prove. If you raise a round your business can’t yet justify, you get punished twice: First in valuation. Then in ownership. So the real question isn’t: “How do I negotiate better?” It’s: “What does this round force me to prove, and can my business already support that?” That’s what protects equity. *Visual credits: Peter Walker ---- P.S. If you want to read more on startup finance: https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc