My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Inverse Relationship Between Caring and Results
The less emotionally attached you are to an outcome, the more likely you are to achieve it, because desperation creates poor decision-making.
Decision Rule
When you find yourself caring too much about a specific outcome, step back and reduce emotional investment to improve decision quality.
How It Works
Desperation leads to short-term thinking, poor negotiating position, and suboptimal choices. Emotional distance allows for long-term strategy and better risk assessment.
Failure Modes
Being so desperate for a deal that you accept bad terms
Caring so much about one opportunity that you miss better alternatives
Making decisions from fear rather than strategy
Appearing needy which reduces your attractiveness to partners/investors/customers
Example Decision
“An entrepreneur who already has financial security can take bigger risks and play longer-term games because they're not desperate for the next paycheck, leading to better outcomes than when they were struggling.”
Related Knowledge
The way you do one thing is the way you do everything
Pay attention to how people handle small details as indicators of their general competence and integrity
Fix-It Theory
A customer service framework where fixing mistakes creates higher customer loyalty than perfect service from the start.
Paul Graham's Animal Test
An entrepreneur evaluation framework that asks: 'Can you describe this person as an animal?
Hold Me Back Guy Strategy
A face-saving mechanism where someone makes aggressive threats while ensuring they have an excuse not to follow through, maintaining reputation without actual risk.
Write investor updates that build trust and get help
Investors understand your business health, offer help proactively, and maintain confidence in your team even during tough times.
Build exceptional SaaS product through customer obsession
Customers become advocates, feature requests get implemented quickly, and users can't imagine using anything else.