Scar Tissue: 3 things I learned in 2024
As we step into 2025, I’ve been reflecting on the lessons I’ve learned so far in this incredible journey as co-founder of Brand Ninja. From raising our seed round at a pre-money valuation of $15 million to signing global clients, building a team, and navigating the constant ups and downs of startup life, the extraordinary frequency and scale of my mistakes has taught me a lot. As Mike Tyson famously said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." That couldn’t be more true!
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a team member, or simply curious about life in a startup, I hope you’ll find my reflections worthwhile. I’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas, or feedback—feel free to share! I’ll do my best to keep it concise. This is more of a living blog, with thoughts still consolidating. As you will probably see.
Focus & Vision
The machine that builds the machine, editing the machine.
A person that lacks purpose distracts themselves with pleasure and the same can be said with companies. In many ways, we are the sum of our decisions and in business I’ve learned that the most important decisions are what you say ‘no’ to. It is easy to say yes. Especially when you’re an AI company in the AI boom and in the use case of ‘content,’ which is applicable to an almost infinite TAM. The danger is to become all things to all people and therefore nothing ‘mission critical’ to anyone. A director on our board (and close personal mentortold me earlier this year that ‘if your platform breaks down for an hour and you don’t have angry customers calling you begging you to turn it back on so they can do their job, you don’t have a real platform.’ It’s not enough to have a vitamin in 2025 - you need a painkiller, and pain is always sharp and focussed. Customization can often kill transformation - in both building a true cult-level brand but also in building a product with the sound, ultra scalable unit economics we require to achieve the size we seek.
However, like all things, balance is important. As Jeff Bezos wisely stated, "If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve."
When I think about focus, I'm reminded of Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1997. The company was on the brink of bankruptcy, with a confusing product line that included a dozen versions of the Macintosh. Jobs did something unexpected - he slashed the product line by 70%. He cut the desktop models from fifteen to one and reduced the portable models to just one laptop. This laser focus not only saved Apple but set the stage for its incredible comeback.
I've learned that, like Apple, we need to identify our core strengths and ruthlessly eliminate distractions. It's not about doing more; it's about doing less, but better. I love Jack Dorsey's quote: "Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.’
Jack Dorsey: The CEO as Chief Editor.
TeamworK
The most important product your company will ever build is its team. Delegation. In 2024 I learned that you don’t rise to goals, but rather fall to systems. As my cofounder Brad Bond says, it takes a village to raise a startup.
What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed, doesn’t get improved. I’ve learned that my role as a confounder is to (with Brad) set the vision, gather the resources (i.e. team, capital) and set the bar for execution (i.e. what we need to do and how efficiently we go about doing it.) I have often spent too much time personally running a process that could have been automated/simplified/delegated and, in turn, caused existential bottlenecks in the business.
The importance of a team rowing in the right direction and feeling like they are ‘winning’ cannot be overstated. I’ve learned that culture isn’t a ping pong table or free beers on Friday, it is looking forward to working each day with a great team that WINS. I love how cofounder of Netflix, Marc Randolph, frames it:
There is always a way
Brad and I doing over 50 meetings across 6 cities in the USA, August 2024.
Thomas Edison said “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” There have been countless moments when we thought we were screwed, but we always found a way through. I truly believe it’s not over unless I’m dead. This belief is what inspires me to dream bigger—to push the boundaries even when it seems like everything is stacked against us. So long as there is energy and integrity, we can always ‘get by with a little help from our friends.’
Part of this is the importance of forward momentum. I’ve learned to prioritise progress over perfection. In a fast-paced environment, staying still will kill you. Reid Hoffman famously said, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late,” which reminds us to keep iterating rather than waiting for an unattainable level of “perfect.”
I know that we have all the seeds required to build an incredibly unique, valuable and hard-to-imitate solution for a globally expanding problem. Traction so far has proven this. We have a terrifying amount of work still to do, but I know that it is only this work, and the sheer relentlessness required to get it done, that stands between us and the realisation of Brand Ninja’s (and therefore, my life’s) potential.
Anyway, I’m still figuring it out. Obviously.
I'll close with two of my favourite Churchill quotes.
“When you’re going through hell, keep going,”
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Cheers to an even bigger 2025. I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for reading.
