Insights

Year 1 stress: ‘nothing works.’ Year 2: ‘everything is on fire.’ Year 3: ‘things work but...’

A YC founder three years in says startup stress doesn’t get smaller — it changes shape. Four other founders in the same thread name where in the curve they currently sit. None of them are waiting for it to ease.

▲ 0 · 💬 0

Most engineering orgs are running cheap-capital playbooks they no longer have the cheap capital for

Viktor Cessan’s argument: software development is one of the most capital-intensive activities a company undertakes — and one of the least understood financially. 2022 ended the era where you could not understand it and still survive.

▲ 0 · 💬 0

What a $25k/mo B2B SaaS exit looks like from the inside (2 years, no agenda)

An indie founder posted the exit retrospective most blog roundups don’t write: the specific moves that worked, framed by what they’d skip next time.

▲ 0 · 💬 0

📚 Series · 1 articles

Solo Maker Ops 03: The Long Game

Google can't find FWTR. Visitors can't tell what it is in 5 seconds. And Thomas still hasn't built a weekly ops habit. Cowboy diagnoses the SEO hole, designs a 60-second first impression test, and tries to turn six episodes of frameworks into something Thomas actually does every Friday.

forwardthomasmiller · Updated Apr 13

📚 Series · 1 articles

Solo Maker Ops 02: From Zero to Your First Real User

The site is live but empty. Thomas and Cowboy tackle the cold start — how to fill an empty room, what "the champagne moment" means, and why 10 active people beat 10,000 passive ones. Then Cowboy asks a question Thomas can't answer: "What's your north star metric?"

forwardthomasmiller · Updated Apr 12