10 Principles for Startups
Principle 1: The Star Principle
No middle ground
Be #1 in your market
In a high-growth industry
Be the star. Or don’t play.
Principle 2: Play long-term games with long-term people
Poker taught me the power of long-term thinking & compounding.
• 1% daily improvement= 37x in 1 year = 5.9 QUADRILLION in 10 years.
Invest in your relationships, skills and knowledge.
Principle 3: The 80/20 Principle
In high-stakes poker, 5% of hands deliver 95% of profits.
In today’s digital arena: A few players dominate search, social, and wealth.
Modern 80/20 is more like 90/10 or 99/1
Focus ruthlessly on the vital few. Ali Abdaal explains it here:
Pareto Principle – 80 20 rule
You are a farmer with a bountiful crop to havest but you’ve got limited time and resources. So how do you decide which crops to focus on. Do you spend equal amount of time on each crop or do you prioritize the one that are going to yield the most returns?
Roughly 80% of the effects come from just 20% of the causes
It applies to many different areas of our life including business and time management and personal productivity. It remind us to focus on the most important tasks and prioritize our efforts accordingly.
Principle 4: Set A Big Audacious Purpose
My working 9 to 5 to business leap wasn’t just for money, it’s about building a legacy:
Connecting entrepreneurs
Creating enduring value
Growing real community
Think Musk-level massive. Let your mission be the magnet for top talent.
Principle 5: Live Feedback Loops
Read patterns in real-time
Pivot on a dime
Gain from pain
Startups demand the same:
Test relentlessly
Measure maniacally
Learn & adapt lightning-fast
Optimize for speed & learning. Endlessly iterate.
Principle 6: Align Incentives
In business, incentives drive behavior. Align rewards carefully:
Link pay to performance
Recognize the right stuff
Balance short & long-term
Structure incentives to encourage winning moves. Charlie Munger said it best here: “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome”
Principle 7: Product > Marketing > Sales
The ultimate marketing is an unreal product.
Think: teleportation, one-click six-pack, happiness on demand.
Tell one person. Watch it spread like wildfire. Steve Jobs: You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new
Principle 8: Hands-on Pulse.
Develop your future-seeing superpowers. In business:
Sense social shifts
Spot tech tidal waves
Predict unmet desires
Principle 9: Leverage
I love to amplify output without equally increasing input. I love applying Naval Ravikant’s leverage formula in every way:
1. Capital
2. Collaborators (all-star teams)
3. Content (massive social reach)
4. Code (automation everywhere)
Principle 10: Creativity Saves Money
Growing up lean taught me that creativity beats cash. In startups, I’ve learned to:
Do more with less
Invent rather than spend
Turn scarcity into a superpower