Adam Lawrence 🇺🇸
@im_asl
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I sell giant machines as CEO of @boomandbucket 🚜 3x Startup COO and founder at a couple of unicorns. I care about the craft of company building.
Austin, TX
Joined May 2009
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Yesterday my neighbor
@TheSamParr
and
@ShaanVP
insulted me on their podcast.
My Mustache is NOT a disguise, I’m NOT trying to blend in, and I was born with this hat and facial hair.
All jokes aside, thanks for the shoutout guys 👍
For everyone else, I was COO at
@bolt
and have
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I believe the most reliable path to building a $100,000,000+ company is integrating new technology into old industries.
Here’s the framework:
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Remote work is terrible for 100% of ambitious people.
Right now we’re trying to hire a bunch of sales people, and I want them right here in Austin, Texas.
I want them,
- in our office
- around the founders
- talking with each other
- interacting with leadership
- learning
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Look at this kid.
He raised $1.6M at 26 years old.
At 27 he was diagnosed with shingles due to stress.
Building a company is not always the heroic story everyone makes it out to be. Sometimes when you put it all on the line, you just lose.
Here’s my story:
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@thesamparr
At 20 I was starting revolutions based on the professor being 15 minutes late. FREEEEEDOOOOOOOOM
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All my rich friends sold too early.
I've never spoken to a founder that regretted selling too soon.
I've spoken to many founders that regretted selling too late.
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I was the COO at a multi-billion dollar fintech company.
I believe the most reliable path to building a $100,000,000+ company is integrating new technology into old industries.
Here’s the framework:
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No way this clown is in my space for the second company in a row.
I hope he leaves it fast.
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1. Older industries are attractive because they reliably print money.
2. New technology allows those old businesses to add new streams of revenue, increase margins, and build moats.
Our business
@boomandbucket
is a great example…
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If you are a startup CEO... Please read this...
Your business’s speed compounds over time.
If you can do something today that your competitor will do tomorrow…
…and you can do something tomorrow that they are going to start next week…
…Suddenly, over the course of a year,
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Boring businesses are “all-are-winners” markets.
Less competition, more slices of the pie to go around.
My belief is that you have a higher likelihood of building a successful $10M+ company by putting modern tech into boring businesses no one else wants.
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No one is building tech for these industries or adopting it into their own businesses.
And the tech doesn’t have to be complicated, it’s simple things like,
- Easy to use web portals
- Automated billing software
- Routing/Job scheduling optimization
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Businesses like this are everywhere, they’re just hidden in plain sight.
Here’s a few you’ve probably never heard of…
- Mobile personal care (haircuts, makeup, massages).
- Mobile dog care
- Fireplace cleaning/firewood delivery
- Home aquarium cleaning and maintenance
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And here’s my point…
No one is looking at these boring industries, not VCs, not tech crunch, no one.
Everyone is busy competing in Web3, AR, crypto, AI.
They’re busy fighting each other in fancy “winner-take-all” markets.
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My buddy is hiring a VP of engineering and the search alone will cost him $100,000…
This actually sparked a debate between myself and a few friends.
See, $100,000 is the cost to hire an executive recruiting firm to search and close a VP or exec role.
A recruiting firm is
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Titles in startup companies are meaningless until you hit ~30 employees.
Then, they’re incredibly important.
Here’s an example…
You’re a solo founder building a tech company and you quickly bring on a Head of Engineering.
They’re a great engineer and previously managed a
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I’ve helped build 2 multi-billion dollar businesses.
Something I’ve noticed:
As a small team of high functioning employees scales into a large team of scattered divisions, they get slower, incentives dissolve, and they start fighting to win 0-sum games.
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I’ve built 3 startups as CEO/COO and scaled from 0 to 200+ employees twice.
These are the 3 worst pieces of conventional wisdom I’ve ever heard about hiring talented people:
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For the company builders out there, please watch out for burnout.
Long periods of excess stress with no respite do not make you stronger, they break you .
I learned the hard way that stress and anxiety are no way to lead. Deep thinking requires mental clarity and calmness.
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There are only 2 types of salespeople in this world:
The 1st type of salesperson is an order taker…
They sit behind a phone, customers call in and they already want to buy something.
This is like…
…The sales clerk at your local home depot. They aren’t convincing you to buy
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Every CEO/COO needs to start collecting “people” data as early as possible.
One of the easiest places to start is with a monthly employee survey.
I’ve started one at every company I’ve ever joined.
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I spoke with a young man recently about how much money he was making at his job.
He was well-paid in an early career role at a mid-sized tech company.
