flâneur

Jibraan Kadri

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on the atlas — 32

highlights — 9

  • If we want to build a real startup community in Canada, we need to let go of those crutches, and choose the Infinite Game.
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work
  • by becoming a milestone-oriented company, and learning how to talk and act in order to highlight those milestones and raise money off of them, you’re going to preferentially select for Bad Angels and disappoint Good Angels
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work
  • Meanwhile, we obsess over mentorship programs and other kinds of “non-dilutive help”, without realizing that there’s a cost to everything, including these relationships – and the steepest cost a founder can possibly pay is to give up an indeterminate trajectory. I mean, guess who these mentors are? They’re either people who have build successful Canadian businesses (finite games!) or, alternately, people from the tech industry who are signing up for formal mentorship programs rather than becoming angel investors. This is devastatingly expensive to startups; not only because these relationships…
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work
  • They’re two systems running in totally contrasting modes: one runs fast, rules opportunities in, rolls valuations forward, and is optimized for infinite-game-mindset founders. The other runs slow, rules opportunities out, feels the need to “defend” valuations (thereby collapsing them to their literal milestone value) and optimizes for fixed, finite games.
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work
  • There is a Canadian Startup Inferiority Complex at work, and it compels us to defend our achievements: “Look at everything we’re doing! Look at these achievements, and look all these milestones our startups are achieving! Surely, these milestones are adding up to success.” We need a narrative that we’re on our way, that we don’t have these exits yet but we’re working on them; and that turns into a culture obsessed with milestones.
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work
  • the more that startups are selected for deterministic thinking, the more it ends up proving the VC’s skepticism right, and the less leverage the startups will have in negotiating terms next time around.
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work
  • Conversely, it’s bad because startups will learn to optimize for how to get funded. So if seed deals take 3 months, then founders will learn to build companies that look good under that kind of microscope. And that means they’re going to optimize for playing determinate games, so that they can show definable wins that can’t be argued against; rather than what they should be focusing on, which is open-ended growth. (Canadian investors love to say, “Your growth is impressive, but we want to see some concrete milestones. We’ll fund you once you’ve achieved this definite accomplishment.” Startups …
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work
  • They’ll have the fewest definite wins relative to their ambition, and the most things that can potentially go wrong. Paradoxically, you’ll also select away from the companies with the fastest growth rates, because fast growth rates (the best possible thing you can have as a startup) are not a definite accomplishment; you can always poke holes in them, you can always intellectualize reasons why the growth rate will stop. The longer you diligence a turbocharged growth rate, the more excuses you’ll find for why it can’t persist.
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work
  • It’s bad because the very best startups, who have the longest time horizon and are most curious about the world, will look disproportionately uninspiring.
    Why the Canadian Tech Scene Doesn’t Work