Matt Silver
@MattSilver
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I believe technology will change how freight moves. Building Cargado. Former founder/CEO of Forager 🇺🇸 🇲🇽 🇨🇦 (acq'd in Jan 2022 by Arrive Logistics).
Chicago, IL
Joined February 2009
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As I get started on this new venture, investors and new founders ask me what I learned from last time and how I would do things differently and so I’ll share a few tidbits on what I learned.
It boils down to people, process, and technology:
The People
1. Build a team based on
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@Jason
I feel like ruler number one, regardless of where you are, is that you don’t hand your phone to someone you don’t know, especially with Zelle open for someone to send as much money as they want, to whomever they want.
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@vkhosla
This whole generation wants to get paid before they work and paid more before they work hard. I sound like a grumpy old man yelling at the clouds but I’m also 36.
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Maersk targeting 10,000 job cuts as container rates continue to drop is not a good sign for anyone in ocean freight forwarding. It’s a commoditized business and a lot of companies are dealing with the same headwinds. The CEO was quoted saying “This is not a diet. This is a reset
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I haven't had the heart to post anything on social media over the past two weeks with everything going on in Israel but, given what happened with Convoy over the past twenty-four hours, figured I would share some thoughts.
Toward the end of my time at Coyote, I looked at both
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We are thrilled to announce a $3M pre-seed round for
@Cargado_
!
U.S.-Mexico trade is at an all-time high.
Thanks to the USMCA, the COVID pandemic, and an overall re-thinking of global supply chain strategy, nearshoring is booming.
Manufacturers are investing heavily in moving
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I sound a bit like a broken record talking about this over and over again but this graph tells quite a story about trade between the U.S. and Mexico. There's so much volume moving between Mexico and the United States and that trend is only going to continue going up and to the
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China 🇨🇳 is losing the US-trade race with Mexico 🇲🇽, and the gap is about to get a lot wider.
You read that right: In 2023, Mexico clinched the title of the United States' top trading partner, surpassing China. It's a game-changer in international trade, and I couldn't resist
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@typesfast
If any of those people were focused on logistics and are in Chicago, send them our way!
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We’re seeing a massive reset in the logistics industry right now.
It’s happening with talent and performance baselines.
Maersk announcing the 10,000 job cuts back in November was just the beginning.
Brokerages and trucking companies saw absurd growth happen during COVID, or at
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Nearshoring is showing no signs of slowing down... it's starting to speed up.
While I don't talk to manufacturers on a regular basis, I talk to the logistics providers and trucking companies who work with those manufacturers.
Here's what I'm hearing:
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I can't say this enough times. I get the temptation to go "I can build a brokerage with my own tech and I'll do it better than Convoy did."
It's not happening. Stop trying to "disrupt the industry." My dad told me once when it was way too late in the process while I was building
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I'm hearing there's a handful of freight tech companies who are on their last legs and we may see another wave of startups wind down or getting acquihired.
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I’ve been a terrible Jew the last 22 years (aka, since my bar-mitzvah) and have been terrified ever visit Israel out of fear of terrorism due to the amount of hatred Jews experience on a daily basis.
I typically have used this platform to talk about freight but have felt sick to
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Wow. RXO acquires Coyote.
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[1/3] I wanted to take a moment, amidst all the Coronavirus (COVID-19) uncertainty and fear, to thank the truck drivers who are still out on the road making critical deliveries despite it.
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All day I dream about Mexico freight! Happy thanksgiving from Cabo!
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Happy New Year! 🎉 My Top 5 Predictions for Cross-Border Mexico Freight in 2024
As we welcome 2024, I can’t help but look ahead with excitement at the evolving landscape of cross-border Mexico freight. Here are my top five predictions for this dynamic sector:
1. Feel the
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Happy Freight Day to those who celebrate! (10-4)
Today’s a big day 👀.
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There’s a lot of chatter and rumors flying around about Coyote.
I’ll start by addressing one of them: no, I’m not buying Coyote, LOL. I don’t have that kind of money, I never owned it and love what we’re building at Cargado.
But let’s talk about Coyote for a minute.
This
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Here we go with some news to kick off the week… Friday was my last day at Arrive Logistics. Before we get all caught up in emotion around this news, we’ll start with the basics.
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I’ve been running around Laredo with a laptop and business cards getting our first users set up in
@Cargado_
and it’s been amazing so far.