And the problem he approached me with was this…
“Adam, I feel fine about how much money I’m making, but my job is boring, I’m
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His first year he profited ~$250k, making a 10% commission on every machine he sold.
And besides his truck and cell phone, he didn’t have many other expenses.
Today his company does ~$8M and looks exactly the same, just with more people.
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FYI: "transparent employee review" websites are fake.
The entire business model of “Honest review platforms” just doesn’t work.
The whole incentive system is backwards.
Let’s take a moment and break it apart…
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I'll never work with someone that is rude to a waiter.
A lesson I’ve learned too many times: People who lack integrity in one aspect of their life tend to lack integrity in all aspects of their life
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10 years ago my CEO and I had breakfast with Michael Ovitz.
Our conversation was generally around how to sell software to big banks.
And Michael — a dealmaking master — was a world class resource to consult at the time.
One thing he said that stuck out to me was this:
“[When
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@ankurnagpal
It’s a shit deal.
In most multi-founder scenarios I’ve seen the early employees are often stronger than one cofounder, but compensated at a fraction.
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There are thousands of companies in the U.S. that broker heavy machinery like us and profit on EVERY transaction.
We make money every single time we sell something.
But not all businesses work the same way.
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I’m big into food pairings. What ketchup is recommended for a 60 day dry aged steak?
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30 days ago I bought my entire company Chat GPT4 plus accounts.
Shortly after, we had a brainstorming session about the lowest effort, highest impact use cases chat GPT would have in our business.
After an hour or so we had 30+ ideas, each with an indication of its usefulness
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@KenziesPoolBoy
I think it’s really hard to build competence remotely. Lots of learning, especially early career, happens through osmosis.
Agree about the politicking of in-person, but that’s also a question of rewards and perfomance management.
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As a COO, the most important thing I’ve ever done for a CEO was listen.
Founders are on an island. If you haven’t been there before, it’s hard to understand.
You can share bits of what is going on with a few people, large chunks with fewer yet, and all of it with only
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Hosting a small meet-up in Austin tonight. DM me if you want details. Lot's of founders and tech friends.
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But Boom and Bucket makes ~10% on every transaction, a 10,000X difference compared to that credit card company.
Where CC companies only profit at scale, we profit every transaction.
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75 days ago I bought my entire company Chat GPT4 plus accounts.
Here’s 2 new ways I’ve seen it used recently…
- We uploaded different equipment specs and compared them to see which one was better.
- We had it write summaries for us from different types of data we’re
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The marginal cost of building SaaS has plummeted over the last 20 years and it's not stopping.
Here’s the idea:
1990s: Cost $10M to build any SaaS
2000s: Cost $5M
2010s: $1M
2020s: $200k
Now with AI writing code for us, the cost will keep dropping.
So what can we learn from
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I love businesses like this that are not (yet) leveraged with tech.
This is way more common in older, “boring”, industries.
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I wish everyone would do this...
I sent an email with a lot of info. Instead of leaving me "on read" they wrote a quick "we're working on it" note.
A+ comms.
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I’ve interviewed 2,000+ people... Here's the process I use to find talent in a 15 minute phone call:
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All my rich friends sold too early.
I love this saying.
Especially because I actually have rich friends that this happened to.
They got in early (like, first 200-400 employees) at a few now very large tech companies.
Instead of holding onto their shares forever or trying to
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Your calendar is a direct reflection of your priorities.
When’s the last time you audited your calendar?
If you haven’t, you’re probably wasting time.
For myself I’ve noticed that my priorities shift or my calendar discipline just gets relaxed over time.
- I take more calls
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If you enjoyed this thread and want more of these “behind the scenes stories” of startups, follow me
@im_asl
Also a big thanks to
@ValKatayev
,
@Girdley
, and
@ShaanVP
for some of the inspiration behind this thread.
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If you’re a founder in the first inning of your career, please read this…
The most important thing you need to do right now is get some experienced operators in your circle.
Specifically, these operators can NOT be your investors or board members.
I’ve watched founders be
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A prospective customer drove 5 hrs (one way) to see our office and prove that we were real today.
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I’m rolling out a new framework in my company right now.
It’s called “Impeccable Agreements.”
It's from the book The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.
Here’s what it is, why we’re rolling it out, and how it works:
I believe trust in an organization is built by people
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When I was 29, one of my business advisors told me this:
“Adam, you seem like you have most things under control.”
“The only thing that you'll have to watch out for is making sure that your health and wellness is good for the next ten years.”
The context of this conversation
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You should almost never hire a generalist into your business.
