## Stop Hiding. No One’s Going to Steal Your Idea.

If your whole startup depends on no one knowing the idea, you don’t have a startup—you have a secret.

Every week, founders email me asking for time. But the moment I agree, they follow up with an NDA.

**No.** Not because I’m rude. Because it’s not scalable, not fair, and not realistic.

Here’s what’s real:
- I speak to hundreds of founders. I can’t track NDAs.
- Most ideas I’ve already heard in some form.
- If you can’t send a 1-pager or deck before a call, **you don’t respect my time**.

This isn’t about being harsh. It’s about balance. You’re asking me to blindly trust you, to enter legal risk, to set aside time—without giving me a reason. That’s not just unrealistic. It’s a power imbalance. Let’s fix that.

## What Stealth Actually Signals

Stealth isn’t strategy. It’s fear in a black hoodie.

Most stealth founders think:
- The idea is fragile.
- They’ll be copied.
- Secrecy protects them.

But most real outcomes depend on execution, not concept. Two people can take the same idea and build radically different businesses. So the stealth doesn’t help—it delays feedback, talent, and momentum.

The market doesn’t care about your secrecy. It cares if you’re solving something urgent, fast, and well.

## NDAs Create Asymmetric Power Dynamics

Founders asking for NDAs are often well-meaning. But the reality is this:

**You're asking someone to take on legal risk to give you free advice.**

Think about that. You're essentially saying: 'I don’t trust you, but help me anyway.' That’s a broken ask.

Instead:
- Trust is earned. Show clarity, not control.
- Respect the other person's time. A good 1-pager shows you’re serious.
- Flip the ask: 'Can I earn 10 minutes with this summary?' is better than 'Can we talk and I’ll explain it then.'

## Secret Pitch Decks Don’t Build Trust

Not sending your deck doesn’t make you look protective. It makes you look uncertain.

If your deck can’t travel without you, it’s not a good deck. If someone can’t understand the core of your company from a PDF, you don’t have clarity yet.

Great founders:
- Share their deck widely.
- Refine it based on reactions.
- Use it as a wedge to earn real conversations.

No one steals decks. But plenty of people ignore vague ones.

## If You’re Genuinely In a Sensitive Space

Sometimes stealth is legit:
- You’re deep in regulated tech
- You’re in crypto or a zero-day window
- You have pre-patent IP

Fine. Then share enough to earn trust, while protecting the edge:
- Give context
- Frame constraints
- Show you understand how to manage disclosure risk

But don’t use stealth to cover for uncertainty. That’s not safety—it’s delay.

## How to Be Open *and* Smart

- Use a 1-pager. Put the what, why, and who in one clear page.
- Send your deck. Make it strong enough to speak without you.
- Ask clear questions: 'Can I get 5 minutes of your reaction to this?'
- Track who you send it to—use tools like DocSend or Notion.
- Follow up with signal, not vague updates.

You’ll get more replies, more intros, more momentum.

## Final Take: Hiding Isn’t Strategy. Clarity Is.

You’re not protecting gold. You’re hiding clay.

Early-stage ideas are fragile—but they only get stronger through exposure, iteration, and pressure.

**So stop asking people to sign things to help you. Start giving them a reason to care.**

Earn trust. Be clear. Move fast.

Stealth is a stall. Clarity is compounding.

## Reflection Questions for Founders

- Why am I in stealth—fear, or true risk?
- Would I sign the NDA I’m asking someone else to sign?
- Can my deck speak without me?
- Am I making it easy for people to help me—or harder?

The right people will help you. If you make it easy to say yes.

Get Out Of StartUp Stealth. No One Cares.

## Why Startups Need the OODA Loop

Startups are high-stakes, zero-structure environments. You’re flying blind until you find signal. Most founders default to gut instinct or scattered advice—then wonder why momentum stalls.

Enter the OODA Loop: **Observe, Orient, Decide, Act**.

Originally built for fighter pilots, the OODA Loop is about making fast, high-quality decisions in chaotic environments. Sound familiar? That’s every startup.

And yet most founders run a broken loop. They think they’re observing, but they’re just listening to themselves. They think they’re deciding, but they’re stalling. They act, but they don’t learn.

Let’s fix that.

