5 interesting insights from the week (#74)

Ten startup lies; Scaling without growing; Gaps in the market vs markets in the gap; Ship or die; Discipline is overrated; and one lesson from Quibi

Jaryd here! 👋 You’re reading 5-Bit Fridays—your weekly ~5-minute roundup of 5 actionable insights that can help you build and grow your product.

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Friends, today’s roundup has some gems. We’re covering 10 hilarious and true startup lies (like how "We have a disruptive business model" is code for we're not making any money yet), as well as an observation on how just because there is a gap in the market doesn’t mean there is a market in the gap…plus more bite-size insights.

p.s I was listening to this deep house classics vinyl mix while writing this morning. So smooth.

5 big ideas; 5 calls to action.

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(#1) Smaller companies using a new AI-native tech stack will no longer need to grow their team to scale and reach $10M+ revenues.

“Within a few years, small business owners will be able to pose simple questions to their data using natural language. Their business tools will advise on pricing, optimization for taxes, converting leads to sales, and will offer various forms of “autopilot” for operating a business. Small teams will be able to make sense of data and gain enterprise-grade security that was never possible without large teams.” —

Scott Belsky

• 🫰 Why it matters: Instead of growing (and adding costs) to scale, teams will refactor to what Scott calls an “intent-driven” AI tech stack, and with it, creativity driven by generalists will be more important than productivity driven by specialists. AI gives the small the advantages of the big.

• 🔑 Bottom Line: This also means we as consumers will demand smaller-scale, human-crafted, and more meaningful versions of things. Simply, as the cost to compete as a small business goes down, artisanal and story-driven products will stand out.

• 🥇 Applying it: Think about what new products must be built to support the “scaling without growing” era for SMBs. One example is new ways of hiring and incentivizing talent—exactly like what Athyna is doing.

Go deeper—read the full post by Scott Belsky

(#2) Ship or die—and index on what you know is needed.

“A lot of founders are scared of criticism. The truth is, if your company is going to be successful, the users who encounter your product in the first few months are such a tiny fraction of all future users. I’d rather our first 10 users tell me why our product blows so I can fix it prior to onboarding the next 10,000. Giving access to a few dozen beta users was the greatest shortcut we ever discovered.” — Tyler Denk

• 🫰 Why it matters: beehiiv launches products ridiculously fast, and they had to when they entered a super competitive market. This has led to two operating principles that are tried-and-true levers of growth: Ship or die, and Speed over perfection.

• 🔑 Bottom Line: To help them manage a very long list of product ideas/gaps, they prioritized what to build, in this order, based on 5 pillars: (1) Their first-hand experience of what the market needed, (2) Preventing users from churning, (3) Unblocking potential new users, (4) Counter-positioning competitors, and (5) Direct user feedback.

• 🥇 Applying it: Notice how they focused on what they, as domain experts, knew the newsletter creator needed before ideas from customers. AKA don’t just build what people ask for.

Go deeper—read the full post by Tyler Denk

(#3) Disciple is overrated. Build systems that minimize choice.

“In the context of a car, think of discipline as the safety break; it’s important to have in specific situations, but if you are using it all the time, you are not driving well. Instead, set yourself up so that whether you have good discipline or not, you are regularly making choices that will get you closer to your goal(s).” —

Ben Saltiel

• 🫰 Why it matters: Most people lack discipline.

• 🔑 Bottom Line: With a good system, your discipline is largely taken out of the equation. This means less reliance on the will to do something, and more emphasis on making the way to do simpler.

• 🥇 Applying it: Spend time upfront figuring out the best way to get to your goal, then build a system that makes it difficult to fail. For example one of the most important things for me is to write great content and grow my newsletter— so I set up my system to routinely make the time.

My calendar

Go deeper—read the full post by Ben Saltiel.

(*) Grow as a leader with Sidebar’s curated network.

“I’ve sped up my own learnings probably five ot ten times as fast as I was before I was doing Sidebar” — Ashley Chang (Co-Founder/CEO)

• 🫰 Why it matters: Leadership challenges are universal. Whether it’s seeking advice or needing support, we don’t always know the right answers.

• 🔑 Bottom Line: You can experience huge personal and career growth with Sidebar (93% of their members say they saw significant impact) thanks to their exclusive network of leaders from FAANG companies, and epic startups like Canva, Athyna, and Gusto. It’s like your own personal board of directors.

• 🥇 Applying it: If you’re growth-oriented and ambitious and want a competitive edge, consider joining Sidebar to get insights and opportunities not found in your run-of-the-mill networks.