Best part of this whole process is that I’ve been able to share feedback with our team during and between meetings via Slack and they’re
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Confirmed imports and exports have been at a near-stop for the last two days because the customs system in Mexico is down and customs brokers are not able to generate DODAs. Loads that already have paperwork prepared are also extremely delayed due to incredibly long lines that
No one's reporting on it in the US, but apparently no freight is moving into Mexico from the US for the last 48 hours because their customs system for inputting entires has been down for nearly 2 days now.
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I find myself telling every founder I talk to how helpful
@PrimaryVC
has been since (and really before) they led
@Cargado_
's seed round.
Between their GTM team, people ops, and recruiting support, their impact team really does make an impact.
My newsletter from this week was
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Everyone is realizing how much more logical it is to manufacture in Mexico. We wrote about this the day Tom Hanks announced he had COVID and the NBA shut down.
Over the next decade, China will lose its status as the world's manufacturing hub, while America will retain its status as the global reserve currency. Supply chains are going to reorientate away from China and back towards North America.
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Good way to get blocked quickly on LinkedIn is to send me a voice memo unsolicited.
Zero chance I'm downloading that file.
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We are going to drastically cut down on WhatsApp usage in cross-border freight. It has to happen. It’s a mess.
Sorry, Zuck.
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Having worked at Coyote and being friends with several people still there, I'm excited for the Coyote-RXO deal.
Coyote has a long-standing legacy and reputation of top tier service but was definitely stuck within the UPS ecosystem.
I learned a lot during my time within that
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We've got twelve signed customers using our product.
Aiming to get to twenty this month, we'll see what happens.
There's the latest building-in-public post.
BTW - we're hiring software engineers anywhere in North America.
Whether you want a demo of our product (waitlist) or
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If we’re gonna try this whole building-in-public thing, let’s start here:
Lessons learned from last time ✅
Business plan ✅
Fun logo ✅
Investor network ✅
Customer network ✅
Technical co-founder 👀
Who wants to build something fun? Slide into the DMs if you’re a technical
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It’s been interesting to see how much all the former Convoy employees (Nonvoyagers) loved Convoy based on the barrage of LinkedIn posts over the past couple days. There’s quite a lot of motivation to carry on a lot of the vision that existed at Convoy to help transform the
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Within 30 seconds of that update on LinkedIn, I had a VC sliding into my DMs.
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Having a hard time figuring out whether this is a serious question or not…
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It's surprising to see UPS and FedEx expanding surcharges in a slow season, especially as Amazon and a ton of tech-enabled regional players are actively working to disrupt the parcel industry. It's like they're sticking to an old playbook while the game is changing around them.
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Manifest
@ManifestFOL
was great but U2 at the Sphere was hands down the highlight of the week.
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It’s alive!
@Cargado_
is live (in beta).
Moving freight across the U.S.-Mexico border is incredibly complex.
There are so many opportunities for a mistake to occur.
Our goal is to help avoid those mistakes.
We’re still working on onboarding our beta group of brokers right
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I’m a believer that things happen for a reason.
Had I not gone to film school, I would’ve never moved to LA to try and make it in the film industry, and failed.
That failure took me back to Coyote, which led me to moving battery freight, which led to me discovering how to move
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FreightX meetup in Laredo!
@theAdrianGrcia
@itsandresgarcia
Love what Adrian is building at
@gategosoftware
! Amazing feedback from these two brothers on what we’re building as well!
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I didn’t realize how much interest there is in cross-border freight there is from various parts of this app until I posted about the new LinkedIn group yesterday. This is going to be fun…
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It's official,
@Foragerscs
has raised a $10M Series A, led by
@USVP_
with a new investment from Soma Capital and the continuing support of
@ChicagoVentures
. If you want to hear more of my thoughts on the raise you can find them here:
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There’s a freight ecosystem to be built. I see the earliest hints of it coming but we still have a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of old and wildly outdated systems that everyone still relies on heavily to operate on a daily basis.
Everyone is talking about how AI and AGI will
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Very bullish on what
@theAdrianGrcia
is building at
@gategosoftware
!
Props to Gatego who made the smart decision of getting a couple Apple Vision Pros to attract booth traffic at a conference. $7K well spent!
I’m excited to have
@theAdrianGrcia
on
@FWwhatthetruck
soon to find out if it helped land any deals, if he thinks the tech has legs in our
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Rule
#1
of being on a panel: answer the questions without pitching your own company. Eyes glaze over the moment you go into your pitch and mention the name of your company. People attend panels to learn, not get pitched.
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I had a ton of fun recording this latest Odd Lots podcast with
@TheStalwart
and
@tracyalloway
! Give it a listen and share if you enjoyed it!
NEW ODD LOTS:
A former freight broker is making a huge bet on Mexico.
