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Why Company Communication Breaks at 50 People; a VC Notices What Happens When a Startup is Down to their Final $250k; You Are Almost Certainly Mispricing Your Product; and MOOOORE
Back in my day, we had web pages and URLs. And you had to look for stuff.
“Who needs to know about this?”: Communication as you Scale [Molly Graham/GlueClub] — People forget all the time that your company values can stay the same as you grow but the activities and practices required to achieve them successfully often have to evolve. Some things you leave behind, others your pull forward in a modified fashion. Here Molly makes the claim that ~50 people is a major transition point for most startups and that COMMUNICATION is the most important/quickest to break at this inflection.
What follows is a fantastic guide to how to think about communications; what you need to implement; and evaluating success. Seriously, read it.
Are We Doomed? Here’s How to Think About It [Rivka Galchen/The New Yorker] — Takes you inside a class at the University of Chicago where each lecture focuses on a perceived existential risk to humanity (AI, Climate Catastrophe, Nuclear Destruction), with a scientific approach. I was also surprised to find that the term ‘existential risk’ as an academic concept only dates back to a 2002 paper by philosopher Nick Bostrom (although obviously theorizing about doom scenarios is, well, timeless).
The Last $250k [Charles Hudson/PrecursorVentures] — A notable pre-seed investor, Charles is remarking on the clarity of action which comes when you’re down to your last $250k of capital and wonders why we don’t/how we can operate with that focus while there’s more money in the bank (so as to not have to get to your last $250k).
“For the type of companies I work with, that $250K usually translates to 4–6 months of life, barring a fundraise or other capital infusion,” Charles writes, then noting that it’s not about effort — most everyone is already working very hard. But rather:
- The most important things to work on become incredibly…
