10 years ago, Branch got its start at StartX.
And a decade later, I was lucky enough to return and share some of my learnings.
Lots of fun (and painful) stories were shared, but some of my favorite takeaways from the night:
1. BE NAIVE; BE FORGETFUL - It's an *asset* to be naive and forgetful. You're not saddled with fear or what-ifs. You don't pay attention to the 1000 reasons why you'll likely fail - you stay focused on the 1 reason you can succeed.
2. MICRO URGENCY, MACRO PATIENCE - You have to hustle. Every single minute of every single day. But you also have to take a long view of years or decades. Building a startup is about sprinting every day, but also being patient waiting for results. Hustle on the micro activities, but don't get upset when things take time - that's the nature of the game.
3. MAXIMIZE BEFORE YOU OPTIMIZE - It's easy to get sucked into the idea of optimizing early. But in the beginning, your job is to maximize. Maximize the number of customers; maximize revenue; maximize adoption. You can optimize later when the returns on optimization effort are high enough to justify. Early on, there's not enough to optimize, so focus on maximizing first.
4. PRIORITIZE THE HIGHEST ORDER BIT - Choosing the *right* thing to focus on is critically important. In binary code, the first bit will give you 8, and the next three bits combined will sum to 7. If you choose the wrong things to do - or wrong bits to flip - they'll never add up to what you can do by focusing on the right thing.
Thanks for having me back, Kyle Wong and StartX.! And thanks for giving us our start 10 years ago :)
Antora Energy's groundbreaking $150M raise marks a bold step towards industrial decarbonization with innovative thermal batteries. A monumental achievement!