A Few Words About Me
I moved to the bay area in 2015 for my own venture (see it on the wayback machine). Discovered how hard finding product market fit is. Despite reaching milestones; built a team, $200k revenue, $500k seed funding, press, front page finishes on ProductHunt, and logos like Siemens, Heineken, Crocs, Verizon, AvisBudget, it never led to unexpected demand.
I currently work with the founder-ceo of a Series D venture. I joined at the Series C stage to help with growth efforts. Over the last 15 months, revenue and team have doubled and the company has raised $100mm.
Here (mostly for myself, although I've seemingly helped 3 others at this point) I'm jotting down things I'm figuring out about product market fit and growth. Latte art still elusive.
My linkedin profile is here.
Faux-losophy
Finding product market fit is a lonely process. The team is just you and maybe a cofounder. No one knows you exist. You build, ship, read data and build again. Later on, finding growth isn't easy either. Competitors have now appeared and are calling on your customers.
When you aren't battling these challenges, you think.
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Reading lets you spend hours with people you otherwise can't get that time with.
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Regret minimization is a valuable decision making framework.
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East Coast : West Coast :: Work to Live : Live to Work.
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Raise your heart rate for a few minutes every day, preferably outdoors.
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Outsource busy work. The panic of idle time will give way to calm and utility.
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Attributing success to luck, and failure to skill keeps you searching.
Reading list
In my Kindle atm: How Google Works, Work Rules!
High growth handbook- How high performing organizations are operated
Mindhunter- How the FBI built the behavioral analysis unit
When breath becomes air- Build long term assets even when you have little time left
The everything store- Jeff Bezos finding product market fit and then finding growth for Amazon
Shoe dog- How Phil Knight built Nike
Creativity Inc- How Catmull, Lassiter and Jobs built Pixar
Bad blood- How Elizabeth Holmes built and destroyed Theranos
Masters of doom- How Carmack and Romero built Doom and Quake
The hard thing about hard things- How Ben Horowitz built Opsware (Loudcloud)
Zero to one- How to build things and create value
The billionaire and the mechanic: How a great sailing team was built
Blitzscaling- How to inject hypergrowth
Essays by Paul Graham- How to start a startup
Pmarca blog archives- How market (or lack of) is the most important thing
Ben's blog- How a company is the sum of people, product and process
Masters of scale- Entrepreneurs tell Reid Hoffman how they scaled their companies
This week in startups- Entrepreneurs tell Jason Calacanis stories from the trenches
a16z podcast- Insights from Andreessen Horowitz's ventures and partners
How to b2b a CEO- How to scale a startup from founder to full stack CEO
Y Combinator's podcast- How to build early products that people love and don't yet scale
Other reading
My entire reading list is here. I like books on finance like Business Adventures, philosophy like Art of War, human condition like End of power and am getting into more scifi like Snowcrash.
Contact
aditya dot sudhakar at gmail dot com