• Who’s lying?

    Pilots use multiple dials, employing different sources of energy, to report identical data, because they understand that in a dashboard full of information, something is always lying to you. The lesson is useful for data and metrics at our companies.

  • Kung Fu

    A summary of nearly everything I think about building companies.

  • Why large companies acquire small companies

    Large companies don’t acquire small companies for their financials, because small company revenues won’t mathematically affect the growth or value of the acquirer. Rather, small companies are acquired for strategic reasons, and understanding how that works is the key to understanding how small companies are sold.

  • How to simplify complex decisions by cleaving the facts

    Businesses of all sizes face complex decisions for which there is no one, correct answer, and yet a strong and often permanent decision has to be made. Sometimes this is due to fundamental uncertainty inherent in the decision, e.g. not knowing how the market will evolve, what competitors are secretly investing in, whether new marketing…

  • No wait, of course THAT is the single most important SaaS metric

    Focussing on just one thing is indeed valuable, especially when a company is young and there isn’t enough time to cut into multiple goals. Larger companies like WP Engine can have maybe three or four, but still not many. Your job is to figure out what’s most important right now, what’s on fire, what’s most…