What parenting teaches about leadership, IPO revenue expectations, 7 mindsets slowing down your career growth
by Matthew Roberts, Founder & Investor of Nodes Ventures and Author of Nodes. | Originally published on Nodes.
Guest post by Matthew Roberts, Founder & Investor of Nodes Ventures and Author of Nodes. | Originally published on Nodes.
We (humans) read hundreds of articles on company building, angel investing, and self-management and curate the best ones into a weekly summary—helping founders and operators stay on the top of their game.
Better thinking
Giving up vs. Quitting (1 minute read)
Giving up means trying less, quitting means putting it down permanently–freeing yourself up to work on something else. Sometimes you need the mindfulness to understand whether you’re actually quitting, or just quietly giving up. Be decisive.
Shitty First Drafts (1 minute read)
“Shitty first drafts” describes startup life perfectly. The key is just to start–no matter how shitty the first iteration is. Whether it’s writing a blog, or building a product, just start. Action creates data, which helps you iterate slowly to something increasingly less shitty.
The Chinese Businessman Paradox (9 minute read)
Debunk the myth of innate business talent. The "Chinese businessman wisdom" paradox reveals that success isn't about education or pure rationality. Success isn't coded in genes or algorithms, but in pragmatism, adaptability, and keen bottom-line awareness. True business wisdom transcends cultural stereotypes and educational levels. Keep testing and refining your theories through practice in real-world situations.
6 Lessons in Leadership from Parenting (6 minute read)
Parenting wisdom offers surprising insights for startup leadership. From the power of repetition in pitching ideas to the importance of connecting emotionally before making requests, these lessons can transform your management style. By applying these lessons in practice, you'll build stronger teams, improve communication, and drive innovation. Remember, nurturing a startup, like raising a child, requires patience, empathy, and a long-term growth mindset.
Operational tactics
How Annual Pre-pay Creates an Infinite Marketing Budget (12 minute read)
Transform your startup's cash flow by reevaluating how growth impacts expenses, focusing on optimizing metrics like CAC (Cost to Acquire a Customer), ARPC (Average Revenue per Customer), and GPM (Gross Profit Margin). Embracing strategies like raising prices or adopting annual billing can significantly shorten payback periods, empowering rapid growth without escalating costs or needing external funding.
Want to Make Things Easy for Your Team? (2 minute read)
To retain top talent, give them something really hard to do. For the best, meaningful work is easier. Not just more rewarding, or worthwhile, but actually easier to do. It’ll motivate them to stay at your company, even if they could secure better pay elsewhere. Identify your top talent, and set them on the hardest tasks you have.
Turning a Yellow Spot into the Sun (10 minute read)
"Turning yellow spots into suns" is a game-changing approach for startups. It means transforming ordinary tasks into extraordinary outcomes, exceeding expectations at every turn. For operators, it's about infusing creativity into daily work. For investors, it signals teams that maximize resources. For founders, it's cultivating a culture of excellence. This philosophy elevates everything from product design to investor pitches, driving innovation and growth. Remember: compounding micro-excellences leads to macro success.
Angel investing
5 VC Syndicate Learnings After Closing 500 SPVs
Syndicate leads aren’t fund GPs–they don’t control the flow of funds, they just help guide it by curating information and inspiring others towards an opportunity. That being said, syndicates, whether as the lead or a member, are a fast and low-friction way of getting started in venture. Here’s the top lessons learned from Calm Ventures, who just completed their 500th SPV deal.
How Much Revenue Must a Company Generate to IPO? (2 minute read)
The landscape for US venture-backed software companies going public has shifted dramatically since 2018, with median IPO revenue doubling to $189 million. The influx of private capital offering higher valuations has led startups to delay public offerings, aiming for higher scale pre-IPO. This trend is marked by fewer companies going public with less than $100 million in revenue and is underscored by major yet-to-IPO firms like Databricks and Stripe, showcasing a strategic move towards late-stage private funding.
Managing your career
Layers of Context. (6 minute read)
In any given role, influencing peers requires reasoning and perceiving across layers of context: seeing both the domain-level, say product, perspectives, and also grasping the leadership agenda. More often than not, you’ll find yourself in situations where critical context is missing to expand your understanding of the layers around you. To make matters worse, your peers have limited bandwidth to help. So what are some effective ways to develop that context yourself? Will Larson, Carta’s CTO, recommends operating from a place of curiosity, rotating onto other teams, and even reviewing support tickets. While this will undoubtedly take time to implement, closing the contextual gap can accelerate ascendance to more senior roles for ambitious leaders.
7 Mindsets That Are Slowing Down Your Career Growth (5 minute read)
Career growth is much about embodying the right mindset as it is about developing foundational skills and working hard. Quite often, we erect mental barriers at work, knowingly or unknowingly, that stall promotions or other pursuits. Although some career growth decisions are out of our control, we can reframe mental barriers into empowering alternatives. Instead of thinking your work ‘will speak for itself’, which is rarely the case in high-performance environments, do the work and help others see your contributions. By speaking up and sharing your successes, your efforts can be acknowledged.
Candor = Kindness (3 minute read)
Parenting your team limits their growth, while honest feedback fosters long-term success. If you’re constantly standing up for your team against the opinions of others, or pumping up their minor successes like they’re major, you’re likely short changing them from receiving the feedback that they really need to improve. People crave praise, but they really want growth.
