Founding Principles

What a first-time founder learns when there's no playbook

12/13/2025

I'm pretty open with most people about the fact that I don't fully know what I'm doing. Honestly, I don't think any first-time founder does. Every stage of building a company is a fresh set of problems you've never seen before. There's no playbook, no map, no one to hold your hand. But over the last year, through mistakes, momentum, long nights, and a ridiculous amount of learning, I've built a set of principles that anchor me. They guide how I live and how I build. And if I stay true to them, I'm confident they'll take me where I'm trying to go.1. Always be learning. This industry moves fast and so do we. Stay curious, ask questions, dig into things you don’t understand yet. The moment you stop learning is the moment you fall behind. 2. Speed defines startups. Focus enables speed. We don’t have the luxury of doing everything. Pick the highest-leverage thing, execute fast, learn, and move on. Scattered effort kills startups. AI-powered humans dominate. 3. Do hard things. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. The calls you don’t want to make, the conversations you’d rather avoid, the problems that feel too big — that’s where the growth is. Lean in. 4. Best idea wins. Come ready to defend yours. I don’t care where the idea comes from. If you have a better way, bring it. But bring the reasoning too. We debate, we pressure-test, and then we commit. 5. Feedback is a gift. Give it generously. We assume positive intent and say the hard things early. If something’s off, speak up. If someone did great work, say that too. We don’t let things fester. 6. Obsess over the customer. Not the competition. Every decision starts with the athlete, the brand partner, the person using our platform. If we’re not solving a real problem for a real person, we’re wasting time. 7. Say what you do. Do what you say. Reliability is everything for a small team. If you commit to something, follow through. If you can’t, flag it early. No surprises. 8. Freedom to fail, from fear, to be, from chaos. We give you the freedom to try things and fail without judgment. Freedom from the fear of looking stupid. Freedom to be yourself. And freedom from chaos by building systems and clarity so you can focus on the work that matters. 9. Do the right thing and we’ll make money damn near automatic. Take care of our athletes, deliver real value to brands, and build something people genuinely love. The revenue follows. It always does. 10. Consistency compounds. Be patiently impatient. Show up every single day, do the work, make progress. Be impatient in the short-term and patient in the long run. We’re not here for second place. This is an olympic sport. This is real life. Wake up every morning fired up.