Failure as a superpower?

Do people still make "fail compilation" videos? Bring 'em back.

I chatted with an old co-worker earlier this week who has been thinking about entrepreneurship. After we had the normal “buckle up, startups are a rollercoaster” conversation, the discussion shifted to the differences between working at a post-product-market-fit company and building a startup from scratch.

A skill that I had never really thought about (or appreciated) until I dove headfirst into startup land is "the ability to rapidly fail”. Anyone can just fail, but being able to rapidly and confidently fail is an amazing trait for founders who are hunting for PMF.

It’s counterintuitive for those coming from established companies where you are primarily nurturing an existing fire rather than trying to spark a flame. Most companies stop rewarding rapid failure after reaching a certain scale, and therefore, rapidly falling is an uncomfortable concept.

The founders who are good at this assume they are wrong by default and lean into user research and customer conversations as their north star. They close doors quickly so they can find the right door to open. They also make smart failure bets: focusing on ones that are inexpensive, fast, and have high learning potential. And, maybe most important, they are rarely discouraged by these micro-failures and instead see them as progress.

Happy weekend,

Raman at Rhetoric

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📚 What’s made me a better storyteller this week

PMF sometimes feels like a “you know it when you see it”, but here’s an interesting survey digging into the metrics behind it.

It’s 1994 and we’re all trying to predict the internet. Most of these takes are probably wrong? But they are fascinating to read and think about.

Solve for m. Great piece by Gokul.