The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from their Founding Entrepreneurs

you can’t describe your company’s value as a painkiller, then I recommend you redefine and refine your business thesis.

expanding the definition to include any original new business initiative by a founding team that is focused on a high-growth, risk/reward profile, scalability, and market leadership.

The first rule is to pay attention to the intuitive “itches” that accompany certain ideas. But VC-blogger Mark Suster pointed out a new twist on this formula: “scratch your own itch” makes sense, but it’s also led to the marketplace being overcrowded with bar and music apps. The end-goal shouldn’t be to scratch a personal itch that leads you to launch another bar app. The goal has to be to do something that you can imagine yourself being passionate about for at least six years.

Passion Is a Proxy for Potential

Don’t Suffer from the Sin of Comparison. Follow Your Own Path.

When we spoke, I tried to get them to answer two central, burning questions:

1. What are your most vital theses for creating successful, scaling startups?

2. What are the key practices, behaviors, and ideas that power a startup’s growth in its first five years?

you can’t describe your company’s value as a painkiller, then I recommend you redefine and refine your business thesis.

Your startup company must be rooted and flow from the founder’s innate gifts.

Draw the org chart of what you want to look like twelve months from now. Then think about all the things you’re doing today—communication, people, processes, decision-making—and compare that to where it needs to be in a year. If you’re not building toward that, it’s going to be all wrong

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