In startup land, growth is gospel. More users. More revenue. More features. More LinkedIn announcements with graphs and confetti emojis. But sometimes, the smartest move is to stop climbing. Not …
Sebastian Murphy
From Firefighting to Forecasting: Building a Proactive Ops Culture
Most startups live in constant reaction mode. Shipping late? Fire drill. Churn spike? Everyone panic. Compliance deadline? Start the all-nighter. In those early days, chaos feels like progress. You’re doing, …
The first ten hires at a startup are not just employees. They’re co-architects of the chaos. They set the tone, build the muscle, and-if you choose wrong-bake in the dysfunction …
In the startup world, going viral is the holy grail. Founders dream of waitlists that break Notion, tweets that cause investor DMs to explode, and dashboards that spike so hard …
Startups love to talk about scale, while ignoring profit ceilings. “We’re building a high-margin business.” “Our gross margin will improve with volume.” “Once we hit Series B, the unit economics …
Innovation is a startup’s lifeblood. Without it, you stagnate. You get outpaced. Your pitch decks start to sound like warmed-over buzzword soup. So founders create pipelines. They form squads. They …
You land the big client. They love you. They pay on time. They even give useful feedback. Before long, they are a case study, a lighthouse logo, a reference call. …
Startups love to pretend they are reinventing the wheel. But behind every “revolutionary” product is a trail of borrowed ideas, remixed features, and stolen UX flows. That is not a …
Most incentive structures look good on a Notion page and fall apart by Q3. What starts as a well-meaning bonus plan or revenue-share agreement quickly morphs into resentment, confusion, or-worse, …
At some point in your startup’s life, you’ll feel the itch. Revenue is steady. Churn is under control. CAC isn’t outrageous. And then someone-an investor, a board member, your inner …