Founder's Journel

Founder Journal: On Gravity

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Five months into my startup journey I realised something was not working. Conversations were not leading to traction. The right co-founders are not joining. Everything felt like pushing a boulder up a hill.

It's not because the problem is not real, nor the fact I have a working solution. Or even that I'm speaking to the right people. It is because I was not communicating correctly.

I was not creating gravity. The blouder is being pushed, not pulled.

So, I recently started searching for that moment a founder stops explaining and starts creating gravity.

That's okay, because there is a point in building a company where the work fundamentally changes.

In the beginning, progress came from building, learning, and surviving uncertainty. The founder explores the problem space, experiments with technology, and develops conviction that something important exists beneath the surface.

That phase rewarded curiosity and endurance.

But eventually, understanding the problem is no longer enough. The company does not grow because the founder understands more. It grows when other people begin to believe the problem must be solved, and that this company will solve it.

This is the moment where gravity becomes the founder’s real job.

Explaining vs Pulling

Early on, most of my conversations resolved to explaining the system clearly.

The assumption is simple: If people understand what we are building, they will want to join. If investors understand the architecture, they will want to invest. If customers understand the product, they will want to use it.

But understanding alone rarely moves people.

People do not join early companies because they are fully convinced. They join because something feels like it is forming with or without them.

That feeling is gravity.

Gravity is when talent leans in without being chased. When investors follow up without prompting. When customers introduce you to colleagues unasked.

It is not charisma. It is not storytelling skill. It is the accumulation of signals that a company is becoming inevitable.

What Actually Creates Gravity

Over time, I have noticed four signals that consistently create that sense of inevitability:

Clarity. Focus. Momentum. Ownership.

When these exist together, people begin to move toward the company.

Not because they are persuaded, but because they sense direction.

Clarity

In my experience, a company becomes stronger when its explanation becomes simpler.

Not smaller, simpler.

Early explanations often describe the technology, the architecture, or the innovation. Later explanations describe the structural problem being solved.

When the problem sounds unavoidable, the company begins to feel necessary.

Optional ideas do not create gravity. Structural problems do.

Focus

Intelligence attracts curiosity. Focus attracts trust.

I have noticed that when a company appears to operate across many domains, people become interested but cautious. When the company commits to solving one painful, specific workflow or problem, conversations deepen.

Constraint signals seriousness.

The narrower the initial target becomes, the more real the company feels.

Focus does not limit ambition. It makes ambition believable.

Momentum

Momentum is often misunderstood.

It is not revenue, funding, or team size. Those are later outcomes.

Momentum is evidence that reality is forming around the idea.

Repeated conversations revealing the same pattern of pain. Early prototypes mirroring real workflows. Technical decisions becoming inevitable rather than hypothetical. Investors asking second questions instead of first questions.

Momentum is pattern confirmation.

One subtle mistake I have made is describing this phase as “learning.” Learning sounds like exploration. Momentum sounds like construction. The activities may be identical, but the signal they send is very different.

Ownership

Perhaps the most counterintuitive lesson.

Builders do not join finished systems. They join unfinished frontiers.

This looks like trying to demonstrate completeness to earn credibility. But showing a system as complete can unintentionally remove space for others to matter.

When a company exposes the difficult, unresolved parts, architecture decisions not yet made, infrastructure not yet built, technical mountains still to climb, it creates an invitation.

Ownership creates gravity because ambitious people want to be necessary.

A great engineer, operator, or early employee does not join to help. They join to own something that would not exist without them.

The Founder Transition

There is a psychological shift underneath all of this.

Early founding rewards proving capability. Later founding rewards creating inevitability.

One is about being impressive. The other is about being directional.

Impressive founders explain complexity. Inevitable founders simplify reality.

This requires letting go of the instinct to demonstrate intelligence and replacing it with disciplined repetition: the same problem, the same wedge, the same narrative, repeated until the market begins repeating it back.

That is when gravity appears. This is where the work is.

The Real Test

A company stops feeling like a project and starts feeling real when it becomes necessary rather than interesting.

Not clever, but structural. Not impressive, but inevitable.

When that happens, the founder’s job changes again. Less pushing, more pulling. Less explanation, more direction.

That is the transition from building a system to building a company.

And it is a different craft entirely.

Build for the Model's Ceiling, Not Its Cost

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I was speaking with the CTO of Granola recently and asked him a simple question. “How do you consistently get the strongest performance out of your agents?” And he replied with an answer that reframed a lot for me.

