Founders

It’s hard to recognize - and risky to exit - a local maxima. 

It’s also crucial to be willing to.

Co-founder @ponder | @survey | Ex   | colinjohnson.io

Inter-disciplinary change catalyst https://marcusdruen.com /farcasterland Crypto Educator https://maven.com/onchain/blockchain-for-beginners

“Earth is now our largest shareholder” - the sign outside of my local Patagonia. Kind of love it.

Agreed that ETH, etc., have likely reached their global maximas (from a product design perspective)

37 signals is a textbook example of a perma-local maxima. Capping Patagonia at 500M is another one. Hyperstructures on the other hand tend to create ultimate global maxima, no? Hard to imagine 10 Ethereums, 10 Unis, 10 Zora's at similar size.

Genart collector. Tinkerer. Investor. Crypto maximalist. Nomadic traveler w/ my wife and 3 kids. Currently somewhere in Poland.

Having the sell option is always nice 🙃. But even before reaching that point, there’s potential to get stuck by having just enough success to be “comfortable”. 

Gotta avoid that longing for comfort.

In several startups I worked, we would take fundraising periods as a chance to explore a new round of finance OR a sale.

You get to the top of that local maxima and evaluate options.

*Sometimes* better to sell/be acquired than look for a global; markets and meta may change and you get diluted…

It depends. Sometimes, it's not worth going through the valley. Depends on the market risk, company morale, stakeholders exit strategies, and founder burnouts!!

it's even harder when you don't recognize it and then you depend on fundraising while "going down"

CPO at Catena Labs • building /decent-ai

Previously: Jump Crypto, Protocol Labs, Netflix, Google AI • ML art nerd • Based™ in 🗽 

www.jfiadeiro.com

agreed, I have come to that local maxima in my executive coaching / change  consulting career. hence, I am shifting into adjacent new hills like psychedelic coaching and sparring partnering for web3 founders and folks. I want to climb new mountains, ranges, with different kit and skills reqs, but still by my feet.

This framework is also so important in terms of career progression

if your aim is to grow continuously then yes. if you’ve reached a place where your business is sustainable and you don’t feel the need to grow, you may not want to exit the local maxima

regardless, it’s good to know and be willing to exit it, once things change

Something I wrote a year ago - I actually need to edit and publish, it's a long post about

It's the opposite!! Sell when you have the momentum!!

Justin Kan: Never sell when you have momentum