## Observe: You Don’t See What You Think You See

Founders often mistake opinion for data. Or worse—vanity metrics for traction.

Observation is the discipline of seeing clearly:

- **What are users actually doing?** (Not just what they say.)
- **Where are the drop-offs?**
- **What’s working right now—not last quarter?**

You need real-time dashboards. Session replays. Sales calls. Support tickets. Manual tagging of feedback. **No noise. No delay. Just reality.**

Founders screw this up by:
- Reading investor reactions instead of user behavior
- Skipping observation entirely and going with gut
- Outsourcing data instead of living in it

**You can’t orient if you’re not actually seeing.**

## Orient: Pattern Recognition, Not Projection

Orientation is where raw data becomes usable insight.

Here’s where you:
- Contextualize feedback
- Apply experience
- Cross-check assumptions

But founders often bring cognitive distortion instead:

- **Confirmation bias**: Looking only for what supports your theory
- **Survivorship bias**: Emulating unicorns without matching context
- **Narrative fallacy**: Telling yourself a great story instead of facing the facts

You’re not here to justify the plan. You’re here to understand what’s really happening.

**Orientation is the gut-check. Most founders skip it.**

## Decide: Momentum Over Perfection

Here’s where speed beats brilliance.

The best startup decisions aren’t always right—they’re fast, testable, and followed by action.

**Decide** means:
- Stack rank your options
- Commit to one direction
- Communicate it clearly to your team

Mistakes founders make here:
- Decision loops that drag for weeks
- Trying to please everyone (cofounders, advisors, investors)
- Choosing consensus over clarity

Speed wins. **Indecision kills more startups than bad decisions.**

## Act: Execution That Feeds the Next Loop

Execution isn’t the end of the loop—it’s what fuels the next one.

Your actions must:
- Ship something observable
- Generate new user behavior
- Create new inputs for observation

Where founders blow it:
- Launching without instrumentation
- Executing blindly with no tracking
- Treating the loop as linear, not cyclic

**If you act without learning, you’re not running a loop. You’re running blind.**

## Where Founders Break the OODA Loop

Most startups think they’re running OODA. They’re not.

**Common breakdowns:**
- No signal → weak observe
- No self-awareness → flawed orient
- No courage → delayed decision
- No learning → wasted action

The whole point is speed + learning. Compress cycle time. Run faster loops than your competitors. Use each iteration to adapt sharper and move smarter.

## How the OODA Loop Aligns with Lean Startup

OODA is Lean’s secret twin.

**Build-Measure-Learn = Act-Observe-Orient-Decide.**

Both are:
- Iterative
- Data-driven
- Biased toward speed over theory

But OODA adds an edge: it’s grounded in high-stakes combat. It demands tempo, awareness, and rapid reorientation.

**It’s not just MVP thinking. It’s survival-speed thinking.**

## Using the OODA Loop in a VUCA Environment

Startups live in **VUCA**: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity.

OODA is a weapon against that.

- Volatility? Observe often.
- Uncertainty? Orient fast.
- Complexity? Decide clearly.
- Ambiguity? Act, then learn.

The loop gives you structure without rigidity. It’s fast without being reckless. And it resets every time reality changes—which it always does.

## Reflection Questions for Founders

- Am I seeing clearly—or seeing what I want to see?
- Is my team aligned on what we’re actually learning?
- When’s the last time we reoriented based on data?
- Do we act fast enough to matter?

Your speed of looping *is* your startup’s edge.

## Tactical Checklist: Running OODA Inside Your Startup

✅ Weekly metrics that trigger decisions
✅ Qual + quant feedback system
✅ Founder-level synthesis time (orient)
✅ Default to decisive action over consensus
✅ Track learning from actions explicitly
✅ Make looping visible to your team

StartUp OODA Loop

The StartUp OODA Loop

## Startup Equity Splits: You're Already Behind If You Haven't Talked About It

Most early-stage teams avoid this conversation because it feels awkward. Reality: if you haven't had the hard talk about ownership yet, you're setting up a future war. Equity isn't just a prize for early work — it's a **retention weapon**, a **loyalty amplifier**, and a **future litmus test** when cash runs out and things get ugly.

## The Emotional Cost of a Bad Split

Resentment kills startups faster than bad code.