@tracyalloway
and I talked to
@Cargado_
founder
@MattSilver
about why he's so bullish on Mexico, and why his new company is entirely focused on solving cross-border trade.
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He's starting a digital freight brokerage. He saw a gap in the market and decided to go for it.
i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people.
will have more to say about what’s next later.
🫡
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Here’s how I grew my followers on X by over 300% in a span of 60 days:
1. A lot of shitposting
2. A bit about freight and building in public
3. I raised a $3M round and posted about it
P.S. it was mostly
#1
P.P.S. this was from 600 to 1,800 followers
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While everyone was focused on the downfall of Convoy, I quickly flew out to Seattle and was fortunate to bring on a technical co-founder who has drastically evolved the vision for our product, along with three incredibly talented engineers. It’s been incredible working with such
@MattSilver
Congrats on the hire, nothing more impt than getting the right people on the bus l
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Are relationships actually what the whole logistics industry is built on? Who’s building tech to disprove that?
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Can we talk about how bad Microsoft Teams is? For those of you with a Mac, which is most people in tech, does Teams crash your computer every time you try joining a Teams meeting?
Also for those who think Meets is better than Zoom, you're wrong. It's definitely easy, and
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I’m sitting at home, under the weather right now, experiencing some FOMO as I see all the pictures and videos from
@FreightWaves
F3. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it for my fireside chat with
@FreightAlley
tomorrow! So instead, I’ll share some details of what we were
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Every cross-border broker’s dream:
A carajillo and a pack of Zyn
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Man, I was going to announce my new billion-dollar business today but Brad Jacobs stole my thunder. Maybe next week. So much for building in public!
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Here's the thing, I think this industry needs a lot of tools. Freight brokerages aren't going anywhere, no matter how much venture capital has been thrown at digital freight brokerages. One of the keys to building a successful freight brokerage is leveraging tech to drive
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For those interested in joining
@Cargado_
, we've got two roles open and are looking for absolute rockstars to join the team. One role is in Laredo TX (non-negotiable location) and one is in Monterrey, Mexico.
You can find the roles here:
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I know we keep hearing from some founders who say it's hard to raise money right now. I keep hearing from investors who are interested in backing the right founders with the right ideas who have an undying hunger to solve interesting problems, especially in supply chain and
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Something that gets me excited for the future of logistics and supply chain is all the startups I've met recently that are focusing on enabling brokers and forwarders instead of trying to disrupt them. This is how an ecosystem is built.
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I’ve had a few people reach out after listening to the
@freightcaviar
podcast asking why I don’t build another freight brokerage.
I think we can take everything that we’ve learned and apply that knowledge to building technology to help move the industry forward. We’re excited to
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In the inbox from
@freightcaviar
this morning: "Non-Competes Banned".
Elsewhere, thousands of carrier sales reps get up from their desks, walk away from their 6-figure commission jobs, and storm out of the office, ready to join a new company.
They show up and realize that new
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Sitting with
@pbjcaviar
from
@freightcaviar
debating whether the guy in 8C will murder us for attempting to record a podcast. Also discussing ways to integrate FreightCaviar into
@Cargado_
. Ready for
@ManifestFOL
!
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Boarding the flight to Mexico City!
Seems like everyone else is heading to Phoenix for TIA.
EXPO in CDMX is up next, and then a wedding in Cabo!
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@m2jr
Check out
@ChicagoVentures
(
@peterchristman
@stuartlarkins
), they led our seed at
@ForagerSCS
and did
@freightpipes
,
@OneRailapp
,
@CognitOps
as well)
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It's 7:30am on a Wednesday on a flight from DFW -> ORD.
Young woman sitting next to me just ordered a Vodka Sprite.
Thinking we'll do an AMA in a bit,
@freightcaviar
style once she finishes that first drink.
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@jspujji
It seems like Google would make more sense to try and buy Slack from Salesforce and integrate it into their suite. The only reason Teams has grown is because organizations that, for some reason, choose outlook over gmail, they end up stuck with Teams. No one actively chooses
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I had an opportunity this morning to see
@ClaudeCimeus
interview Justin Ishbia, one of the founding partners of Shore Capital Partners, and one of the owners of the
@Suns
.
Really enjoyed the conversation but disappointed in his answer to the question that I fed to Claude to ask:
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I love how much more attention
#logistics
and
#supplychain
is getting! I keep meeting founders from the most recent
@ycombinator
batch that are trying to solve some interesting problems in the space. Excited to see how this buzzy tech actually gets applied. And none are DFMs!
