🔫 Building Bulletproof Businesses
The battle is won on the field, you just need to survive.
Your startup should be able to take a few bullets. A critical employee leaving, a competing product taking off, or a fundraising round falling through. These are all things that can grind a startup's momentum to a halt. And momentum is the most valuable thing a startup has.
Much has been written about finding early market validation, building founding teams, and raising initial capital. But what happens after you've done all that?
Founders should have one mission: build the product, team, and brand that makes you hard to kill.
Product
The first product a startup brings to market likely isn't defensible. The fact that it could be built in a short amount of time inherently means someone can copy it. And as soon as you show signs of momentum, someone will.
Now, that's a generalization. The Seven Powers do apply to great products. However, in the business of SaaS, it's unlikely the flywheel of monopoly has started spinning ahead of your Series A.
Product velocity doesn't just help you close more customers. It makes you harder to kill. The more aggressive you are with product expansion, including moving beyond individual features to entirely new product lines, the more surface area you're able to cover.
This is not easy. You have to build good products. But if done right, in the best case scenario you can sell more features, and in the worst case scenario you have a hedge.
People
An early startup team can feel very codependent. If your only salesperson is on vacation, sales velocity slows. If your lead engineer is out sick, product doesn't ship.
As soon as possible, it's critical to add coverage across all functions of the business. It allows people the space to get sick, handle life stuff, and learn from each other.
This is why going from 1 person to 2 on a team is more impactful than going from 2 to 3.
I commonly see startups get into a slump after not growing beyond 10 people, as that team size is unsustainable to keep up with the momentum of a rapidly growing business.
Over time, great teams operate like boulders rolling down a hill. As they continue to grow in size and execution, there's very little that can slow them down.
Brand
Brands are like oak trees. They take forever to grow, require significant resources, but once established they're sturdy. Of course, a hurricane can still take them down. But brand is one of the most important moats. Brand creates distribution, earns trust, and closes deals that are neck and neck. It also fuels the necessary hiring pipeline to keep great people coming.
Building great brands requires taste and time. The establishment cost is high, but the compounding growth is invaluable. It's much harder for others to copy.
The ultimate power of brand is becoming the default. Being the default means you've already won the consideration phase of every deal. Competitors have to explain why they're better. You just have to show up.
Becoming Antifragile
Business durability comes from building resilience to survive inevitable failures. Every startup will face existential threats. The question is whether you've built something that can take the hit and keep moving.
Momentum is your most valuable asset, but it's also the most fragile. Products, people, and brand are what transform that momentum from a temporary advantage into a permanent one. They're what keep you moving when everything else tries to make you stop.
The startups that survive aren't necessarily the ones with the best ideas or the most funding. They're the ones that became too stubborn to die.