I've worked in a People role at seven early-stage firms for over 15 years (I enjoy chasing a dream!). Few of the seven achieved profitability, including unicorn status or acquisition.

Did early-stage startups share anything? Was there a difference between winners and losers? YES.

I support founders and entrepreneurs building financially sustainable enterprises with a compelling cause. This isn't something everyone would do. A company's success demands more than guts. Founders drive startup success.

Six Qualities of Successful Startups

Successful startup founders either innately grasped the correlation between strong team engagement and a well-executed business model, or they knew how to ask and listen to others (executive coaches, other company leaders, the team itself) to learn about it.

Successful startups:

1. Co-founders agreed and got along personally.

Multi-founder startups are common. When co-founders agree on strategic decisions and are buddies, there's less friction and politics at work.

As a co-founder, ask your team if you're aligned. They'll explain.

I've seen C-level leaders harbor personal resentments over disagreements. A co-departure founder's caused volatile leadership and work disruptions that the team struggled to manage during and after.

2. Team stayed.

Successful startups have low turnover. Nobody is leaving. There may be a termination for performance, but other team members will have observed the issues and agreed with the decision.

You don't want organizational turnover of 30%+, with leaders citing performance issues but the team not believing them. This breeds suspicion.

Something is wrong if many employees leave voluntarily or involuntarily. You may hear about lack of empowerment, support, or toxic leadership in exit interviews and from the existing team. Intellectual capital loss and resource instability harm success.

3. Team momentum.

A successful startup's team is excited about its progress. Consistently achieving goals and having trackable performance metrics. Some describe this period of productivity as magical, with great talents joining the team and the right people in the right places. Increasing momentum.

I've also seen short-sighted decisions where only some departments, like sales and engineering, had goals. Lack of a unified goals system created silos and miscommunication. Some employees felt apathetic because they didn't know how they contributed to team goals.

4. Employees advanced in their careers.

Even if you haven't created career pathing or professional development programs, early-stage employees will grow and move into next-level roles. If you hire more experienced talent and leaders, expect them to mentor existing team members. Growing companies need good performers.

New talent shouldn't replace and discard existing talent. This creates animosity and makes existing employees feel unappreciated for their early contributions to the company.

5. The company lived its values.

Culture and identity are built on lived values. A company's values affect hiring, performance management, rewards, and other processes. Identify, practice, and believe in company values. Starting with team values instead of management or consultants helps achieve this. When a company's words and actions match, it builds trust.

When company values are beautifully displayed on a wall but few employees understand them, the opposite is true. If an employee can't name the company values, they're useless.

6. Communication was clear.

When necessary information is shared with the team, they feel included, trusted, and like owners. Transparency means employees have the needed information to do their jobs. Disclosure builds trust. The founders answer employees' questions honestly.

Information accessibility decreases office politics. Without transparency, even basic information is guarded and many decisions are made in secret. I've seen founders who don't share financial, board meeting, or compensation and equity information. The founders' lack of trust in the team wasn't surprising, so it was reciprocated.

The Choices

Finally. All six of the above traits (leadership alignment, minimal turnover, momentum, professional advancement, values, and transparency) were high in the profitable startups I've worked at, including unicorn status or acquisition.

I've seen these as the most common and constant signals of startup success or failure.

These characteristics are the product of founders' choices. These decisions lead to increased team engagement and business execution.

Here's something to consider for startup employees and want-to-bes. 90% of startups fail, despite the allure of building something new and gaining ownership. With the emotional and time investment in startup formation, look for startups with these traits to reduce your risk.

Both you and the startup will thrive in these workplaces.

Weekend project: limitless design service. It was fun to see whether I could start a business quickly.

I use no-code apps to save time and resources.

TL;DR I started a business utilizing EditorX for my website, Notion for client project management, and a few favors to finish my portfolio.

First step: research (Day 1)

I got this concept from a Kimp Instagram ad. The Minimalist Hustler Daily newsletter mentioned a similar and cheaper service (Graphically).

I Googled other unlimited design companies. Many provide different costs and services. Some supplied solely graphic design, web development, or copywriting.

Step 2: Brainstorming (Day 1)

I did something simple.

• What benefits and services to provide

• Price to charge

Since it's a one-person performance (for now), I'm focusing on graphic design. I can charge less.

So I don't overwhelm myself and can accommodate budget-conscious clientele.

Step 3: Construction (Day 1 & 2)

This project includes a management tool, a website, and a team procedure.

