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Scaling, pressure cookers, and startup killers

Hi nerds -

I salute you from Miami, as I arrive back from a weekend-long yoga retreat in California.

I felt recharged and restored, until I took the red-eye flight back from LAX. Reminder to never do one of those again.

The consequences…

brain farts

🕰️ Pressure cookers: I learned about the Y Combinator deadline 5 days before it happened. Within that time, I:

  • Designed an end-to-end user journey and built a working prototype

  • Worked out company financials for how to reach $1B valuation

  • Recorded and edited 2 demo videos

  • Wrote this newsletter and got the first few clients

  • Got friends to send in YC referrals for me

Lesson: if you ever need a productivity boost, craft arbitrary deadline.

🚀 Scaling: One of the biggest lessons I learned from working in Developer Relations is that nothing scales if we don’t do the things that don’t scale first. 

  • To build a 100k community, we need strong 1:1 relationships

  • To scale a product to 100k users, we must dive into the pain points of the first 100 users

  • To recruit the best 100 people, we must spend time hiring right the 10-20 hires

As a dev, I tend to want to automate everything. But if we don’t do the things that don’t scale first, it’s hard to get the important nuances right early on.

🧘🏻‍♀️ Yoga lessons: This weekend I went to a yoga retreat and reflected a lot about how the lessons from my yoga practice transcend beyond my mat:

  • I know I can stand back up, after I fall

  • I am more flexible than I think I am

  • Reaching balance requires strength and focus

  • The rewards of my hard work are felt when we rest at the end

  • We sleep better when we work hard

smart goodies

Startup killers: Multi-tasking, too much capital, too little capital, perfectionism, not obsessed enough over details, too obsessed over competition, team burnout, constant pivots, no distribution, no fun anymore.”

“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

~ Michelangelo

funky jams

If you’re into jazz with a house base, this band has me on repeat!

Thanks for reading.

Btw, if you’re looking to move to the US (or know someone who is), reach out and I may be able to help out 😉 !

Speak soon,

Jules 🤸🏻‍♂️

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