To give a little bit of context, I've been building agent workflows to be maximally efficient. For example, I would maximise token efficiency at all costs. So trying to get the minimal amount of token usage for generating a response, and some of the time this works, but the result is not consistent.

He said that he prefers to max out the model's context window as much as possible. "It doesn't have to reach to the full amount," he said, "but if it was on a scale, you'd look to medium to high context window." Because you're prioritising giving the user the best experience from the model's capability.

Granola have just raised $60M so that they can give that best user experience to most of the users for low cost or even free. And they're happy to spend that amount to improve the experience, improve the brand, improve their reputation while growth is still happening.

There's also an important point that I came too realise, through implementing the strategy. Not only are you maximising for the current model, but you are also maximising the models' capabilities. This means that when eventually a new model comes out (which will not be too long), you already maximally fit for the current model. The token usage becomes more efficient because over time, models become more efficient. The teams that are building these models are always looking to improve and make them more efficient, the token window becomes less expensive over time.

Actually making these really bold bets in the early stage of this nascent industry and also in the early stages of a company actually provides a really hidden, powerful benefit of:

Delivering an exceptional user experience immediately.
Positioning your product to become dramatically more efficient as model costs drop.

The founders who build like this will dominate the next cycle. They will control more of the market. attract better customers. and develop a stronger brand because they made the right bet early. The founders who optimise for minimal token usage will save a little money now and lose a lot of ground later.

AI capability is accelerating. If you want to lead, build for where the curve is going, not where it is today.

Founder Journal: On Pitching

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I have failed to pitch correctly more than anyone can count.

Some got meetings but no second call. Potential customers said they understood the product, then did nothing. I used to think the problem was clarity. If I could only explain the system well enough, people would get it.

That was wrong.

The Room That Taught Me

I remember one pitch where I was walking a room of execs through the architecture. Midway through I noticed them on their phones. One of them leaned forward and said: "I have a busy schedule, can you get to the point?"

I had been clear. I had been precise. And it had not mattered.

The lesson was brutal: clarity alone does not create engagement. There has to be something for the audience to feel.

That moment stayed with me. It was the beginning of understanding why my earlier pitches had fallen flat.

What I Was Doing Wrong

I was starting with the thing I knew best: the product.

"We are an X platform that does Y."

Nothing wrong with that sentence in isolation. Nine times out of ten it communicates what you do. The problem is that it gives the room nothing to feel. No stake. No reason to lean in. I had optimized for understanding and skipped the step that actually makes people care.

Great pitches do not start with what. They start with why.

Not "why we exist" in a mission-statement way. Why this problem matters. Why it is urgent. Why the person in front of you should care before they have heard a single feature.

I learned that the hard way. I am writing it down so I do not forget.

Two Kinds of Emotional Trigger

Over time I started to notice a pattern in the pitches that worked.

When people leaned in, it was because something had landed emotionally. I began to separate those moments into two types.

Direct: You speak to a pain, a belief, or an experience that is personal to them. They feel it in the room. It is about them.

Indirect: You speak to a problem they know exists from the industry, from others, from the news, even if it is not their own story. They are motivated because they recognize the problem and want to be part of solving it.

Neither is better. The work is to know which kind of audience you have, and to aim the opening at that. I had been pitching the same way to everyone. That was another mistake from the earlier attempts.

Knowing Your Audience

The challenge is always the same: who is in the room?

Are they living the problem? Then the direct trigger is available. Are they observing it, managing it, or investing in it? Then the indirect trigger is the one that will land.

This does not come from the deck. It comes from listening before you pitch. From research. From questions that help you place them without giving away the idea. When I had no chance to do that, cold events, networking, I learned to default to why. Why this problem, why now. It is the safest opening when you do not yet know how they relate to the problem.

Why Before What

A "what" statement is: "We are an X platform that does Y." Practical. Clear. Emotionally flat.

A "why" statement answers: why are we solving this in the first place? It connects to something that makes the listener want to hear more.

Example:

"The power demand for AI compute is increasing exponentially and data centres are producing extraordinary amounts of heat. With models getting larger and more compute-intensive, the problem will only get worse. That is why we are building next-generation hardware that is more energy efficient and can handle large-scale compute in one chip."

I could have led with the chip. I could have led with the platform. Nobody would have felt anything. By starting with the problem, the trend, the stakes, the room has a reason to care before the product appears.

The aim is to get them to the edge of their seat, make them ask for the details.