I built a project management tool and flow first. Once I had the flow and a Notion board, I tested it with design volunteers. They fake-designed while I built the website.

Tool for Project Management

I modified a Notion template. My goal is to keep clients and designers happy.

Team Approach

My sister, my partner, and I kept this business lean. I tweaked the Notion board to make the process smooth. By the end of Sunday, I’d say it’s perfect!

Website

I created the website after they finished the fake design demands. EditorX's drag-and-drop builder attracted me. I didn't need to learn code, and there are templates.

I used a template wireframe.

This project's hardest aspect is developing the site. It's my first time using EditorX and I'm no developer.

People answer all your inquiries in a large community forum.

As a first-time user developing a site in two days, I think I performed OK. Here's the site for feedback.

4th step: testing (Day 2)

Testing is frustrating because it works or doesn't. My testing day was split in two.

• testing the workflow from payment to onboarding to the website

• the demand being tested

It's working so far. If someone gets the trial, they can request design work.

I've gotten a couple of inquiries about demand. I’ll be working with them as a start.

Completion

Finally! I built my side project in one weekend. It's too early to tell if this is successful. I liked that I didn't squander months of resources testing out an idea.

I've always bucked social media norms. YouTube doesn't compare. Traditional video made me zig when everyone zagged. Audio, picture personality animation, thought movies, and slide show videos are most popular and profitable.

YouTube's business is shifting. While most video experts swear by the idea that YouTube success is all about making personal and professional Face-Share-Videos, those who use YouTube for business know things are different.

In this article, I will share concepts from my mini master class Figures to Followers: Prioritizing Purposeful Profits Over Popularity on YouTube to Create the Win-Win for You, Your Audience & More and my forthcoming publication The WOWTUBE-PRENEUR FACTOR EVOLUTION: The Basics of Powerfully & Profitably Positioning Yourself as a Video Communications Authority to Broadcast Your WOW Effect as a Video Entrepreneur.

I've researched the psychology, anthropology, and anatomy of significant social media platforms as an entrepreneur and social media marketing expert. While building my YouTube empire, I've paid particular attention to what works for short, mid, and long-term success, whether it's a niche-focused, lifestyle, or multi-interest channel.

Most new, semi-new, and seasoned YouTubers feel vlog-style or live-on-camera videos are popular. Faceless, animated, music-text-based, and slideshow videos do well for businesses.

Buyer-consumer vs. content-consumer thinking is totally different when absorbing content. Profitability and popularity are closely related, however most people become popular with traditional means but not profitable.

In my experience, Faceless videos are more profitable, although it depends on the channel's style. Several professionals are now teaching in their courses that non-traditional films are making the difference in their business success and popularity.

Face-Share-Personal-Touch videos make audiences feel like they know the personality, but they're not profitable.

Most spend hours creating articles, videos, and thumbnails to seem good. That's how most YouTubers gained their success in the past, but not anymore.

Looking the part and performing a typical role in videos doesn't convert well, especially for newbie channels.

Working with video marketers and YouTubers for years, I've noticed that most struggle to be consistent with content publishing since they exclusively use formats that need extensive development. Camera and green screen set ups, shooting/filming, and editing for post productions require their time, making it less appealing to post consistently, especially if they're doing all the work themselves.

Because they won't make simple format videos or audio videos with an overlay image, they overcomplicate the procedure (even with YouTube Shorts), and they leave their channels for weeks or months. Again, they believe YouTube only allows specific types of videos. Even though this procedure isn't working, they plan to keep at it.

A successful YouTube channel needs multiple video formats to suit viewer needs, I teach. Face-Share-Personal Touch and Faceless videos are both useful.

How people engage with YouTube content has changed over the years, and the average customer is no longer interested in an all-video channel.

Face-Share-Personal-Touch videos are great

• Google Live

• Online training

• Giving listeners a different way to access your podcast that is being broadcast on sites like Anchor, BlogTalkRadio, Spreaker, Google, Apple Store, and others Many people enjoy using a video camera to record themselves while performing the internet radio, Facebook, or Instagram Live versions of their podcasts.

• Video Blog Updates

• even more

Faceless videos are popular for business and benefit both entrepreneurs and audiences.

For the business owner/entrepreneur…

• Less production time results in time dollar savings.

• enables the business owner to demonstrate the diversity of content development

For the Audience…

• The channel offers a variety of appealing content options.

