The line between being a sceptic and a cynic is very fine. Being a sceptic can be very fruitful and trigger more rigourous thinking. Being a cynic on the other hand usually just breeds toxicity.

Recognize what you get to judge and what not. Whether your product is smooth, your brand attractive, your communication easy to follow etc - the other party gets to decide (and vote with their money), whether you like it or not!

Founders talking big ideas without keeping an eagle eye on their financial and operational metrics are like pilots marveling at the beauty and adventure of the skies without regularly checking their instruments. May work in fair weathers - recipe for disaster in current times.

VC's train associates through shadowing as board observers. Why don't funds allow entrepreneurs to shadow them on their best-managed boards to observe and learn how to run effective board meetings - seems like win-win for everyone?

The current obsession with layoffs is symptomatic for a bunch of people being asleep at the wheel (all of us can be guilty of that at times!!) - if your org is too fat today, chances are it was already so 3 months ago and was ignored. If it wasn't, is it really so today?

"The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life." Naval

Counterintuitive fact: if you like being in control - don't do a start-up. I can hardly think of a job where you're beholden to more external influences every day messing up every single plan you may have. Accept and embrace the lack of control or it will eventually break you!

"Show me the data for this" is a favourite smart-sounding counter. Often such data isn't available. But just as often there's also no data countering a suggestion. Absence of proof isn't proof of absence. And so we're back to arguing about beliefs in these "data-driven times".

Hypothesis: the key to successful turnarounds is to first reduce the frequency of bad things happening (as they will kill you first). Only once the rate at which ... hits the fan is trending back to "normal", can you focus on increasing the rate at which good things should happen

EXCITING NEWS 🎉 We are ecstatic to announce that we have secured a fresh $10 Million #funding from our existing investors. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Celebrate value creation (happy paying customers), ensure upside participation (positive unit economics/take rates) & acknowledge progress (funding, milestones, launches...). With this order of priorities, whatever the outcome, you should be at peace with yourself!

Given 90% of Pakistani start-ups still operate some form of Seth culture this may not be fully relevant to my Pakistani friends but for the outliers here's a very interesting paper warning from going too far in the opposite direction 😉

Controversial(?) take: just like quants took most investing from the "art of stock picking" to mathematics, in 10 years most marketing will go from "art" towards rapid testing + modern statistical methods (e.g. casual inference). 90% of today's CMOs will be left behind.

Which company globally has learnt best on how to monetize a massive consumer base in diverse and creative ways?

Witnessing greatness in whatever area is the most underrated growth hack possible as you can never unsee that again...

Just published: Redefining Our Relationship with Generative AI: The Plausible Translation Engine Metaphor and Its Potential Impact on Wealth linkedin.com/pulse/redefini… via LinkedIn - will publish 5 variants over next 5 days. Anybody want to guess which ones? Keen to hear thoughts!

Prompt engineering? Just precise instructions, folks! Ancient skill, same challenge. No need for fancy terms. 🤔💡🌟

The amazing thing about Buffet is not how much money he made as he became (ultra)rich. The thing to be most impressed by imo is how he "stayed rich" for many decades across cycles, independent of whatever went on in the world.

"Product is too important. So we got rid of product managers." - read about our latest move at Timo Digital Bank here: linkedin.com/pulse/product-…

To increase your employability in an AI world you have to become MORE not less human. linkedin.com/pulse/ai-wont-…