Startup Growth
Startup Growth

Tokens Are the New Customer Acquisition Cost

I've been thinking recently that tokens are essentially becoming the new customer acquisition cost. One of the things that made SaaS, and particularly freemium SaaS, work so well was that the marginal cost of letting somebody use your product was basically negligible. Sure, there was a bit of bandwidth, some storage and some infrastructure, but once you'd built the software, giving somebody another week or month of usage didn't really cost you very much.
Startup Growth

Finding Your First 100 Users

As a start-up founder, your first focus is usually getting some sort of Minimum Viable (or Minimum Lovable) Product out the door. Something that solves a meaningful customer problem which at least some of your potential customers—your early adopters—would be willing to try, however basic.
Startups and Investing

What gets VC funding now?

I was recently asked to join a local conference panel about what investors are looking for in 2026. The session ranged from angel and seed investing to scale-up capital, bank lending and company valuations. But the question I kept coming back to was narrower: what has changed over the last 12 months, and why does the old early-stage fundraising playbook feel less reliable than it used to?
Startup Growth

10 Practical Startup Books Every Growth-Obsessed Founder Should Read in 2026

A quick search for “startup books” will surface the usual classics: The Lean Startup, Crossing the Chasm, Blitzscaling, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. They’re thoughtful, often inspiring, and occasionally sobering. But when you’re in the messy middle of building a startup — trying to land your first customers, work out why growth has stalled, or decide what to do next with limited time and money — inspiration isn’t the thing you’re short on. Clarity is.
Startup Growth

Why The Growth Equation Ended Up as an Audiobook (and Why I Didn’t Read It Myself)

One of the quiet failures of most startup books is that they assume founders have time to read them. The reality is that most founders consume ideas in the cracks between everything else. On the morning commute. While walking the dog. At the gym. Audiobooks fit that reality far better than a hardback ever will, which is why I always planned to release an audio version of The Growth Equation.