• The same format is not monotonous or overly repetitive for the viewers.

Below are a couple videos from YouTube guru Make Money Matt's channel, which has over 347K subscribers.

Enjoy

24 Best Niches to Make Money on YouTube Without Showing Your Face

Make Money on YouTube Without Making Videos (Free Course)

In conclusion, you have everything it takes to build your own YouTube brand and empire. Learn the rules, then adapt them to succeed.

Please reread this and the other suggested articles for optimal benefit.

I hope this helped. How has this article helped you? Follow me for more articles like this and more multi-mission expressions.

His story will inspire you.

“Google search went down for a few hours in 2002; Jeff Dean handled all the queries by hand and checked quality doubled.”- Jeff Dean Facts.

One of many Jeff Dean jokes, but you get the idea.

Google's top six engineers met in a war room in mid-2000. Google's crawling system, which indexed the Web, stopped working. Users could still enter queries, but results were five months old.

Google just signed a deal with Yahoo to power a ten-times-larger search engine. Tension rose. It was crucial. If they failed, the Yahoo agreement would likely fall through, risking bankruptcy for the firm. Their efforts could be lost.

A rangy, tall, energetic thirty-one-year-old man named Jeff dean was among those six brilliant engineers in the makeshift room. He had just left D. E. C. a couple of months ago and started his career in a relatively new firm Google, which was about to change the world. He rolled his chair over his colleague Sanjay and sat right next to him, cajoling his code like a movie director. The history started from there.

When you think of people who shaped the World Wide Web, you probably picture founders and CEOs like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Marc Andreesen, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. They’re undoubtedly the brightest people on earth.

Under these giants, legions of anonymous coders work at keyboards to create the systems and products we use. These computer workers are irreplaceable.

Let's get to know him better.

It's possible you've never heard of Jeff Dean. He's American. Dean created many behind-the-scenes Google products. Jeff, co-founder and head of Google's deep learning research engineering team, is a popular technology, innovation, and AI keynote speaker.

While earning an MS and Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Washington, he was a teaching assistant, instructor, and research assistant. Dean joined the Compaq Computer Corporation Western Research Laboratory research team after graduating.

Jeff co-created ProfileMe and the Continuous Profiling Infrastructure for Digital at Compaq. He co-designed and implemented Swift, one of the fastest Java implementations. He was a senior technical staff member at mySimon Inc., retrieving and caching electronic commerce content.

Dean, a top young computer scientist, joined Google in mid-1999. He was always trying to maximize a computer's potential as a child.

An expert

His high school program for processing massive epidemiological data was 26 times faster than professionals'. Epi Info, in 13 languages, is used by the CDC. He worked on compilers as a computer science Ph.D. These apps make source code computer-readable.

Dean never wanted to work on compilers forever. He left Academia for Google, which had less than 20 employees. Dean helped found Google News and AdSense, which transformed the internet economy. He then addressed Google's biggest issue, scaling.

Growing Google faced a huge computing challenge. They developed PageRank in the late 1990s to return the most relevant search results. Google's popularity slowed machine deployment.

Dean solved problems, his specialty. He and fellow great programmer Sanjay Ghemawat created the Google File System, which distributed large data over thousands of cheap machines.

These two also created MapReduce, which let programmers handle massive data quantities on parallel machines. They could also add calculations to the search algorithm. A 2004 research article explained MapReduce, which became an industry sensation.

Several revolutionary inventions

Dean's other initiatives were also game-changers. BigTable, a petabyte-capable distributed data storage system, was based on Google File. The first global database, Spanner, stores data on millions of servers in dozens of data centers worldwide.

It underpins Gmail and AdWords. Google Translate co-founder Jeff Dean is surprising. He contributes heavily to Google News. Dean is Senior Fellow of Google Research and Health and leads Google AI.

Recognitions

The National Academy of Engineering elected Dean in 2009. He received the 2009 Association for Computing Machinery fellowship and the 2016 American Academy of Arts and Science fellowship. He received the 2007 ACM-SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award and the 2012 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award. Lists could continue.

A sneaky question may arrive in your mind: How much does this big brain earn? Well, most believe he is one of the highest-paid employees at Google. According to a survey, he is paid $3 million a year.

He makes espresso and chats with a small group of Googlers most mornings. Dean steams milk, another grinds, and another brews espresso. They discuss families and technology while making coffee. He thinks this little collaboration and idea-sharing keeps Google going.

