The Best 17 Minutes You’ll Spend Today

The most important variable for early stage entrepreneurs is speed. You’re likely pretty far from a real business when you start (which is fine — everyone is), so the speed with which you schedule and run interviews, deploy intent tests, try out wedges etc. is critical. Doing those things lots of times will eventually lead you to something that works. Startups fail because they don't have enough time to run enough tests to find the combination or sequence that works. So, we need to optimize for speed.

Your “internal product” — the way you manage all that stuff — is the driver of that speed.

I won’t dive into all the pieces of the internal product today, but maybe the most important pillar is your inbox. When I’ve done ethnographic research on our startups (looked over their shoulder for an hour or two during their dedicated “work on my startup time”), I’ve seen people spend 60% of it in their email.

Here’s my favorite email system - it’s approachable and something you can build on. It’ll likely help you find an hour a day. The video is 17 minutes — 8.5 on 2x speed — and I can’t think of a better thing for you to do today. We'll get into more pieces of your internal product soon, but this is the place to start.