Generalists succeed in environments that are varied and ambiguous in nature.
They are good at solving a wide range of problems that can be executed without much depth of experience.
The problem is that 99% of
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Something on my mind has been bothering me lately, and I want to transparently share it here…
When I was a younger man, I had an ego.
Big time.
I’d look down at my competitor’s businesses a lot.
Especially if they appeared old or had outdated processes that didn’t make
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One of my favorite interview questions to ask:
“What are you trying to do with your career, and how does this job help you get there?”
With this question, I’m asking for a candidate’s north star.
I’m trying to find out,
a) if they’ve strategically thought about their long
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I’ve hired and managed over 250 people.
Something I’ve noticed:
Employees HATE company offsites… Especially if you do them like everyone else.
But over time, I’ve built a system for leading amazing offsites.
Here's it is:
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Fun fact: This story ends with me selling this business in a Walmart parking lot on the way to burning man.
But along the way I hope you learn something about managing your health in stressful situations.
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In 2016 I interviewed for the COO position at one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world.
That was when Bitcoin was ~$1,000.
Here’s the reason crypto looks like a massive sh*t show right now:
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If you are interviewing for a job soon… read this:
I had a very poor interview with a sales candidate recently and I think a lot of people should learn what NOT to do in an interview from the company’s perspective.
Here’s some context:
I do a lot of these quick 15 minute
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If you believe in America you must believe in the construction industry.
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I internalized all of this pressure and it quickly showed in my health.
Panic attacks, anxiety, major weight loss, major weight gain, shingles, no sleep, no exercise, lost friends, you get the point.
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Steve Jobs once said:
"The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller…"
"The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”
I’ve been running companies for over a decade now and whole heartedly agree, storytelling is a
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Hiring is NOT a 9 to 5 thing.
If you want to recruit the best people — it’s any day - any time - any night - any weekend.
You need to be fast.
Your ability to be flexible and adaptable to a talented person’s schedule is a competitive advantage.
If they can call you after
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This will be the most powerful business lesson you read today👇👇
But it has nothing to do with business…
In 1948, Lyndon B. Johnson ran for Texas Senate.
He went balls to the wall with his campaign, doing everything possible to win.
Specifically, he had himself, 3 separate
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“Do we raise more money or do we sell our company?”
I was asked this question by a startup recently.
The startup had 2 cofounders, they were ~4 years into their journey, in their early 30s, doing ~$1M in sales, and owned ~80% of their company.
An early career exit at this
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I’ve built 3 businesses that have 1000s of employees.
Here’s how I run a team meeting:
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His first year in business was just himself, a truck, and a phone.
Every day, he drove to contractors, excavators, landscapers, etc, and pitched himself as a used equipment broker.
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In the last month, Amazon has laid off 18,000 people, Microsoft has laid off 10,000 people, and Google has laid off 12,000 people.
A CEO friend I advise asked me this question about layoffs:
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The admin state must be stopped.
Two blatant examples are healthcare and education. Both sectors have seen worsening outcomes while experiencing explosive growth in admin staff.
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@businessbarista
Off the shelf connections to train customer service LLMs.
Ingest tickets, calls, emails, codebase, and qa tests.
Output awesome responses
The same could be used to autogenerate your internal wiki and knowledge base.
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One of my favorite tools for making big decisions:
“Sharpening the contrast.”
Here’s the framework…
Anytime you have a new idea or initiative, 10x it and see if it still makes sense.
- “Instead of investing $10,000 into SEO, what if we did $100,000?”
- “Instead of hiring 1
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This $1,500,000 G-Wagon is owned by a billionaire in Miami but registered in Montana… Why?
A tax loophole.
I did some research, here’s how it works:
a. There is no sales tax on cars in Montana
b. There is no emissions testing in Montana
c. You do not need to keep your car
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Have you ever had a new hire accept a job offer, then their employer talks them into staying?
I have.
Here’s why this happens…
The fact is, new candidates suck at leaving their current employers.
- It’s difficult to do
- It’s an emotionally charged event
- New hires
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Last week, someone asked me how they get promoted from an ops manager into a COO.
“I want to be in the room where decisions are made, how do I get there?”
I’ve done this a couple times, so here’s my answer:
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From 2017 - 2020, I worked with
@ryanbreslow
every single day.
One of the best things I got from that experience was the installation of this concept deep into my brain:
“If it’s not a HELL YES, it’s a HELL NO.”
It’s another way to say “trust your gut,” but it goes a bit
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One of the first things I’ve done at every organization I’ve joined is start a monthly employee survey.
