Rattlesnakes, Homesteading, and 13 Startups

I did a five-year research project on founder success and failure.

Thousands of interviews, five people, cost me 500 grand.

And I started to understand that the The failure rate that's associated with founders is associated with an unarchitected space, meaning every single founder goes through the experience as if it's their first time.

Instead of there being a breadcrumb trail left behind that makes it easier, every founder that comes through gets better and better and better.

And so what I started to do was try to figure out how I could architect a structure, a life cycle that told founders where they were going, where they are, what to expect, what to look out for, and all the things that happened during the journey of a founder.

Most people think that a founder's journey is dictated by the round of funding.

So they'll say, oh, I'm at my pre-seed round.

I'm at my seed round or my series seed round or my series A or whatever it is.

Those are things that happen during the journey, but that's not the journey itself.

There are things that are more important.

Fundraising and going after money is the outcome of something else.

And that something else is what I focused on.

And that's where I picked up the startup architect, the name.

So

did that come from other people who nicknamed you that? Or was that the name of your research project? Or did you name yourself that?

No, they named, people named, the publisher named me that.

The first one was The Entrepreneur's Entrepreneur.

And then somebody else came in with the startup architect and then, you know, that's the one that they ended up giving me.

So I kind of just

stuck.

I have, I got a nickname.

People said to me after I had already started five startups, you know, you've got to stop calling yourself a serial entrepreneur.

You're an incorrigible entrepreneur.

Yeah.

Which they say with sort of a little bit of a negative vibe.