Hi everyone,
Greetings from my favorite week of the year in New York City 🎾🗽. If you've never been to the US Open, go. The hack is to go during the first week and never set foot in Arthur Ashe. Walk the outer courts and you'll find an unassigned seat 10 yards from the #16 player in the world playing the #42. Last year the US Open sold $17 MILLION worth of Honey Deuces. I'm in the wrong business.
On to the book.
The journey is still amazing. A total grind during my nights and weekends, but amazing.
So close, but feeling the grind!
Since my last post I've drafted four new chapters:
How to Build Your Founder Peer Community
How to Keep Your Co-Founder Relationship Working as You Scale
How to Create and Instill Your Company Values
How to Make It Safe to Tell the Truth
That puts the manuscript at 44,500 words across 13 chapters, up from 27,000 and 8 when I last wrote you.
🚨 Here's my problem.
Lori (my coach) tells me business books sell best at 40,000 to 50,000 words. That's about 150 to 200 pages. People recommend books they actually finish. So I'm already at the size of a real book, and I still have 8 more chapters I want to write. Investors. Layoffs. Selling the company. Winning your first customers. All of them full of founder stories I'm dying to share.
I can't write all 8. I'm running out of pages.
💡 So I had an idea this week: you pick.
I built Tinder-style voting into my website. Two chapters come up, you swipe the one you'd rather read, repeat. It takes about a minute and I love watching the results come in. Go play with it.
And if you think it's a clever feature, share it with a friend. The more votes, the better the book.
New voices.
Nine new founders and SMEs have joined the list of people interviewed for this book since late July:
Nadir Izrael, co-founder of Armis
Bar Katz, co-founder of Silk Security, acquired by Armis
Bart Lorang, founded FullContact
Dmitry Norenko, founder of Graphio
Wemimo Abbey, co-founder and co-CEO of Esusu
Brad Feld, co-founder of Techstars and Foundry Group
Carrie Palin, Cisco CMO, interviewed as Amanda Kahlow's customer
Robbie Wiggins, Customer Success at Chili Piper, on the culture Alina Vandenberghe built
Kirsten DiChiappari, VP of Customer Success at vCom, for the chapter with Sameer Hilal
One thing I'm excited about: Nadir bought Bar's company. That means the book will have the same $150 million acquisition told from the buyer's chair and the seller's chair.
One more ask. If you're connected to a well-known business author, I'd love an introduction. I'm asking for 15 minutes to do a mini book intake and start a relationship, in hopes of a testimonial down the road. Think Malcolm Gladwell, Brené Brown, Kim Scott, Eric Ries, Michael Lewis.
That's all for now. Wishing everyone a wonderful Labor Day weekend if you're in the States 🏖️.
As always, thank you for being part of this journey.
—Josh