Inception Stories

I launched Inception Stories sometime last year in November. It quickly grew to about 50 subscribers in two weeks. But that all changed very quickly, my main source of customer acquisition was no longer viable. As a result, Inception Stories stalled and is currently at 70+ subscribers. Based on the few subscribers and users I got; I was able to analyze the data and found that engagement on the platform was very low. I was building a content library and hoped users would engage with the content, but the data said otherwise. Subscribers were more receptive to the newsletter. We have an average 75% open rate and an 8% click-through rate. I didn’t intend for Inception Stories to be a newsletter, but hey, I’ve got to follow the data. So, I recently pivoted Inception Stories into a newsletter, we’ll see how that goes. Follow Inception Stories for more updates on that and subscribe to the newsletter while you can! :)

I came across this video of Solidcore’s founder, Anne Mahlum. If you don’t know what Solidcore is, it’s a Pilates studio valued between $600 and $700 million as of September 2024. What I like about Anne’s story is that she played a game she could win, and she urges other founders and entrepreneurs to do the same. But her story is more than that, the sheer will and determination she had is inspiring. Obviously, everyone’s story is different, but I thought I’d share this. Follow Inception Stories and subscribe to our newsletter for more stories like these delivered directly to your inbox.

Julia Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite on making better hiring decisions by focusing on the underlying problems and skills needed before considering specific candidates. She emphasizes the importance of avoiding hiring mistakes but also acting quickly to correct them when they occur. "Don't make hiring mistakes, but if you do make them, fix them quickly." Hartz suggests beginning with a clear understanding of the customer problem to be solved, then identifying the necessary skills, experience, and attributes to address it and only afterwards reviewing actual resumes. "If you were to solve that problem in the most effective and efficient way, which skills would you need to have?" She highlights how sticking to a systematic, problem-first hiring process leads to stronger, more successful teams. "Every time we stick to that process religiously we have a great outcome." Get more stories, insights and lessons like these at inceptionstories.com #inceptionstories #startups

Brian Chesky on the importance of selecting the right co-founders for your startup. Here are the key points: - Chesky emphasizes that co-founders should be equals or even better than you. "Your co-founder should be better than you. If they're not better, you should at least feel like they're equal." - He warns against choosing co-founders who are not on the same level, as they may become disenfranchised and unable to scale with the company. "They become proxy early employees that can't scale and when they can't scale they get super disenfranchised and they're not useful and they're not able to contribute." - Chesky suggests that some people choose inferior co-founders out of laziness or insecurity, which can lead to power struggles. "Sometimes people do it because they're lazy or out of insecurity they don't want to equal the company because it may be like a power struggle." - He stresses the importance of deeply trusting and liking your co-founders, given the extensive time you will spend together. "You have to have people that you deeply trust and like. You're going to be around these people for 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day, 16 hours a day." - Chesky believes that being around better co-founders will challenge and improve you. "The mentality is if they're better than you then you will rise to the occasion and become better because you're around them." Get more stories, insights and lessons like these at inceptionstories.com #inceptionstories #startups

Ben Silbermann, co-founder of Pinterest, advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Ben’s two key pieces of advice for those embarking on their entrepreneurial journey: 1. Build Something You Believe In: "You should really just build something you believe in... If you're gonna go on a 5-year, 7-year, ten-year, 15-year journey, at least build something that you really, really love because otherwise you're definitely gonna burn out." 2. Perseverance and Support: "Don't give up. Don't let somebody talk you out of your dream." He highlights the challenges and loneliness that can come with starting a startup but stresses the value of finding supportive communities, whether locally or online. "The fact that we could get a beer and talk about, 'Hey, this is really tough, this is a hard time,' made it a lot easier." Ben also expresses his excitement about being in a room full of like-minded individuals who share his passion for building something impactful: "To be with lots of those people just makes me happy. It gets me excited about doing what we do every day." Get more stories, insights and lessons like these at inceptionstories.com #inceptionstories #startups

Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, on how to transition from building a product to running a company. Houston emphasizes that becoming a CEO is a learned skill, not an innate one. "Nobody's born a CEO... The job you learn it and the challenge is you just don't know what your blind spots are." He highlights the complexity of scaling a company beyond just building a good product. "If you want to bring a company to scale there's a lot more, the chessboard is a lot bigger than just building a good product." Houston advises maintaining a healthy paranoia about future needs and systematically training oneself. "One year from now, 2 years from now, 5 years from now when I look back on today What will I wish I had been learning or what would I wish I had been doing?" He recommends several books for management and gaining wisdom quickly. "My favorite book on management is High Output Management by Andy Grove... The Effect of Executives by Peter Drucker is really good... Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie Munger is probably the best book on that that I've read." He suggests learning from friends who are ahead in their journey. "Having friends that are one step ahead, 2 steps ahead, you know 5 years ahead and just sort of looking at the deltas between them." Get more stories, insights and lessons like these at inceptionstories.com #inceptionstories #startups

Instagram’s co-founder on why features aren’t everything for startups. Transcript: “Too many startups have the goal of maximizing features. I had one VC come up to me and say, "You guys haven't really launched any features in the last year. Is that a problem?" I was like, "Dude, do you know how much work we've done on the product to make it scale to where it is today?" The things you launch that end up making the difference are not like yet another feature that no one's gonna use. It's about what you can really go deep on. What we went deep on was scaling to over fifteen million users, which, in retrospect, is hopefully the tip of the iceberg. We added hashtags; that was a huge thing that didn't exist. We made our filters fast. We asked ourselves, "What do people love about the product, and how can we make it even better?" It was a very focused effort to improve the product. Well, you know, it takes a lot of discipline too. And I mean, frankly, only having three engineers back in the day made us focus on those problems. It was the thing that made us shine. For that, I definitely want to, if I do this again, hire more people more quickly. But I think focus is key.” Get more stories, insights and lessons like these at inceptionstories.com #inceptionstories #startups

Steven Bartlett on the 2 species of entrepreneurs. Transcript: “I think I've found two sorts of species of entrepreneur, and the real distinction between them is how long they've been doing it. One species of entrepreneur, that I know, cares entirely about being right, which is their initial hypothesis being correct. That's typically the young entrepreneur. Then, the more seasoned entrepreneur cares entirely about being successful, regardless of whether it's via their initial hypothesis or not. They care entirely about saving time and being successful—not being right. I think it's interesting that tenure as an entrepreneur seems to determine which camp you sit in.” Get more stories, insights and lessons like these at inceptionstories.com #inceptionstories #startups

Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb, on the most important advice he got from Paul Graham. Transcript: "Probably the most important single piece of advice I got, which is probably one of the most important pieces of advice I can give you, is he [Paul Graham] basically drew out this chart and he said, 'It's better to have a hundred people that love you, a hundred customers that love you, than a million customers that just sort of like you.' In other words, if you have a hundred people that absolutely love your product, they'll tell a hundred people, and then they'll tell a hundred people, or even ten people. This thing will grow; we call it growing virally. In fact, almost all movements in history have grown this way as well. There are deeply passionate followers, and they grow it and they're customer advocates. The problem is, in Silicon Valley, the general wisdom is, 'I need to build some app. This thing needs to have this viral coefficient; I need to get millions of people to use it, and they gotta like it enough to share it.' And that's totally the wrong way to think about it, especially if you're in a service business like ours. So, Paul Graham said all you have to do is get a hundred people to like you; don't worry about millions of people. That was totally freeing. Because until then, I'm like, 'How the hell am I going to get a million people to do this if I can't even get my mom or my sister to do it?' But I can find a hundred people. And so we literally decided to do things that don't scale. If all you need to do is get a hundred people to love you, do things that don't scale." Get more stories, insights and lessons like these at inceptionstories.com #inceptionstories #startups

Co-founder of Instagram Kevin Systrom’s Advice to Early-Stage Founders: Focus on Solving Problems. Kevin: "And then, in terms of something we did really right, it was by focusing on solving problems. I think far too many startups are technologies in search of a problem, right? They're like, 'Oh, I guess Google Maps exists and I guess Tweets exist, so let's mash them up and do this geolocation Tweet thing.' No offense to anyone doing that, exactly. Honestly, I made that up. I think too many people don't focus on problems people have. And I mentioned those three problems before: about making photos beautiful, about allowing you to share them on multiple networks, and then finally making uploads go really quickly. Right? Solve problems that people have. And we focused on three. We weren't trying to reinvent the world of photography; we were just like, 'Let's focus on these three humble, simple problems.' And that's what turned Instagram from simply yet another network trying to tackle this photos thing to something people used. And that was the fundamental difference." Get more stories, insights and lessons like these at inceptionstories.com #inceptionstories #startups