“Some of us have been working together for more than 15 years,” Dean said. “We estimate that we’ve collectively made more than 20,000 cappuccinos together.”

We all know great developers and software engineers. It may inspire many.

Don't sleep with your own sister.

70% of lottery winners go broke within five years. You've heard the last one. People who got rich quickly without setbacks and hard work often lose it all. My father said, "Easy money is easily lost," and a wealthy friend who owns a family office said, "The first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it."

This is evident. Corrupt politicians in developing countries live lavishly, buying their third wives' fifth Hermès bag and celebrating New Year's at The Brando Resort. A successful businessperson from humble beginnings is more conservative with money. More so if they're atom-based, not bit-based. They value money.

Crypto can "feel" easy. I have nothing against capital market investing. The global financial system is shady, but that's another topic. The problem started when those who took advantage of easy money started affecting other businesses. VCs did minimal due diligence on FTX because they needed deal flow and returns for their LPs. Lenders did minimum diligence and underwrote ludicrous loans to 3AC because they needed revenue.

Alameda (hence FTX) and 3AC made "easy money" Genesis and DCG aren't. Their businesses are more conventional, but they underestimated how "easy money" can hurt them.

Genesis has been the victim of easy money hubris and insolvency, losing $1 billion+ to 3AC and $200M to FTX. We discuss the implications for the broader crypto market.

Here are the quick takeaways:

• Genesis is one of the largest and most notable crypto lenders and prime brokerage firms.

• DCG and Genesis have done related party transactions, which can be done right but is a bad practice.

• Genesis owes DCG $1.5 billion+.

• If DCG unwinds Grayscale's GBTC, $9-10 billion in BTC will hit the market.

• DCG will survive Genesis.

What happened?

Let's recap the FTX shenanigan from two weeks ago. Shenanigans! Delphi's tweet sums up the craziness. Genesis has $175M in FTX.

Cred's timeline: I hate bad crisis management. Yes, admitting their balance sheet hole right away might've sparked more panic, and there's no easy way to convey your trouble, but no one ever learns.

By November 23, rumors circulated online that the problem could affect Genesis' parent company, DCG. To address this, Barry Silbert, Founder, and CEO of DCG released a statement to shareholders.

• A few things are confirmed thanks to this statement.

• DCG owes $1.5 billion+ to Genesis.

• $500M is due in 6 months, and the rest is due in 2032 (yes, that’s not a typo).

• Unless Barry raises new cash, his last-ditch efforts to repay the money will likely push the crypto market lower.

• Half a year of GBTC fees is approximately $100M.

• They can pay $500M with GBTC.

• With profits, sell another port.

Genesis has hired a restructuring adviser, indicating it is in trouble.

Rehypothecation

Every crypto problem in the past year seems to be rehypothecation between related parties, excessive leverage, hubris, and the removal of the money printer. The Bankless guys provided a chart showing 2021 crypto yield.

In June 2022, @DataFinnovation published a great investigation about 3AC and DCG. Here's a summary.

• 3AC borrowed BTC from Genesis and pledged it to create Grayscale's GBTC shares.

• 3AC uses GBTC to borrow more money from Genesis.

• This lets 3AC leverage their capital.

• 3AC's strategy made sense because GBTC had a premium, creating "free money."

• GBTC's discount and LUNA's implosion caused problems.

• 3AC lost its loan money in LUNA.

• Margin called on 3ACs' GBTC collateral.

• DCG bought GBTC to avoid a systemic collapse and a larger discount.

• Genesis lost too much money because 3AC can't pay back its loan. DCG "saved" Genesis, but the FTX collapse hurt Genesis further, forcing DCG and Genesis to seek external funding.

bruh…

Learning Experience

Co-borrowing. Unnecessary rehypothecation. Extra space. Governance disaster. Greed, hubris. Crypto has repeatedly shown it can recreate traditional financial system disasters quickly. Working in crypto is one of the best ways to learn crazy financial tricks people will do for a quick buck much faster than if you dabble in traditional finance.

Moving Forward

I think the crypto industry needs to consider its future. This is especially true for professionals. I'm not trying to scare you. In 2018 and 2020, I had doubts. No doubts now. Detailing the crypto industry's potential outcomes helped me gain certainty and confidence in its future. This includes VCs' benefits and talking points during the bull market, as well as what would happen if government regulations became hostile, etc. Even if that happens, I'm certain. This is permanent. I may write a post about that soon.

Sincerely,

M.