👋 Hello! I’m Ivan. I write monthly about the playbooks and hidden tactics of the top 1% of founders and investors. Subscribe to stay ahead of the curve:
Summary
🌊 The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s playbook.
🌊 Bootstrap: 0 to 1 learnings.
🌊 Amazon Meetings: a template.
🌊 Launching USA: an action plan.
💵 Iberian Deals: 23 deals (>€400M).
🍫 Meme of the month: Yoda PMF.
Today’s Startup Riders is sponsored by: Product Hackers Conference
Product Hackers is launching the biggest Growth conference in Europe:
In Madrid, Spain (June, 25-27th).
It's a unique opportunity to meet and learn from top Growth leaders like:
Sean Ellis (Dropbox)
Yara Paoli (Semrush & ex-SkyScanner)
Jorge Bestard (Canva)
Carlos Cantú (Freepik)
and many more!
How do I get my ticket?
👉 Use your exclusive code PH-STARTUPRIDERSon this link for a discount.
Rick Rubin is widely known as the best music producer of all time.
He’s made a career out of helping artists amplify their creative voices.
From helping Jay-Z produce 99 problems to being instrumental in designing the lyrics in System of a Down’s Chop Suey! (watch the video, the story is unbelievable).
When reading the book I couldn’t stop thinking how often creativity as a space or act is oftenignored or left out of most entrepreneurs’ stories.
It is a skill that should be intentionally developed. Not only because it is fun and deeply human, but because of its power.
“To the best of my ability, I’ve followed my intuition to make career turns, and been recommended against doing so every time. It helps to realise that it’s better to follow the universe than those around you.”
“The call of the artist is to follow the excitement. Where there’s excitement, there’s energy. And where there is energy, there is light.”
Actionable insight: follow curiosity, have fun.
To reject the cultural gravity (“fall in line”) that the world throws at you that founders so often face in the form of rejection, you need to develop a deep sense of trust in your own intuition.
You can accelerate building trust working on your judgement (i.e. reading, creating, experimenting) and practicing “paying attention” to what excites you.
And why is having fun important? Because fun is the key to creating new things. Playing around helps you try new ideas and be creative.
2. Practice paying attention
“To live as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention. Looking for what draws us in and what pushes us away. Noticing what feeling tones arise and where they lead.”
Actionable insight: monitor your inflow of information.
This one is probably one of the biggest challenges founders face in our times. Everything and everyone is constantly bombarding our senses in an endless fight for attention, supercharged by technology and a/b tests.
Funnily enough, even AI breakthroughs have stemmed from this very principle (see Google’s seminal paper on “Attention is all you need”)
Easier said than done, but build a daily practice of deep attention (away from screens) where you are the one choosing what information comes in (not your email / screens).
3. Wait for the waves
“Just as a surfer can’t control the waves, artists are at the mercy of the creative rhythms of nature. This is why it’s of such great importance to remain aware and present at all times. Watching and waiting.”
Actionable insight: be patient but observant.
To solve a problem, you often need to step away from it. We spend too much time in our minds and not enough in our bodies (paying attention). That’s why sports, running or doing anything physical often opens up space for creative problem solving.
🌊 Bootstrapping
Besides my main gig as a full-time vc, I moonlight on Revenue Squared.
We recently crossed 6 figures in revenue.
Here’s what I’d tell myself 12 months ago:
Keep writing: There’s a type of thinking that you can only do when you write, especially when solving problems. Plus, when you share your thoughts in the open, it attracts people who think like you. This increases your luck surface area, and it is free.
Bottleneck thinking: when people say “execution is the only moat” I don’t disagree, but it lacks context. Whoever identifies the right bottleneck to focus on and obsesses over the biggest levers, fastest, tends to win in business. Sounds obvious, but it’s not. You are probably working on a bunch of stuff right now that doesn’t move the needle. Because bottlenecks look like mirages. You think you see them everywhere, but they’re not real. We often know what we should be working on, but choose to ignore it.
Strategy is fluid: Strategy only gets you so far, fluid strategy is the way to go. Be ready to flow, reality changes your plans.
Optimise for durability: things take time. Choose actions and levers with a long term outlook in mind. Do things that excite you or delegate.
Search for High Agency: If you delegate and there’s no ownership, it’s usually a talent problem that you should move fast to address.
Screen time zaps you: time-box it. Create screen-free zones. Take time off, and when on holiday, step away from screens.
🌊Amazon meeting agenda template
I love the idea of including this in every calendar invite (in big orgs):
🌊 How To Launch In The US Market
We interviewed Jen, a pro at helping startups launch in the US.
We go through tactical advice on how to execute a US expansion initiative:
💵 Iberian Deals
You love startups and want to enjoy a Spanish lifestyle?
Come join the Spanish startup ecosystem. Here’s a list of recently funded startups:
Boopos (financial services) secured $175M in credit.
