Author: Sol
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Have a business? Create an Investor Update list
If you run a business, I highly recommend you start up an Investor Update list. You don’t even need investors (we have none). I use it as an accountability tool – every month, it forces me to think about what’s happening with the company. And over time, you can see how things have evolved. Furthermore,…
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Examine v2
Examine was started back in 2011. Since then, we’ve had tens of millions of visitors. We’ve built up a reputation of trust and authority and an irritating adherence to being nuanced and contextual, rarely ever giving you binary answers. We started work on Examine v2 back in January 2020, and it was released on August…
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3 traits (in how to think) good leaders have
The past few years have kicked my ass in ‘leadership’ — from Examine almost dying in 2019 to COVID crushing 60% of our revenue — it’s been a whirlwind. (With that said, Examine’s revenue is up more than 3x from the nadir of 2019, so good progress!) I recently talked to an employee about the…
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Stop causing unforced errors
Growing up in Saudi Arabia, I played a lot of table tennis (not a lot of options). And I had one friend who always whooped us. And I mean it when I say whooped — for over half a decade, I can count the number of times he lost on my hands. Hell, I think my lifetime…
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Own your mistakes publicly
I’ve done a fair number of JTBD (jobs-to-be-done) customer interviews. It’s been super interesting seeing the patterns of what people say (and don’t say). Here’s a random one to share: a few months ago Kamal had the idea of (inspired by GiveWell) to publish an “Our Mistakes” page. When talking to customers, they LOVE bringing…