Learn more and apply to Sidebar—or see Sidebar in action here.

(#4) Your product is not their problem.

“As a young marketer, I made this mistake all the time— thinking that my product was a solution to someone’s problem—without ever understanding what problems the customers really had. And that I needed to have all the answers when in fact I didn’t even understand the questions.” —

Steve Blank

• 🫰 Why it matters: If the market is not currently solving the problem your product does, it may not be a problem they’ll pay to solve.

• 🔑 Bottom Line: Just because your product has clear benefits, doesn’t mean they matter. Don’t underestimate apathy as a competitor.

• 🥇 Applying it: Once you spot a gap in the market, always make sure there is a market in that gap. To repeat it: Gaps in the market do not mean a market in the gap!

Go deeper—read the full post by Steve Blank

(#5) Ten startup lies

I saw this post by Guillaume Moubeche (founder of Lemlist, Lempire, etc) and just had to share. 🤣 I’ve pasted it below for convenience.

• “Forbes 30 under 30” —> I paid a PR firm $50,000 so my mum could be proud of me

• “We decided to raise less money for this round because we don’t really need it” —> We did a down round, and I now only own 5% of my company

• "We have a highly experienced advisory board." —> A few industry experts agreed to have coffee with us once.

• “Our sales team is crushing it!” —> About 25% of our sales team hit quota

• “We’ve been developing our own AI for years” —> We use chatGPT and have a nice UI

• "We have a disruptive business model." —> We're not making any money yet.

• "Our burn rate is under control." —> We're running out of money, but we're trying to sound optimistic.

• "We have a strong company culture." —> We occasionally order pizza and play ping pong in the office to keep morale up.

• "We're in talks with several Fortune 500 companies for partnerships." —> We had one introductory call with an intern at one of those companies.

• "We've growing 100% month-over-month" —> We have 2 users, last month we had 1.

What would you add?

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(Lesson from the Archives) Watch out for your blindspots that may lead you into a high-risk, high-reward, experiment to validate the most important thing underpinning your business.

“Having deep expertise in your domain as a founder is a massive advantage. By and large, that’s because it means you understand the market and customers deeply and are in a leveraged position to uncover a unique insight into a problem.

But, in Quibi’s case, the founding team’s vast experience and previous successes worked against them. Jeff and Meg’s conviction that this is where the market was going and what people wanted was so strong, that they simply did not accept the notion that they could be wrong. And if you’re that confident and sure in yourself, you can see how “building lean” and rolling something out more incrementally all seem like a waste of time.” — me

Go deeper—Why Quibi Died: The $2B Dumpster Fire That Was Supposed to Revolutionize Hollywood

4 bits of bonus content for the curious….🧑‍🎓

(1/4) Featured tools I’m currently using to grow 🛠️

• I use Sidebar as a leadership program to accelerate my growth as a product leader. An excellent community for founders and senior leaders. (Learn more)

• I use Circeback as my new AI notetaking meeting buddy. I’ve never seen actionable summaries so good—neither has my team. 10/10. (Learn more)

• I use Perplexity for everything. It’s my new Google search, my go-to AI tool, and my #1 research companion. A true game-changer for me. (Learn more)

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(2/4) How I can help you grow 🤝

Are you a founder looking to grow your business without breaking the bank? If so, I’ve invested in a company (Athyna) that can help you find incredible talent and build out your global team in less than 5 days. Their product, service, and worldwide talent pool are just amazing (and so affordable). Learn more here ↗

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(3/4) Other interesting things I came across 🕳️🐇

• The Ultimate Founder Mental Health Stack — one of the most vulnerable and honest pieces on mental health.

• Sinking Lego Ships — I have no idea why, but this video of a guy building LEGO machines to sink LEGO boats took me down such a rabbit hole.

• Training an unbeatable AI in Trackmania — another video that visualizes in such an entertaining and smart way how reinforced machine learning works.

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(4/4) Latest posts from the newsletter ✨

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are three of the most recent editions.

• The simplest (and best) way to know if a problem is real: The new MVP (Meme Viable Problem), and a 3-step playbook to using it

• 100 books to help you Grow: The Power of the Paperback, a Database of the Top 100, and a Personal Curation

• How CommandBar Grows: A deep dive into a new layer of the internet

And that’s everything for this week’s edition. If you enjoyed reading today’s letter, feel free to forward it to someone! Or if you’d like to both (1) support my work, and (2) unlock premium essays like these, consider upgrading to paid.

Otherwise, have a fantastic weekend, and I’ll see you next time. ✌️
—Jaryd

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