Why find your founder leverage?

Learnings from a first time founder.

Apr 22, 2024

Welcome to the 227th edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every week, I write two pieces that go to over 100,000 product, marketing, business leaders & ambitious founders in marquee internet companies around the world. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do.

Most founders s*ck at figuring "leverage" - including me. If you have been an employee before you turned founder, chances are - you are doing stuff that you shouldn't do - here's how to get out.

In the picture is a moment in the game of SHASN. I was moderating one of the GrowthX members only offsite in Goa - you should play if you want to understand leverage in politics.

Over the years while working at consumer tech companies, I was tasked with solving top line growth. I had less incentives to really make product changes.

Point to note - someone else decided what my biggest strength was to create "leverage" would be. This was on point as I would argue, I created massive leverage for the companies I worked at.

Don't confuse "leverage" with "impact" though. Impact could mean doing a marketing campaign to get this quarter's number. But, real leverage is building a growth channel that keeps growing/ compounding with minimal effort over a really long time - like referral programs.

Its the edge that will help the company either do orbit change or solve something marginally over a really long period of time.

But, because you are good at something does not mean that's your "founder leverage". I need to go back and honestly answer this question myself - "What will create the biggest leverage for my company?"

Once I get the answer, do the following urgently.

1. Find low leverage stuff - can I not do it? If I can't skip it, how can I delegate and keep the recurring cost of delegation low.

2. Find medium leverage stuff - do I have someone who can figure 0-1 solution-ing? If not, get involved in figuring the foundations of solving the problem - ensure momentum to not spend a huge portion of time. Build SOP & transfer ownership.

3. Find high leverage stuff - this typically is either fund raising early on, hiring key roles, ensuring we are not losing product market fit, going after the right market, talking to customers & constantly driving speed in every single team.

I wish I knew this early on - would have spent my last 2.5 years of founder life a lot differently. As an early first time founder, we try to optimize the $$$ too much to the point that the ROI on founder time goes to sh*t. Don't make that mistake.
Find high leverage & impact shareholder value.

This also makes me reflect on the importance of building a solid founding team that understands this and strives to help build better founder leverage. Keep those builders close to you - it’s a moat.

Thanks for supporting this newsletter

If you’ve enjoyed this piece, do consider referring our newsletter to a friend. For your first referral, we’ll send you our Infographics ebook, which has a collection of growth & business infographics that have generated 1 Million + impressions across our social channels.