I’m beyond excited to share that I’ve been named to the @Forbes 30 Under 30 list!. This honor reflects the amazing founders, collaborators, and mentors I’ve had the privilege to work with. A huge thank you to @MenloVentures, @shawnvc, @GregRudin, and my friends and family who

Too many founders overthink their pitch deck. Here’s the truth:. ✨ The best ones are just 7 slides and take 7 minutes to present. Here’s the structure I recommend after 500+ founder meetings:. 👥 Team.🔥 Problem.🛠️ Solution.📊 Market.⚔️ Competition.💰 Business model.📥 The ask

What’s the real job of a CEO?. It’s not being the smartest person in the room. It’s making sure the whole team is aligned and moving in the same direction. Stewart Butterfield realized this at @SlackHQ . Jensen Huang designed @nvidia to operate like a “small company” despite

🚀 Most startups aren’t founded solo-and for good reason. Only 35% of startups in 2024 had solo founders. Of those, just 17% raised venture funding. Source: @cartainc . Going solo means full control and greater upside-but it can also mean slower velocity, fewer skills on deck,

If I had to bet all my money on one predictor of founder success….It wouldn’t be vision. It wouldn’t be product. It wouldn’t even be fundraising. It would be this: the ability to hire top talent. The best founders are magnets for exceptional talent. They know how to:.✅ Spot

🚨 One of the strongest (and most underrated) signals of a high-performing founder?. They reply to emails fast. ⚡📩. We talk a lot about speed in startups:.→ Build fast.→ Iterate fast.→ Grow fast. But how fast you reply to emails is a clear signal of speed that rarely gets

Ever noticed how many top founders come from product roles?. That’s no accident. Tamara Berg (who sold her first company to Meta) told me:. “I had no idea how much goes into building great products. I wish I had built up more of that knowledge earlier.”. Here’s why product

If you removed the AI… would the product still work?. That’s the question every founder should ask before claiming they’re building an AI startup. Here’s how most AI startups break down:. 🧠 1. Core AI companies – Build foundational models (think @AnthropicAI , @OpenAI ). 🛠️ 2.

🤔 Do you pivot or persevere?. That's the question every founder faces when growth flattens or traction feels… off. I sat down with second-time founder @patricksamy (his startup Span was acquired by Eight Sleep), and his advice stuck with me:. 🔍 Customer obsession is

"Your best early hires won’t come from a job board.". Tamara Berg, founder of Shopagon (acquired by Meta), shares 3 key takeaways from her entrepreneurial journey:. 👥 Community is everything.🤝 Trust is your best early recruiting tool.💡 Funding isn’t the goal—building

💰 Founders, fundraising timelines have changed—are you prepared?. The old norm? Raising a new round every 18-24 months. The reality today? 24-30 months—or even longer. Even more surprising: only 15% of companies secure their Series A within two years of raising their Seed

Most co-founders don't split equity evenly—here’s why. 🤯. Fresh data from @cartainc reveals that over 50% of two-founder teams end up with unequal shares. And when there are three or more founders? An even split is even less common!. Why does this happen? What factors drive

🚀 What’s happening with startup funding in 2025? Here’s what founders need to know. I sat down with @PeterJ_Walker , Head of Insights at @cartainc , to break down the 3 biggest trends shaping the venture landscape right now:. 1️⃣ Funding levels are back to normal.👉 2021 was

🚀 Lessons from Exited Founders 🚀. Today, I’m joined by @patricksamy , Co-Founder & CEO of Span, a health coaching platform that exited in 2022. In this video, he shares 3 key lessons from his journey:. 🔹 Co-founding relationships take work – Constant communication is

🚨 Slack was down for nearly 10 hours yesterday!. For teams worldwide, that meant scrambling without their go-to messaging app. But did you know Slack wasn’t originally built to be a messaging platform? 🤯. 🎥 Watch my latest video to uncover the unexpected pivot that turned

🤔 Is MVP (Minimum Viable Product) officially outdated?. What if I told you that in today’s AI-powered world, MVP just isn’t enough anymore?. AI is accelerating development, reducing costs, and making it possible to bring something far more compelling to market—a “Strongest First

Founders, did you know it can take anywhere from 5 to 14 different SAFEs to close a funding round? 🤯 . Most SAFE rounds don’t happen all at once. They come together piece by piece—smaller checks, multiple investors. @cartainc just dropped new data on SAFE check sizes. If

🤔 How much equity should you give your startup advisor?. At Menlo, we categorize advisors into three types:. 1️⃣ Standard Advisor.2️⃣ Strategic Advisor.3️⃣ Expert Advisor. 📽️ Watch this video for a breakdown of each category and how much equity we think you should offer. 💬 Have

🚀From Idea → Funding → Launch in just 6 months!. Building fast is hard. @RamiMatic actually did it. As a Menlo Fellow, he took his idea for @almaknowsfood first-ever AI nutrition companion—and turned it into a fully funded, launched product in half a year. 💡What's his

📊DPI: The #1 Metric Investors Care About. DPI (Distributed to Paid-In Capital) is a key metric in Venture Capital—but what does it mean and why does it matter so much?🤔. 👇Let's break it down:. 🔹What Is DPI?.It’s how VC firms measure their investment performance. It shows how