I love Founders Who Think Like Hackers
#99 Angelinvesting.it - From idea to Series A - Weekly Newsletter
3 minutes to reflect
Dear reader,
Hackers can fail hundreds of times attacking a system - but one success is all they need. This asymmetry between infinite attempts and a single required win mirrors entrepreneurship perfectly.
What this means for pre-seed startups:
Burn rate: Keep operational costs paper-thin. I have a portfolio startup with 1.5M in cash burning just 30k monthly - that's 50 months to get it right. The lighter you are, the more time you have.
Speed kills: Fast iteration is your weapon. The quicker you test assumptions, the higher your odds of cracking product-market fit. Every week matters. “What have you accomplished today”
Noisy users are gold: You need speed AND vocal early adopters who'll help you course-correct. Their feedback closes the loop and guides your sprints.
Bonus psychological hack: Failed attempts sting less when viewed as experiments. They're just steps toward that one success you need. Because like hackers, entrepreneurs just need to crack the system once.
2 resources to advance to pro
2. Velocity in a Nutshell: Make it Exist. Then Make it Good.
A controversial truth from a coding experiment: Writing bad code fast then refactoring beats trying to write perfect code first try. Every. Single. Time.
Think like a sculptor:
Rough shapes reveal the full picture
Early mistakes = early learnings
No wasted polish on wrong parts
The Velocity Stack:
Make it exist
Make it good
Make it fast
This is how great products are built. MVP → Product-Market Fit → Scale
You can't optimize what doesn't exist. Ship it rough, perfect it later.
That's how velocity compounds.
Check a controversial coding experiment
2. Building simple = Building fast
Everyone laughed at Elon's "just a tunnel with Teslas." Now that "simple tunnel" is generating $75M annually. Here's the underground story of Vegas' most profitable transit experiment:
The Raw Numbers:
$75M annual revenue
28,000 daily passengers
2-min average wait
150 Teslas running
Zero accidents in 3 years
The Boring Company's Secret Sauce: Traditional subway: $500M per mile Vegas Loop: $10M per mile
How? They stripped everything down:
Tunnel diameter: 12ft vs traditional 28ft
One-way tunnels only
No lane changes or signals
Human drivers (no complex autonomy)
Result: 67% less dirt, concrete, and build time.
The Expansion Story:
68 planned stations
87 miles of tunnel
Full Strip connectivity
Airport-downtown in 5min
While traditional transit projects debate perfect solutions for decades, Vegas Loop adds stations monthly.
The Innovation Paradox: It's not a subway or a bus - it's "point-to-point mass transit."
No schedules
No intermediate stops
Direct rides only
90% satisfaction rate
The $47M experiment critics mocked is now the template for next-gen urban transit.
The best solution isn't always the most advanced - it's the one you can build today that solves real problems and generates real revenue.
1 reason to smile
ChatGPT has just realesed the most powerful LLM in the world and still, you can beat it at tic-tac-toe!
Ciao,
Simone