Kyle Tibbitts
@KyleTibbitts
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CMO @Wander • Betting on founders @ParadoxVC
Utah 🇺🇸
Joined March 2010
Underappreciated phenomenon: . Working at a high-growth, margin-focused startup is a real-life MBA where you get paid six figures plus equity to learn how to build a business instead of paying six figures and going into debt to learn how to build a theoretical one.
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When you locked in a 30 year fixed mortgage at 2.75% over a year ago.
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“You still have freedom of choice… you’ll just lose your job, your online presence and your bank account if you choose wrong.”.
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The libertarian leaving my body watching how Libertarians behave at their convention.
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It took a pandemic to realize:. • Homeschool is going mainstream.• Living at an office is unnecessary.• Telemedicine should be default.• Good hygeine protects everyone.• Megacities aren’t the only option.• Blindly believing experts is risky.• Change can happen really fast.
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@Austen You’re meaning to tell me then they didn’t let random people pull up to a window where the President who almost got assinated twice was giving people their order?.
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My heart is breaking for these small business owners. This is wrong.
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Marketing lessons learned over more than a decade growing startups (thread):. Great marketing emanates from a great product. If the product sucks no amount of world class marketing can redeem it. Marketing can help make a good product great––it will never make a bad product good.
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Would love to see the science that says packing 200 people into a metal tube for a flight is ok, but having 20 customers eating outside a restaurant is dangerous.
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The BlueAnon theory that Elon used Starlink to steal the election for Trump is patently absurd, but if it gets Democrats demanding paper ballots and voter ID, then so be it.
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California really outdoing itself right now:. • Can’t leave your house because of COVID19.• Can’t go outside because of fires/smoke.• Can’t turn on AC because the powers out.• Can’t ride/drive for Uber because of AB5.• Can’t leave the state or we’ll tax you
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Every company is now a media company, it’s just that they don’t all realize it yet.
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We went from “the tech industry is overreacting to #coronavirus” to a statewide lockdown of 40 million Californians in 35 days.
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Attempting to cancel @joerogan is a great way to convince sane people to vote against your side. • He has the largest podcast in the world—190M downloads/mo.• He gives folks on all sides a chance to speak freely.• He can say whatever he wants.• He’s by all accounts a good guy.
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I’m not sure our brains are made for the level of information warfare we’re going to experience from here on out.
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The founders I admire most spend 0% of their energy bashing other startups.
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“Sorry my toddler can’t wear a mask at school today. She’s feeling the spirit.”.
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@austin_rief “Time is the currency of life. Money is not.” This is true and you just need enough financial freedom to have control over your time.
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Ideal two-person co-founding team:. A builder who can sell.A seller who can build.
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@ComfortablySmug Everyone is talking about how brilliant Bloomberg is at marketing because he hired some Instagram influencers. Meanwhile Trump is doing flyovers with Air Force 1 at the Daytona 500 and whipping around the track in The Beast.
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Some of the most talented people I’ve worked with at startups took unconventional paths getting there. Biologists who became marketers. Lawyers who became product managers. Bankers who became engineers. Don’t let anyone tell you “you can’t” just because they can’t imagine it.
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Advice is overrated. If you want to start a business, do it. If you want to start investing, do it. If you want to go to school, do it. If you want to have kids, do it. There's never a perfect time to do anything worth doing in life. Trust your instincts. Filter out the noise.
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The more hiring a startup does before reaching product-market fit, the less likely it is to ever reach it.
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Every time I see folks advocating for aggressive "content moderation" and censorship, I think of this @naval quote:. “The test of any good system is to build the system and turn it over to your enemies to run for ten years.”.
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Who had John Fetterman becoming the smartest Democrat political commentator in the country on their bingo cards two years ago?
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President @nayibbukele is ridiculously impressive. When are we going to get a leader like this in the United States?
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In an office environment, being a great talker is an advantage. In a remote one, being a great writer is a superpower.