The topics repeat every quarter, but important measures like employee net promoter score are asked monthly. Surveys should take 5-10 minutes, no more.
This “people data”
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3 weeks ago I spoke with a 25 year old asking me for life advice.
They were between jobs and asked me if they should start a business or keep working in other startups.
This is what I told him:
“Early in your career, you need to optimize for working with the smartest people
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Hosting a casual meet up next Tuesday in Austin. DM me for an invite.
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I’ve helped build several $10M+ companies.
Work rituals are amazing.
We always implemented rituals as a way to break out of “work mode” and refocus the team.
Here are 18 of my favorite work rituals that I’ve picked up or created over the past few years:
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Example: Fintech
Most credit card companies make a fraction of a fraction of a percent when a card is swiped.
If the CC company isn’t doing millions of transactions, they’re losing money.
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Every manager needs a “personal user guide.”
Something that sets blindingly clear expectations on how their colleagues can expect to work together.
In 2019, I wrote a personal user guide for myself.
here it is…
👇👇
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“If you have any used equipment you need to sell, I can find a buyer. If you’d like to save money and buy some used equipment, I can find it for you.”
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I’ve helped scale 2 companies into billions, here’s what I think about executive teams:
CEOs need to build their executive office around themselves.
Similar to how a football team builds itself around an all star Quarterback.
Let me elaborate.
Let’s take an example between
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Here’s an example:
I know someone who built an $8M boring biz in 7 years.
He’s an equipment broker, similar to Boom and Bucket.
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The feeling of isolation as a founder or leader can be excruciating.
Sam's building a network of peers to support eachother's ambitions.
I'm a fan.
ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm back.
Last July I founded a new startup. Today I'm sharing it with the world.
It's called Hampton: a highly vetted membership community for entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs.
Why launch a community? I'll explain + why it'll be huge biz.
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7 weeks ago, we hired our 15th employee.
If all goes according to plan, this will be my 3rd time building a small team of 1-3 founders to 100+ employees.
Here’s a small piece of my hiring philosophy:
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Offering people advice without understanding their North Star is completely worthless.
I’ve gotten to the point in this social media creator thing where people are starting to ask me questions in the DMs frequently.
“Adam, I’m the founder of ABC company in XYZ industry, how do
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I challenged myself to write a new piece of content every day for 50 days in a row.
Every post contained something I’ve learned from my 10+ years building startups.
Some parts of this challenge were good.
Others very bad.
Here’s what I learned:
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Here’s the entire point of this thread:
1. Don’t look for employees you could be beer buddies with.
Look for people who you could have fun solving work-related problems.
2. The bottom of the resume is far more important than the top.
3. Hire for potential in scrappy roles.
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Thanks,
@thesamparr
for telling the story of our Digital Dealership,
@boomandbucket
. Proud of what we've built with my excellent co-founders
@sshah1983
,
@klinear
and team.
Last month on pod we talked about my buddy who created a marketplace for buying+selling big farming equipment.
You people loved it.
So, here's the full story:
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I hate cheesy stupid analogies that relate climbing a mountain to building a business.
But I use this one everyday:
In mountaineering there are a series of hills, valleys, and plateaus you’ll encounter before you get where you want to go.
But the problem is you can only see
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@anothercohen
Meh. Seems like she's following the Bezos advice of inventing and wandering. Emphasis on the wandering.
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Routinely showing up late to a meeting is incredibly disrespectful.
I used to work at a company where people were constantly late. There was always a conference room of people waiting for the same tardy people to show up.
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There are thousands of distractions in business.
They come in all shapes and sizes.
- New products to develop
- Valid markets you should enter
- Innovations you need to adopt in your business
There are countless ideas that may be completely valid.
But your job as a leader is
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Something happened recently that changed my entire perspective on AI…
I needed an ETL script written for a small side project I was working on.
So I asked someone on Replit to build the script for me, and they got back to me in 10 minutes with a perfect script.
Now, I’m not a
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1/ Stopped exercising
I stopped working out because I needed that time for other activities. A few minutes in the gym were a few minutes away from sales, support, emails, calls, etc.
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If you want a successful career in startups, read this:
Success in startups does NOT come from one amazing idea.
It doesn’t come from getting in with a good company at a good time.
It doesn’t even come from amazing execution on a great plan.
It comes with time in the market.
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The first 5 months of Boom and Bucket’s history were spent cold calling people who were selling heavy equipment on Craigslist.
Me and my cofounders
@klinear
and
@sshah1983
probably called 500 people.
Why?
Because we were still vetting the opportunity.
We wanted to validate a
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