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How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
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Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
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When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
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Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
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We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
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The Value of Actually Getting Paid
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Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
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How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
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Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
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Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?
The Case Against Full Transparency
Should I Feel Guilty for Failing?
Always Take Money off the Table

How We Built an 8-Figure Business by Saying “No”

Wil Schroter

How We Built an 8-Figure Business by Saying “No”

At Startups.com, we built an 8-figure business by saying "no" — a lot.

We knew going in that if we’re going to have 100% control of our destiny now and in the future, that would only work if we could constantly say "no" in a disciplined manner.

But you know what? Saying "no" sucks. Just like saying "no" to delicious glazed donuts sucks. We know that we want them, but we also know the cost of saying "yes"! Now I'm hungry for a glazed donut. See what I mean?
We knew that controlling our destiny would mean an insane amount of discipline, across the entire organization. In order to prepare ourselves for this discipline, like any good regimen, there were a few things that we'd have to stay incredibly focused on.

We had to be OK with things taking time

You know how we all get fired up about how this is an "opportunity of a lifetime!" and that we need to push all of our chips in on this one big bet? We had to ignore that, which is hard because we work with ambitious startups for a living!

Instead, here is what we focused on: "People will need help building startups for the rest of time. So as long as we're good at helping, we can work on this problem for an entire generation." We took fake urgency off the table and instead recast our opportunity as a long term play, not something that needed to "scale immediately" for some made-up reason (and it's always a made-up reason).

We had to defer tons of decisions (thankfully)

Early on, we were building Fundable.com as one of our first products. It was at the dawn of equity crowdfunding and every single market indicator was that crowdfunding was going to change fundraising forever. It didn't.
Along the way, we had a million opportunities to pursue different extensions of the business, acquire competitors, or raise money to scale 100x faster. We deferred all of those decisions, partially because we had to (we didn't want to raise VC) and partially because we actually wanted to see how the market played out. It turned out we saved millions of dollars by just deferring our decisions. It's amazing how many good decisions you can make when you're not "forced" to make bad ones.

We had to live and die by profitability

Our income statement has become as much of a management tool as anything else in our company. Our entire leadership team knows every last income line and cost in the income statement, and by way of that, how every decision impacts profitability. Before we even ask "Should we pull the trigger on this expense?" we sorta know whether or not we can.

Compare that to lots of other organizations that work in this opaque sort of world where the Head of Engineering asks "Can I hire another engineer?" (because product development is behind) without having any sense of what that impact is. In our world, we are all chained to the income statement, so that every move we make has a direct correlation to how we manage profitability.

That very same focus, company-wide, has prevented us from saying "yes" to lots of things, but it also has provided the knowledge of how to get to "yes". In the end, our ability to stay disciplined and say "no" in the formative years has given us the opportunity to say "yes" to just about anything we want once the business matured.
Was it worth it? Hell yes!

In Case You Missed It

Optimizing for Happiness We do something in our planning at Startups.com that is relatively unheard of in the startup business: we optimize for happiness. Here’s how we do it.

How Much Should I Be Working? (podcast) While there's truth to the assumption that more hours equal more growth, we'll explore how it benefits to think quality and not quantity when it comes to your weekly punch card.

How Do I Design My Startup Around My Life? There’s very little preventing us from designing our startups around our life goals. It starts with us being very clear about what we want to achieve and then taking clear, small steps toward those outcomes.

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