@ryanarutan profile picture
Ryan Rutan @startups.com @ryanarutan

Co-Host of The Startup Therapy Podcast and CMO / Founding Partner of Startups.com

Joined February 2009
  • Tweets 2,738
  • Following 68
  • Followers 1,586
1,080 Photos and videos
1
68
Best founder superpower? Selective amnesia. • Forget the rejections (remember the lessons) • Forget the betrayals (remember the signs) • Forget the failures (remember the pivots) • Forget the pain (remember why you started) We're not naive. We're strategically optimistic.
1
1
63
Beautiful truth: Every unicorn started with a founder who couldn't sleep. Not because they were visionaries. Because they forgot to pay the electric bill. • Chaos before clarity • Ramen before revenue • Doubt before determination • Survival before success You're doing ok.
1
50
Plot twist: Your worst day as a founder beats your best day in corp. Even when Your: • Runway is measured in weeks • Co-founder just quit (again) • ICP is still "humans with money" • laptop is held together with hope You didn't leave comfort for easy. You left for alive.
1
2
49
I love a big thesis for each year. My thesis this year is that while a Startup's first hire should still be a human, that human should be managing an army of AI agents. @dharmesh - if I was going to build an ongoing workshop to help early stage startup Founders @startupscom build and deploy agents with agent.ai what 5 agents would you start with?

Agent.ai | The #1 Professional Network for AI Agents

Discover, use and build agents to create your personal AI agent team.

agent.ai
2
155
Funny how the world celebrates 'security' but ignores 'risk'—until it pays off. Keep going. 🏗️
Startups.com
@startupscom
22 Feb 2025
Entrepreneurship is a lonely road at first. Most people won’t get it, and that’s okay. Keep building—the real recognition comes after the results. 💯 #EntrepreneurLife #Startups
163
What if I had raised capital? What if I had sold? What if I had started earlier? We love to imagine the best-case scenario—but do we ever calculate the real cost? #founder
1
3
165
Ryan Rutan @startups.com retweeted
Startups.com
@startupscom
2 Feb 2025
What if contentment is actually the goal? 🤔 As founders, we’re always chasing the next problem to solve—but do we ever stop to appreciate what we’ve built? Maybe true success isn’t in more, but in knowing when it’s enough.
0:47
2
3
239
Success comes with costs. If you’re not ready to pay them, the upside won’t feel like a win.
1
1
59
more replies
As Founders, we often create situations where "winning" becomes quite difficult because of a miscalculation on one or both sides of that equation.
1
52
We thought success needed to be bigger than it really did to satisfy us, and/or we thought the costs of getting to that success would be smaller than they were, and more than we can tolerate...or at least more than we can tolerate and still be happy with the "win".
51
Had to explain to a Founder today that most of the people who tell you "great idea" are just being polite.
1
54
Scaling isn’t about strategy. It’s about keeping things from catching fire faster than you can put them out. #startups
1
55
Is this an obstacle? Maybe. Or, it might be your next milestone revealing itself. As Founders, perhaps more than for anyone else, Aurelius' observation that "the obstacle is the path" is so very, very true.
48
Building a startup isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about staying in the game long enough to figure them out.
2
1
67
.
1
52
PS - this takes years, NOT months.
47
You might think startup success stems from being the smartest in the room. It does not. It comes from being the most relentless.
59
I've seen some version of this pitch 3x this week: Step 1: Build something no one asked for. Step 2: Try to convince people it’s their fault they didn’t ask. #pitchslapped #startups
44
Load more