The Founder’s Wake-Up Call: The Patterns That Matter
Every founder thinks they’re building something great—until the market tells them otherwise and their energy runs out. Here are the patterns of success .....
The Brutal Reality: Lessons That Break You (or Make You)
I had just quit my job and borrowed $30,000 to go all in on my startup. I thought I had conviction. I thought my co-founder did too.
Then he pulled out. Just like that.
And I had made the rookie mistake of not setting up a vesting agreement. No cliff, no structured equity vesting—just a handshake and blind optimism. When I asked if he’d return his 30% equity, he wasn’t willing. What followed was three months of negotiation hell.
That’s how I ended up in a car park at 11 PM, staring at my inbox, refreshing over and over, waiting for an investor reply that would never come. I was completely alone.
I had done all the startup things—networking, refining decks, pitching, attending endless events, even applying to Muru-D, Telstra’s accelerator.
We were the audience favourite… but still got rejected by Sydney startupland OG Mick Liubinskas (aka Mr. Focus) (his exact feedback was ‘love the jockey not the horse’…fair fair).
(Hint: accelerators very rarely fulfil the promise they espouse.)
But pain isn’t failure—it’s the tuition you pay for lessons that actually matter.
✅ Speaking to 400 engineers before I finally found the right one—someone incredible, who became my co-founder and CTO. Shirren, I’ll always be grateful for everything you taught me.
✅ Hustling for six months to raise $300K from angel investors—grinding through rejection after rejection before I finally got term sheets.
✅ Realising the startup ecosystem can eaily reward noise over substance short term— then growing to learn to play a different game.
The Breakthrough: Learning What Actually Works
The turning point came when I finally saw what world-class execution looked like.
I ultimately said no to funding and instead joined Canva as one of the first leaders.
That’s when my learning around what actually works - crystallised.
At Canva, I experienced what an elite product, team, and execution machine looked like. I saw what real customer, problem and market obsession was…what a vision and executing to it looks like
I watched Mel (& Cliff) operate—relentlessly refining, iterating, and building something people loved. And in my opinion, that product intuition came from years of deep work on Fusion Books, long before Canva was even an premise. That’s what separates great founders. That’s what I was missing. Definitely can be developed..
Here is a doco that I think every ANZ founder should watch…it shares the Canva story….p.s (I have a micro-cameo) …
Given all of this….here are the good patterns and anti-patterns I have noted through my own startup experience, Canva, Airtasker, Simply Wall St, Phase One’s awesome success and speaking to 1000s of founders…all around the world.
The Good Patterns: What Winning Founders Do
Founder Obsession with the Customer
Winning founders don’t talk about themselves. They talk about their customers the problem and the market. They stumble in excitement about it.
They know their customers’ pains, workflows, and habits inside-out.
They can tell you exactly what keeps their customers up at night.
They aren’t just solving a problem—they feel responsible for their customer’s success.
The only signal I truly trust here is …. actual time spent on discovery - this strips away all biases that I may have. I trust the time and work spent understanding the customer and problem. In my experience - one needs to spend 18 - 24 mths solely on this.
🚀 Example: The Airbnb founders literally knocked on doors to speak with hosts, taking their pain points and turning them into product features.
If a founder can’t shut up about their customer, that’s a good sign.
Focus on a Specific Problem
Weak startups try to do too much. Strong startups hone in and start to go narrow and deep.
A tight, well-defined problem beats a broad, vague ambition. There is a real tension here. A founder should have incredible ambition and ego around their vision but humility and precision around todays niche customer and problem
The best startups build a “killer first product”—something so good that a niche group of users can’t live without it.
🔥 Example: Amazon’s Relentless Focus on One Category Before Becoming the Everything Store
When Jeff Bezos started Amazon, he didn’t try to sell everything.
He focused on one niche: books
Did I say … speaking to Customers— to be clear do that …A LOT
In my opinion there’s a direct correlation between the amount and quality of conversations with customers early on and startup success.
The best founders will do things like this:
Do 200-500 deep customer interviews before writing a single line of code (read “Don’t make me think”.)
Please please please spend more time with customers than at startup events. One of those activities will always lead to value creation.
OR
Start to actually provide service to their customers and then aim to productify down the road.
Slow, Controlled Growth—Keeping Equity
Good founders don’t rush. They keep equity, bootstrap where possible, and avoid unnecessary spikey ups and downs. The hockey stick curve that will occur has a really long runway before the inflection point.
They don’t raise money just because they can.
They don’t hire prematurely.
They validate, validate, validate before beginning to build. (once you write your first line of code…the solution seems to be to write another line of code. No. Go speak to a customer)
💡 Tip: If you think your startup needs funding before spending copious amount of time with customer - something is likely off
Making Revenue—ANY Revenue
If a founder can make $1, they can make $1M.
Doesn’t matter how. Consulting, scrappy side deals, pre-orders—anything that validates demand.
Startups that delay monetisation often lose touch with reality.
🚀 Example: Stripe’s first users were founders in their YC batch. The team manually onboarded each one. Revenue is validation. Importantly this is not about showcasing revenue. It is about showcasing that your connection to the customer and problem is real.
Tip: You want to build a unicorn…simple…make revenue from 20-50 of the same type of businesses in the US. That' should be enough learning to get you going.
Doing Unscalable Things at the Start
Winning founders are hands-on. They:
Manually onboard users.
Provide high-touch support.
Build deep, one-on-one relationships with early adopters.
🚀 Example: Uber’s early team literally texted riders manually to match them with drivers. The unscalable creates the scalable.
The Anti-Patterns: Red Flags That Kill Startups
1. In the News Too Early
If a startup is featured in the press before having clarity… red flag. An announcement for an announcement’s sake - signals wrong priorities and wasted energy.
Funding rounds, awards, and media coverage mean nothing without true customer and product insight.
💡 Reality Check: No customer consistently buys a product because it was in TechCrunch.
2. Celebrating Vanity Metrics Over Real Success
It is definitely a warning signal to me when what you hear from startups is:
Mainly around raising capital as opposed to founders who wax lyrical about the customer, engagement with the customer, market and more….
Showcasing startup events that they have been to etc.
The likes of Min-Kyu from Ivo.ai, Amber from NextWork - you hardly hear a peep from about “where they have been and who they hang out with”.Building a big team before having clarity of the problem roadmap.
Real success? Retention, engagement and revenue.
3. Listening to the Wrong People
Be ruthless about whose advice you take.
Notes:
Be wary of mentors who haven’t built or scaled a company. The marketing exec in a big tech company DOES NOT have lived experience around early stage startupland. Nor do most investors and VCs.
Advisors who push theoretical MBA frameworks and mature company tactics vs first principled “what are we doing and for whom” thinking.
Look … I trust everyone has good intentions but as a founder you have to become world class at signal reading who is able to provide quality guidance vs who is not in a good position to do so.
The Startup To-Do List: What to Actually Focus On
If you’re a founder, ditch the noise and focus on these:
✅ 18-24 months of deep problem discovery.
✅ Make revenue. Doesn’t matter how small.
✅ Learn the venture capital, who is who in the zoo, what their incentives are and build a relationship with them.
✅ Talk to 50-100 customers. Then 100 more. Then another 100 more…then….
✅ Forget PR, awards, and startup hype—just obsess over solving the problem.
Final Thought: The Signal vs. The Noise
Startups die when founders focus on the wrong things.
The signal is:
Customers
Revenue
Retention
Deep insight
The noise is:
PR
Awards/Hype
Panels
Fundraising celebrations
If you obsess over the signal and ignore the noise, you’ll win.
🚀 Now go speak to a US customer.