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It’s Friday.
Building a distributed team means you can work from anywhere. Spent the last ten days in Cabo soaking in the sun and getting work done.
Bringing the team to San Antonio and Laredo next week to meet with some early design partners.
Issue
#2
of the newsletter is
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I can't wait for the day when someone puts out product updates to the level that Apple does but for the freight industry.
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It's wild that there's still not the same level of visibility in freight as there is in food delivery, where you see a car or bike moving on a map, heading to your house. How is this not on every shipment moving around the world at this point? (I'm not talking about breadcrumbs
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Tracking needs to answer:
- where is my freight?
- what direction is it going?
- when will it be there?
- if it’s going to be late, do we know in enough time to shuffle a dock schedule?
- can I get tracking without needing to initiate a multi-step process that requires multiple
@NWischoff
@MattSilver
Glad to say we’re working on something really exciting for tracking but more than that, enhanced security as well.
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I get a lot of messages from people asking questions about Mexico freight and, while I'm one of the experts, there's so many other experts in the space and I figured it made sense to help get everyone on the same page... Shoot me a DM for access to a new group on LinkedIn for
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If anything, we should be calling it low-hanging freight jokes.
Agreed with these comments. More and more people in the logistics industry are in their twenties and thirties. This applies to brand and marketing, software (particularly product design), and sales strategy.
It’s
@LogTechEric
@MattSilver
@lostisreed
We are slowly crossing the chasm of decision makers being from the old guard to the meme generation.
It behooves brands to understand this low hanging fruit and begin to gather an audience of who will be making the decisions in the years to come.
Being a “fun” freight brand
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Spotted in the bathrooms at
@ManifestFOL
: those little Zyn packets all over the urinals.
Not even remotely surprised, was this all you
@lostisreed
?
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How I got my start with Mexico
I've been asked often enough how I, a gringo, got involved in cross-border Mexico freight. It's addicting and I love the complexity of it all. Read more for the backstory.
🇺🇸↔️🇲🇽👇
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You know you've been in freight for too long when the first thing you do is check the area code of a person's phone number in their email address to figure out where they're based or from.
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1. Where are companies nearshoring? Mexico and ?
Colombia seems to be a popular option for nearshoring when it comes to talent. Tons of freight brokerages have teams in Colombia, but it's debatable as to whether Colombia counts as near as you have to cross a large body of water
@MattSilver
Couple thoughts from someone that knows little but wants to learn more
1. Where are companies nearshoring? Mexico and ?
2. what’s the sell to the customer? Price, speed, geopolitics?
3. Who are the customers ? I can think of Apparel, auto, and electronics.
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We’re building software to help everyone in the industry better manage and execute on cross-border Mexico freight. That’s all I’ll say for now. It’s not a digital freight brokerage — I never want to broker freight again. I’m excited to build real software that will benefit
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What a week to be in logistics and supply chain! What kind of industry-jolting story will we get today? I feel like there’s more news coming soon…
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What a wild last two weeks.
✅ Co-Founder
✅ Founding engineering team
✅ Code base foundations
✅ Roadmap
✅ Customer interviews and commitments
Time to start building with some travel lined up...
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Let’s talk about Mexico freight tech. We’ll be on Discord, if you can figure out how to join it. It’s like Slack but more confusing and different sound effects.
Tonight on Tech Bro Tuesday
@MattSilver
will be hopping in to talk a bit about exiting stealth mode and launching
@Cargado_
Starts in 10 mins
Join ⬇️
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Personally, I hate the sound of my own voice and so I don’t typically listen to the podcasts I join.
You would think with how much I post on here that it’s the opposite, but I was once told by
@Andrew_Silver7
that I don’t have a good voice for podcasts and so now, here I am,
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Mexico freight is nothing without its people, the shipper, the Mexican carrier, the transfer carrier, the U.S. carrier, the Mexican customs broker, the U.S. customs broker, and the receiver.
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Quickly becoming my least favorite phrase that I hear from a lot of investors: “we’re of the mindset to build relationships with founders when they’re not raising.”
If I spent all my time talking to those investors, I’d have a ton of friends and no customers.
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I love building a product that companies are paying to use.
I love it even more that it’s helping solve problems I’ve lived for the past decade, and that they’re making money using our product.
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My newest unhealthy addiction is refreshing the metrics page we have set up that shows how many companies accepted invites and started using our product ahead of the full launch next month.
One key hire in a strategic market + social media engagement has made all the difference.
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One thing humanity needs to learn is to not stand directly in front of elevator doors.
Just assume someone is getting off and back up a bit.
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