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Muhammad Lila retweeted
Jun 11
OG Anunoby leaving Toronto and thriving in America like every homegrown Waterloo software engineer
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Jun 11
This is a huge advantage that many founders overlook. We've experienced it ourselves repeatedly, especially after our pivot.
No company wants to do business with founders who aren't nice. Being nice makes you attractive to others. It increases your organic inbound by 5-10x.
Jun 11
It will also be an advantage in dealing with competitors. The companies in some of the adjacent markets they'll expand into are not nice at all. So customers will flee from them to our startup like prisoners freed from jail.
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Jun 11
It reminds me of the greatest startup lesson I ever learned, from my music teacher in grade 7.
He stood in front of the class and said "if you want to be popular, then help as many people as you can. Everyone likes the person who helped them."
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Jun 11
There's nothing I'd love more today than for @denk_tweets to open the email I just sent him.
π G = π
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Jun 11
The Toronto Public Library was my second home growing up. It helped me through elementary, middle, and high school -- and gave me a lifelong love for learning.
It's one of Toronto's best institutions.
Congratulations to @skanwar for stepping up.
Jun 11
The @torontolibrary gave me my first job and opened a lot of doors for a kid growing up in Scarborough.
Today, @aratisharma and I are matching donations to @TPL_Foundation 2X up to $100,000 to help fund after-school programs across the city.
Donate πβ‘οΈ tplfoundation.ca/GoodFuture
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Jun 8
Some of the best founders never got into YC.
Not because they aren't talented.
Not because they aren't ambitious.
But because they didn't realize one obvious flaw.
They used AI to write posts like this.
Think about it.
X is full of them.
You've seen them before β we all have.
They didn't even bother to remove the em-dashes.
The reality is that it has obvious patterns.
Sometimes it's right.
Sometimes it's wrong.
What matters is what you do the day after?
Do you stop building?
Or do you keep going?
The next generation of great companies won't come from a single batch, accelerator, or fund.
They'll come from builders who learned basic communication skills.
Like this.
A long post poking fun at AI, in the same voice as AI, but written by a human.
Or was it?
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Jun 7
Similarly, if you reach out to a partner and instead they ask you to meet with an associate first.
Jun 6
If a VC schedules your pitch weeks out,
theyβre not interested, and they never will be.
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Jun 5
I once pitched a top angel investor in Canada. She said she loved the idea and was in.
We agreed to terms and she asked for the term sheet saying she'd sign back quickly.
I sent the term sheet. No reply.
I followed up a week later. Ghosted.
Then another follow up, ghosted again.
After a month, she replied saying she was busy because her nanny had quit, meanwhile as a founder I was struggling just to pay my basic grocery bills. I had no leverage so I politely said the delay was fine and I'd still be happy to give her an allocation.
Three months later, she replied saying it would conflict with one of her portcos so she couldn't invest.
I lost all faith in Canadian VCs after that.
Jun 2
I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A.
12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30 minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going.
I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital.
You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious.
It's a dance.
And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious.
If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird.
No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there.
It is weird.
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Jun 5
This has always been the case, it's not new. The best storytellers have always been able to speak in soundbytes.
Founders and CEOs must change the way they do interviews.
1. Long form is dead.
2. The clip is the product.
3. So the way you answer questions must change.
4. Repeat every question with tone and excitement.
5. Imagine, every answer is it's own clip (because it will be).
6. This will increase retention as it provides the hook, the interviewer needs to turn it into an amazing clip on it's own.
We must change the way we create content to work with the algorithm.
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May 30
We've closed Canadian deals that took more than a year and even then it was only through CEO intervention.
It's not just a procurement issue. It's mindset.
Too many Canadian enterprises only want to protect their market share vs. actively growing it, which requires risk.
May 30
CentML sold to Nvidia for $400M. Before that, the Toronto team couldn't get a single Canadian enterprise to try their product. Bay Area companies had no problem.
The founder said it plainly at Toronto Tech Week: you don't even get in the door here. Not even with connections.
We keep asking why builders leave.
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May 26
The ones complaining loudest about being removed from X's Creator Revenue program are ironically the same people who rip off other peoples' content the most and post it as their own.
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Muhammad Lila retweeted
May 25
Same for VCs.
The firms that really want the deal will come to you IRL.
May 24
The biggest hack Iβve seen for founders to close deals faster: just show up.
Get on a plane, fly to their office, meet in person, bond with the whole team.
Instantly replaces weeks of zoom calls.
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May 25
I remember when @jonsteinberg launched @cheddar, he would tape for 3 hours live every morning, then fly out to meet potential customers in the afternoons.
Shaking hands in person with customers is something that Zoom can never replicate.
May 24
The biggest hack Iβve seen for founders to close deals faster: just show up.
Get on a plane, fly to their office, meet in person, bond with the whole team.
Instantly replaces weeks of zoom calls.
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May 25
Here goes. Applied to @ycombinator
0-$1M rev in 8 months. 1.2b impressions.
most founders: "ivy engineer building agentic something"
me: survived warzones, explosions, reported live from around the world
new: referral from YC's top portfolio founder.
Let's see.
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May 25
While people are talking about this, but most don't know that social media platforms are already subject to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). They can't allow users to steal content.
What's new is that X is championing the little guy over big accounts, which is good.
May 25
It is fine to bring the best videos on the internet to X. One of X's core values is cultural commentary.
However, we cannot tolerate big accounts intentionally using their larger following to hijack impressions hours after another user posts something.
Having said that, we will aim to reward original content creators and livestreamers more in the coming weeks.
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May 21
There are many stories like this. One of our investors once told me how hosted a dinner for a few friends, including @elonmusk and others.
While everyone had transitioned to the dining room, Elon stayed back on the couch.
He stayed there even as dinner was being served.
When our investor went back to check, he found Elon scribbling notes and calculations on a notepad.
When he asked him why he wasn't joining for dinner, Elon apologized and said "I'm really sorry, but I think I just figured out the problem with rocket propulsion I've been trying to solve."
It's something every founder can relate to. When you're working on solving a problem, especially at global scale, nothing else matters.
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May 19
I'll never forget the first advice @mwseibel gave me:
"Just start"
It's always the hardest step.
May 18
It's harder to:
β Get to $1M ARR than $100M
β Raise your pre-seed than your Series B
β Walk than run
β Get your first paying customer than your thousandth
β Sign your first investor than your tenth
β Hire your first employee than your fiftieth
β Get your first follower than your first 100K
β Make your first dollar online than your first million
β Quit the job than start the company
β Send the first cold email than build the outbound machine
The first one is always the hardest.
Always.
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