What I Would Tell My Earlier Self

Pitching is more than one lesson. There is timing, pacing, and the psychology of how people decide. But if I could only pass on one thing from the attempts that failed, it would be this:

Do not lead with what you built. Lead with why the problem demands that it exist. Give the audience something to feel before you ask them to think.

It's difficult and you will not get it right on the first try. This is very much an iterative process. In practice, you know it works when you get a follow on conversation. Experiement with your audience and see what works best.

Tenets of 2024

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Every year, I like to reflect on the past twelve months and approach it as an observer devoid of bias.

For me, this reflection time is very important, and I treat it like a ritual. It often takes the shape of a solo trip or adventure into nature, honing two tools, a pen and a notebook.

This year, I stumbled across a theme for my reflections, and they decided to take the form of tenets or rules. Some lessons have come from the observations of mentors, friends and colleagues. Others have shown themselves as adverse reactions to behaviour, and ultimately only shown themselves through hindsight.

It is a consistent effort to ensure that we can adopt lessons from others past experiences without living them ourselves.

Admittedly, this is something that I'm not perfect at, but I'm working on it. Here are ten tenets that have stood out to me this year.

Tenets

I can expand my mind beyond any restrictions or rules.
Treat feedback as a gift; whether it is a criticism or a positive, there is something you can learn from it.
Only prove your love, not your worth.
Protect those who can’t, ignore those who won't, and enable those who want.
Stay true to your values, and write your obituary to keep your actions accountable.
You can win regardless of your emotional, physical, and external setbacks. Working hard to overcome these challenges is the difference between winners and losers.
Approach each day like an athlete, show up with a winning mindset, and approach each challenge enthusiastically. Train hard, listen to experience, rest and recover.
Value your friendships, celebrate those around you who are exceptional and work hard.
Recognise the thoughtful actions of others, and be generous with your actions towards them.
The most essential thing in life is your relationships; therefore, be super selective with the people you associate with, especially the person you choose to be your life partner.

If you found these tenets helpful, you can use them as a framework to reflect on your own year. If that is the case I'm happy they inspired you.

Creating Your Own Tenets

If you would like to create your own tenets, the following steps are a good place to start:

Look back on your year with honest eyes, and ask yourself: what principles have guided you? What lessons have shaped you? What values do you want to live by?

If patterns emerge, if themes reveal themselves, write them down. Create your own tenets.

And if you do, I'd love to hear them. Share what you've discovered, what principles have become your compass, or what reflections have shaped your thinking.

There's something powerful in seeing how others navigate their own growth. Your insights might just inspire someone else to start their own reflective journey.

Breaking Free from the Spreadsheet Prison, The Future of Intelligent Data

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Working in the investment industry, I saw firsthand how fragmented and siloed data could slow decision-making to a crawl. Multi-million-dollar projects were still tracked in Excel sheets, which were isolated, rigid, and nearly impossible to integrate across teams.

Each spreadsheet had its own format, assumptions, and structure, making data exchange a nightmare. Something as simple as a column order change could break entire workflows, and reconciling information across departments was time-consuming, error-prone, and frustrating.

For years, the industry accepted this as "just how things work." But it doesn't have to be.

What if data could structure itself?

This is the power of AI-driven Linked Data transforming raw, unstructured information into fluid, connected intelligence.

Just as Web 1.0 connected computers and Web 2.0 connected people, Linked Data connects information, breaking down silos and enabling seamless data interaction. AI-powered LLMs take this a step further, abstracting away the cognitive and analytical effort needed to transform raw data into structured, meaningful insights.

Instead of spending hours wrangling spreadsheets and databases, investment firms, procurement teams, and financial institutions could query knowledge directly, making sense of disparate data in real time.

Converting Siloed Spreadsheets to Connected Data

The impact? Faster insights. Smarter decisions. No more data dead-ends.

Investment portfolios could update dynamically, pulling from live data rather than static files
Teams could ask questions and get real-time, structured answers rather than relying on outdated reports
Legacy systems wouldn't have to be painfully integrated; they'd evolve into something better, more innovative, and more connected
No more wasted time migrating all of your data into a closed system that is expensive, rigid and limited only by the progress of its engineering team

The reality is that structured data isn't meaningful data, but with AI-powered Linked Data, we can finally bridge that gap.

"What if every industry instantly had seamless, intelligent access to all of its knowledge?"

How much time could we save?

How many opportunities could we unlock?

How much innovation could we inspire?

The future isn't just about collecting more data but making the data we have work for us.

The era of knowledgeable, interconnected data starts now.