Erin Chan

As a neuroscientist, here are 7 ways to trick your brain into doing difficult things: 1. Shrink the task to just two minutes. Your brain resists big commitments. So don't make one. - "Work out" → do one exercise. - "Clean the house" → pick up three items.

@jjen_abel I listened to your episode with Lenny a few days ago. It was great - thank you!

@erinechan - price is far too low, leaving money on table - market is small - no machine, yet built …

a round-up of startup sales thoughts: 1. having the founder involved in sales process is a natural competitive advantage 2. selling high cost things is a hell of a lot easier than selling low cost things 3. demo should never be focused on the product — focus is on how it increases/grows their influence in the organization 4. need to understand their buying process before you build/define your GTM 5. corporates build for the boss, startups/SMB build for the customer 6. when you pitch, the storyline is 1 + 1 = 10, the value needs to feel like a 'no-brainer' AND really, really different 7. $10K - $20K/year deals are NOT enterprise sales 8. tier 1 logos ARE often the early enterprise adopters for startups 9. a high win rate (>50%) is often not a positive BUT negative signal 10. smb is NOT easier than enterprise, it's radically different games of marketing OR sales 11. > 6 months enterprise sales cycle means something is off - their buying maturity, influence your champion has, etc. 12. outbound sales often has highest avg. contract value 13. in the enterprise cheapening/lowering your cost seldom impacts demand 14. moving up-market is NOT about selling more seats; it’s about delivering a complete step-change in executive value 15. the more technical your pitch, the faster you’re delegated down the chain of command

@lennysan I bought myself a pair of titanium chopsticks from @snowpeakusa and they make the act of eating feel delightful and meditative.

What’s something you bought (or were gifted) that’s under ~$200 that makes you very happy?

@birgitomo Congratulations and well done!

Where are my fellow Canadian immigrants? Feeling grateful! 15 years in Canada, with 14.5 of them spent working hard while pursuing my BScN, MEd, CCRN & now PhD, all while being a mom of 2. Many years of community service. Immigrants are indeed a blessing to Canada. Let’s talk👋🏿

@sweatystartup Quality post

This weekend go for a walk by yourself or with a friend in your local downtown area. Every business you pass by, ask yourself these 6 questions: 1) How does this business make money? 2) Roughly how much money do they make per day, week and month? 3) How many employees do they have and what do these employees cost the business each month? 4) How much did it cost to start this business? What's the minimum amount of $ you would need to make it happen? 5) How much rent do they pay for this location or how much was it to buy this building? 6) How much profit might this business generate for the owner each year? Observe ALL of the companies around you. Restaurants, bars, coffee shops, retail stores, professional services, banks, hotels, movie theaters, barber shops, etc. If they are in business in your town and they have been there for a while, they are making money and providing value. Then answer the following two questions: 1) How would I run this business more efficiently if I were the owner of it? 2) How would I create more revenue or reduce costs and how could I operate this business just a little bit better than the competition? If you walk around the world with this mindset, you’ll discover an infinite amount of opportunities. You will start to understand which businesses are good businesses (i.e profitable, easy to operate, sustainable, simple) And which businesses are bad businesses (i.e low margin, complex, difficult to staff, difficult to grow, etc) And you will learn a ton about where you want to spend your time and which opportunities you might want to pursue. Go do this and then respond to this post with what you learned or saw this weekend or next week.

@HarryStebbings @chetanp @honam @rabois @jasonlk @bdeeter @ttunguz Now let's talk about retention with those growth metrics. If not, it's all just hype.

"Triple, triple, double, double is dead. Going from $1M to $3M to $9M is not interesting. You have to go $1M to $15M to $100M." @chetanp @honam @rabois @jasonlk @bdeeter @ttunguz is triple triple double double dead? Have our growth expectations changed forever?

The realest thing I've seen this week

Most people are too casual with the most important things in life.

@blairbeckwith I'm grateful for my time at the co, but laughed out loud reading this. For the record, not in there.

If you think X is toxic, join the Shopify Alumni slack for a true taste of how annoying people can be

@afonsolfm Building tech is getting easier but building a business isn’t.

@robjama @aratisharma @skanwar @fahdananta @internetvin @Sirupsen @hashemito @harrybrundage @danielpatricio @themoridwan @nayeemzen Ryan Brideau - Scopa

Here's a just a few to get the list going @aratisharma @skanwar - Good Future, Ghlee @fahdananta - Roach capital @internetvin - Futureland, New Systems @Sirupsen - Turbo Puffer @hashemito @harrybrundage - Gadget @danielpatricio - Abra @themoridwan @nayeemzen - Pluto @michaelperry @sealabcore - Maple @CarlCasis - Casis Careers @Brentertainer @amirjaffari - Growth Crew @klprose - OpsLevel @karnsaroya + team - Re @stevenwhatevr - Super Magic Taste @drupeek - Tilt @erinechan - Rhenti @jmwind - Sea People @ZackHonarvar - Creator Now @Mark_v_Ryan - Pavlov @gautamg_ - Highbeam @cshold @paulpritchard - Archetype Themes @cpollo01 @TaylorSicard @richgilbank - Uptime @fatimayusf - Imagine Create @sylvng - Return Bear @elizcreighton - Brazen UX @davidgaylord - Bushbalm @Effielinn - Afterword @mandiramidha - Mandira Midha @llwire - Infinit @jeet25_m - Swift me + @mrkrishsatya - Boom

The Shopify alumni are building incredible companies but there's no place tracking them all. Let's fix that! Drop names of Shopify Mafia (Mounties? 🇨🇦) founded startups, brands and agencies below and I'll vibe code it into an open database. Who else should be on the list?

My latest from the Globe… Mystery CAMH mega-donor reveals identity with latest $100-million gift to hospital theglobeandmail.com/canada/article…

Fun responses here..

a big unlock in life is when you realize that you want what some people have but you don’t really want to be who they are

Thinking about being a founder?

@carlvellotti Invest time into creating design libraries or even better, component libraries.

Product managers, a dilemma: Your team's engineering bandwidth is higher than its design bandwidth. So engineers are implementing features faster than design can work on new ones. Your company is also on a hiring freeze, so no new designers. What can you do?

@HarryStebbings We have this for our little guy. Looking forward to listening.

Chess.com is one of the most underrated stories in startups. The company does $100M in revenue, has 100M users and did not raise a $$ of venture for over 16 years! Coming on 20VC shortly...

@tferriss Just got this book and looking forward to reading it!

“I will have to remember ‘I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.’” — From The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander

You’re always making the best choice based on your current understanding. Don’t try to change the choice - change the understanding.