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“Your forcing employees return to the office full time is my recruiting opportunity.” — remote-first startups everywhere.
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Pro-censorship crowd: “FB must stop propaganda and false info from spreading or else!”. Facebook: “Ok, we’ll block and/or suppress misinformation from getting reach on our platform.”. Pro-censorship crowd: “No, not my propaganda!”
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Companies have moats, but so do people—five of the strongest ones:. • Low personal burn rate and equity (capital).• High integrity and authenticity (brand).• A peaceful mind and fit body (process).• Helping and connecting others (network).• Friends and family you love (team).
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If you’re a perfectionist, building startups will beat that out of you. Perfection is the enemy of the good in general—but in a startup context, perfectionism paralyzes productivity and destroys velocity.
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The magic of building startups: . A small team believes a secret the external world doesn't. Forges a product around it. Sends it out the door. Reality bends in response to it. The market wants more of it. The secret becomes ubiquitous. The team never forgets how it all started.
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The pure creative energy required to take startup from 0 to 1 is a form of modern art.
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If @BillGates were taxed at $100B it would fund the federal gov’t for 8 days. The majority would be wasted at the oppty cost of Gates deploying it to save 1Ms of lives. You all in Congress can’t even spend $3.3T of record tax revenue halfway responsibly.
Say Bill Gates was actually taxed $100 billion. We could end homelessness and provide safe drinking water to everyone in this country. Bill would still be a multibillionaire. Our message: the billionaire class cannot have it all when so many have so little.
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Being underestimated is a tremendous competitive advantage.
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Keep your startup team as small as possible for as long possible to go as fast as possible.
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Censoring trades = censoring speech. How it started How it’s going
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Tell me you’ve never watched Rogan without telling me you’ve never watched Rogan.
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Utah is one of the most beautiful but under-the-radar states in the country.
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Sometimes you only need to be right once:. • Build 1 great business after many failures.• Pick 1 great investment after many losses.• Choose 1 great spouse after many breakups.• Find 1 great friend after many acquaintances. Realizing this changes your relationship w/ failure.
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This from @bhorowitz’s book has been stuck in my mind for a week👇. A startup’s comparative advantage is speed. But lack of trust creates massive friction. So startups virtually eliminate their edge if they don't build trust—with customers/each other—into their DNA from day one.
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The virus helped turn stocks into sports, sports into politics and politics into religion.
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Tired: asking to get verified.Wired: remaining unverified.Inspired: refusing to be verified
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I’m looking to invest in 8 to 12 pre-seed and seed-stage founders next year and help them craft their marketing strategies (I just committed to one closing next week). Reply or DM with what you’re building and where you’re building and let’s chat.
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SNL both needing @elonmusk to stay culturally relevant and hating it every step of the way is kinda the perfect parable for the state of wokerati media today.
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@Geiger_Capital Biden snubbing Elon at the EV Summit and Trump going to see the Starship launch is quite the contrast.
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Startups are rarely born with product-market fit. It’s almost always forged with sheer will.
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The U.S. started World War II with biplanes and ended it with bombers. We have a long history of starting slow and then ramping up to win. New #coronavirus test from Abbott delivers positive results in 5 minutes.
This is GAME CHANGER. Abbott to market, starting next week, a fast point-of-care #coronavirus test, delivering positive results in 5min and negative results in 13min. Will deliver 50K tests/day to start. Kudos to Abbott and FDA’s Jeff Shuren and team at CDRH who are in the fight.
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A startup is basically “doing things that don’t scale” to will your product into existence and scaling the shit out of them once your customers can’t live without it.
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If you’re wondering why institutional credibility is basically near zero:. The CDC started the pandemic saying “don’t wear masks” and is ending the pandemic saying we can’t take them off.
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Prediction: companies that overcorrect to remote work will get dominated by co-located companies with WFH flexibility in the long run.
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In startup hiring, hunger to build and learn is infinitely more important than credentials and degrees.
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@DavidSacks lol I loved Jason’s list of asks for the New Democrat candidate that described a moderate Republican.
