Tag: startups
April 21, 2026
Refilled: How we work
The onboarding introduction that I used at Refilled. It's a cheatsheet to existing within the organisation.
April 16, 2026
You get what you tolerate
Small compromises don’t stay small. In business and personal relationships, what you allow quickly becomes the baseline.
April 8, 2026
Teams need a shared identity
A reflection on Tom DeMarco, startup teams, and the hard-earned lesson that trust, belonging, and a shared identity matter more than process ever will.
March 29, 2026
The Moment a Startup Starts Serving Investors
There is a point where a startup quietly shifts from building for customers to performing for investors. No one announces it, but the work stops compounding and the system begins to degrade.
March 20, 2026
Racing Engines, Aircraft Engines
Startup culture glorifies short bursts of heroic effort, but durable organisations are built more like aircraft engines than race cars: through limits, maintenance, and reliability over time.
January 20, 2026
The Board Is Not Your Enemy, Unless You Make It One
Boards don't become adversarial by default. They become adversarial when founders avoid structure and force governance to emerge through intervention instead of design.
December 10, 2025
The Myth of 'Build It and They Will Come'
A startup without hustle defaults to building in the dark, convinced features replace customers. They don’t.
November 25, 2025
ESOPs Are Not Remuneration
ESOPs get sold as part of your compensation, but structurally they're not pay. They're discretionary, illiquid side-bets that shift risk onto employees without giving them real value or power.
November 2, 2025
Why Founders Struggle With Letting Go
Founders often believe their personal involvement is what keeps the company alive. That may be true early on, but it becomes the bottleneck that stops the organisation from maturing. Letting go isn’t emotional; it’s structural.
September 7, 2025
Startups Don’t Fail from Lack of Vision; They Fail from Lack of Structure
Most startups don’t die because they lack big ideas. They die because they never build the structure needed to turn those ideas into reality.