- Growth trajectory can beat market size.
Airbnb had just 47k homestay guests in 2010 but dominated a rapidly expanding category

- Minimize “time to magic.”
Study how quickly target users reach their “wow” moment and whether it fundamentally transforms an existing experience or behavior pattern. The most successful consumer companies (Uber, Tinder, Instacart, etc) delivered this magic through dramatic friction reduction

- Identify intense user love early.
Genuine passion among even a small user base signals future scale. “You can grow the love, but you can’t fake the love.”

I recently co-hosted a dinner gathering the most thoughtful consumer investors and founders to unpack what it takes to build enduring consumer businesses in the AI era.

Lessons from the past:

Gender norms aside, having a truly supportive partner is a game changer and should always be celebrated.

Oh and he does my laundry.

He sends me a pep talk on his walk to work every day, sources deals and tests out products for me, role plays difficult conversations with me. He is always on the look-out for opportunities I can benefit from to make sure I have everything I need to succeed, and more.

Every month we go over our long-term and short-term goals and how we can support each other in our progress. He is the clearest thinker I know and edits my posts.

I posted the tweet in jest, but it sparked a "global gender debate" about women being "invisible emotional labor sidekicks to men's visible professional successes."

In actuality my fiancée(!) is my secret weapon.

4. Founders are the first growth channel.

From TikToks to public Discords, it’s clear: people follow people. Your early GTM might be scrappier than you think.

3. Design retention before acquisition.

Midjourney optimized the model, not the website, for stickiness—building image personalization into the core experience to keep users coming back.

2. Start community before you start paid.
Each company waited to turn on paid ads until organic traction was proven. The order matters: authenticity first, acceleration second.

1. Product is your best distribution channel.

If people don’t love it, nothing else matters. Status grew via referral codes embedded in the core loop.

🎟️ And IRL is back: some enterprise CMOs are allocating 50%+ of budget to events because they have the highest conversion.

⚠️ DTC warning: many consumer startups are hitting the “CAC Valley of Death”—where paid channels no longer scale profitably post-PMF.

💬 AI tools like Decagon are taking over customer support—with CSAT scores exceeding top reps.

🤖 Tools like Clay are automating outbound, replacing manual enrichment and entire sales teams.

👥 Some B2B brands are even creating influencers— for example by backing rising CFO voices on LinkedIn

📦 Google’s shift to product carousels (not blue links) is forcing brands to re-index entire catalogs. Query lengths are up 50%.

🔍 LLM-optimized SEO is the next wave. Inbound leads from ChatGPT & Perplexity are doubling month over month.

🎙️ Podcast spend is surging and starting to take up significant portions of budget. More companies are starting their own podcasts like Shopify to have owned media.

🧠 SEO agencies have mostly been scams - beware. AI is replacing SEO teams with custom GPTs trained on top-performing content.