Growth is an incredibly interesting concept to me.

As someone who has been helping startups with growth for about 12–13 years, I can confidently say: most founders do not understand it well enough.

The first company I ever helped with growth was Uber. The second was Airbnb. The third, Electronic Arts. Since then, I’ve worked with about 200 companies — mostly venture-backed.

And when I talk with founders, it quickly becomes obvious who actually understands what growth is… and who is just making assumptions.

And let me be clear: I believe assumptions are one of the dumbest things human beings do all day long. Every. Single. One. Including me.
So, with that all said, let’s dive in.

Business Chess vs. Growth

Few founders I meet are clearly thinking deeply about growth in what I consider to be, the correct way.

They’re playing a different game. I’ll call it “business chess” to simplify...

In my career, I’ve probably had conversations with around 2,000 venture-backed founders, and worked with about 200 of them.

On most calls, founders tell me about their vision, their products, their origin story, and their market. But those aren’t the things I care about. However, I listen, intently, to try to understand where they place their focus, what they feel is important to share, where their priorities lie, what motivates them, their theories, their goals, their strengths, their weaknesses, because I learn more by what they don’t say, than what they do.

What these founders don’t usually know, because they view me as an agency, a gun for hire if you will, is that I’m scanning for whether not I think they’re real, for lack of a better way to put it, so I can decide whether or not I want to spend my time with them. Especially now, that we’re living through the early days of what I...