Moonshot by Chris Hlad

Hey strangers, I'm back! I spent the last year learning how to actually build a startup. Not talk or write about it. And damn it's been an awesome experience. I'm still building. But I'll be writing a series on The Stories Behind the World's Biggest Brands. So without further ado... In 2010, TIME called it one of the “50 Worst Inventions”.​Others called it the “ugliest shoe ever”.​But since 2002 they’ve sold over 600 million pairs.​Here are 3 ways Crocs transformed from boat shoe to global...

hey strangers. It's been a minute since I crawled into your inbox. But I'm writing to you my lovely reader about imposter syndrome. Why? I recently became the Chief Revenue Officer at Meow. This forced me to rethink how I need to evolve to take our business to the next level. Also... it forced me to face the fact that imposter syndrome never goes away. (for the uninitiated, imposter syndrome means you don't feel quite ready or deserving of your position) Know why? No one ever knows how to...

hey stranger. if you forgot about me, I'm the guy who ghosted you and failed to deliver juicy golden nuggets to your inbox for a month. typically, I could try to make an excuse that starts with bull and ends with s-h-*-t. but this time i have a good reason. the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank will forever be the craziest 5 days of my career. panicked $27 million wires to get out of SVB at the cutoff. 2 am calls with customers in india making $50 million decisions. i quickly transformed...

hey hey! - I'm 6ish months into Meow. I'm leading our go-to-market engine. But it bleeds into product / ops too. However, my most important job is closing sales. For the uninitiated, Meow helps startups earn more yield on their cash with ~5% US Treasury Bills and a ~4.3% checking account. Our most important metric? Assets under management (aka dollars on the platform). Well in my first 100 days, I closed $100 million. I've been drinking from the sales firehose - but also studied the best and...

So I woke up semi-hungover at 8:17 am on Sunday morning and scrambled in the dark searching for the little rectangle that ran my life. That rectangle (aka my iPhone) marked the day's bleak beginning. Next, I got in 43 minutes of dopamine drips - twitter likes, new emails, instagram stories from that girl I barely knew from high school, linkedin posts and other mindless soul sucking activities. At 9 am, I pop out of bed and start playing the All-In Podcast on YouTube (it's a few tech...

80.7 billion of Warren Buffett's $81 billion fortune came after his 50th birthday. How? This magical force called "compounding". For my unitiated friends, compounding is earning money on your money. If you earn 7% on $100, you get $107. If you earn 7% again you don't just earn $7. You earn $7.50 because you get to earn 7% on your bigger base of $107. Over a long time, this makes a massive difference. Here's what I mean: 1% better every day for a year = 37,778% gain 1% worse every day for a...

Teaming up with Tegus! I used to do business research with a billion chrome tabs. Now, I start with Tegus. They have a 30,000 expert interview database with former execs and employees from all the epic companies. Who is this a no brainer for? An investor and corp dev team looking for an edge... You can grab a free trial here. Try Tegus hey! I got some awesome responses from my last letter. It made my day. If you missed it, click here. Okay let's hit it... I'm obsessed with friction....

Teaming up with Tegus! I used to do business research with a billion chrome tabs. Now, I start with Tegus. They have a 30,000 expert interview database with former execs and employees from all the epic companies. Who is this a no brainer for? An investor and corp dev team looking for an edge... You can grab a free trial here. Try Tegus Hey friend, Outside of a few festivities, I locked myself in my hilariously small Soho apartment over New Year's weekend. I thought thoughts, drank Keurig...