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@shaunmmaguire Very interesting that every election irregularity I’ve seen posted here the last week is against one candidate.
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In the era of cheap capital, most startups invested in their non-paid marketing channels last. In the era we’re entering, the best startups are building their organic channels first.
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One of the most rewarding things in life is betting on someone with potential before anyone else sees it — and them proceeding to absolutely crush it on every level.
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If the three dimensions to building a startup are market, team and product, the fourth dimension is timing.
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@maklelan You’re meaning to tell me then they didn’t let random people pull up to a window where the President who almost got assinated twice was giving people their order?.
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The best startup investors know it’s an honor for them to be on a founder’s cap table — not the other way around.
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👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿.👉🏿👉🏾👍🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👍🏽👈🏾👈🏿.👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽👍🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👍🏼👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿.👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽👉🏼👍🏻👇🏻👍🏻👈🏼👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿.👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽 You can be 👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿👈🏿.👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽 friends with 👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿👈🏿.👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽 people you 👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿👈🏿.👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽 disagree with 👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿.👉🏿👉🏾👉🏾👍🏼👆🏽👆🏽👆🏼👆🏼👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿 .👉🏿👉🏾👍🏽👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽👍🏽👈🏾👈🏿.👍🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾.
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Two of the biggest startup mistakes: . 1) Not attacking the hardest, most existential problems first.2) Playing like you have something to lose after some success.
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Some people are best in the 0 to 1 phase of a startup. Others are better in the 1 to N phase of scaling. Few are good at both.
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Investing in seed stage startups isn’t about seeing the future. It’s about betting on founders who are building a different one.
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Genuine helpfulness is the currency of a successful startup ecosystem.
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You can’t reach product-market fit with zero marketing. In order to build something people want, they have to know it exists.
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Goldilocks principle of career growth:. Too junior: all execution/no strategy.Too senior: all strategy/no execution.Just right: both strategy+execution. Progress to the point where you build a strategy muscle, but not to the point where your execution muscle atrophies to nothing.
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Science used to be about questioning everything to find the truth. Now "science" is often invoked to silence questions so you'll stop searching for it.
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We tend to underestimate the extent to which constraints drive creativity. Without a character limit, Twitter would have been just another failed startup.
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Prediction: In 2030, SF remains tech epicenter but 50% of $1B+ startups are in less dysfunctional hub cities. SF network effects persist but remote makes leveraging ecosystem & building elsewhere possible. Much like Hollywood where they film in cities like ATL but pitch in LA.
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@paulg Your rate-of-learning is a better proxy for how successful you will be than your current compensation because it’s a leading rather than lagging indicator.
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Attempting to cancel @BillGates for suggesting it may not make sense for him to pay a theoretical $100B/90% wealth tax demonstrates that much of the motivation behind these ideas is driven not by helping the less fortunate but punishing the wealthy.
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@JRIngallinera You’re in good company. I just flew into California from Utah and am seeing more Trump shirts and hats here.
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Betting on people early is a superpower. An investor writing a founder's first check. A founder hiring their very first employee. An early employee taking a risk on an idea. Bet on people before they've made it. They’ll never forget you took a chance on them –– you won't either.
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The media narrative that JD Vance is an awful Vice Presidential pick got obliterated tonight, the same way the narrative that Biden was sharp evaporated after the first debate.
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Early-stage startups almost universally undestimate the power of social proof in driving conversion and building trust once their product is resonating. Customer videos and testimonials, 4+5-star reviews, impressive stats, recent press coverage. Put. It. Everywhere.
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Founders: bias towards action .Investors: bias towards traction.Customers: bias towards satisfaction.
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The only advantage startups have is speed. When you massively overhire, you give away the only real edge you have over companies with more money, resources and people.
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Someone who builds houses once told me: “if you want to go fast, go slow.”. He’d learned the hard way. Doing everything fast meant doing nothing well — and way more mistakes. Building anything great requires focus. And doing fewer things well is the best way to move faster.
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