If your co-founder secretly feels shafted, that 5% you 'saved' will cost you 10x in lost energy, dropped balls, and silent sabotage. When the offer comes — or the layoffs hit — bad splits surface like rot in the foundation.

## You Don't Actually Own Your Equity Yet

Secret no one tells you: **none of you truly 'own' your shares until you vest**.

Set a standard 4-year vesting schedule with a 1-year cliff. Non-negotiable. It protects you from deadweight, disappearing acts, or 'spiritual resignations' where someone stays but stops pushing.

**Visualize it:**
![Carta Vesting Example](https://i0.wp.com/www.saastr.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/carta.jpeg?resize=713%2C713&quality=89&ssl=1)

## Equal Splits Are Rare (and Usually Stupid)

Equal splits sound fair until life gets unfair.

Was the time, risk, capital, or opportunity cost truly equal? If not, why pretend?

**Founder equity is not about feelings — it's about matching commitment to consequence.**

## Founder CEO? You Need to Act Like It

If you're the one driving fundraising, hiring, product, vision — you're not 'just another founder.'

You need to **give equity like a general, not split it like a kindergarten teacher**.

Think: what equity do you need to **buy the loyalty** and **buy the upside** you require from this person for the next 4 years?

## A Quick Tactical Checklist Before You Split

- Who is actually taking full-time risk today?
- Who is fronting money (if anyone)?
- Who has the rare skills or networks that create outsized upside?
- Who is signing the first fundraising docs?
- Who is personally guaranteeing anything?

Split equity based on **future contribution and current sacrifice**, not just friendship.

## Red Flag: If You're Obsessing Over 2-5%, Wrong Partner

If you or your co-founder are nickel-and-diming each other on 2-5% adjustments, warning sirens should be blaring.

Trust and mission-first mentality matter way more than microscopic equity tweaks at this stage.

**If you can't trust them with equity, you sure as hell can't trust them in a board meeting, a lawsuit, or a product crash.**

## Reflection Questions: Gut-Check Yourself

- Would I still want to work with this person if we lost all funding tomorrow?
- Does their upside match their sacrifice and risk?
- Am I anchoring to what feels 'fair' or what will actually **keep us in the fight** two years from now?
- If we both had $0 salaries for 12 months, would this split still feel fair?

## Final Takeaway: Split for the Worst Day, Not the Best

The day you raise a round, sell the company, or hit $10M ARR — no one cares about the split.

The day you're at $1k in the bank and 6 months of missed salaries? **That's when the split decides if your startup lives or dies.**

Build your cap table for that day.

Not for the fantasy.
For the survival.

Startup Founder Equity Split: How to Get It Right Before It Breaks You

## Introduction: Why Founders Need Reality Distortion Fields

Startups don't succeed because the world makes room for them. They succeed because founders force the world to change.

When you're building something new, almost everyone—from investors to customers to your own team—starts off not believing. Facts alone won't convince them. Logic won't close the gap.

You need a **Reality Distortion Field (RDF)**: a psychological force strong enough to pull others into your vision and make the impossible seem inevitable.

## What is a Reality Distortion Field (RDF)?

Coined at Apple to describe Steve Jobs' gravitational pull over facts, timelines, and people, a Reality Distortion Field (RDF) is the ability to bend perception. It's how founders:

- Recruit believers before they have proof
- Close fundraising rounds before they have traction
- Convince customers to buy what barely exists
- Push teams past sane limits of effort

An RDF isn't lying. It's the skill of making others **see the world the way you do—before it actually exists.**

## How Steve Jobs Weaponized His Reality Distortion Field

Jobs used his RDF relentlessly:

- **Fundraising**: He pitched Apple to investors when it was literally two guys in a garage.
- **Recruiting**: He convinced top engineers to leave stable jobs and gamble everything on unproven products.
- **Shipping**: When engineers said it couldn't be done, he reframed deadlines as moral imperatives.

Bud Tribble famously said, "In Steve's presence, reality is malleable." And even when people *knew* they were under its influence, it still worked.

## Why Founders Must Master Reality Distortion

Early-stage startups have no proof, no credibility, and often, no working product. If you only operate based on what's objectively true today, you die.

You must make others:

- **Believe before the evidence appears**
- **Bet before the product matures**
- **Sacrifice before the rewards are real**

Founders who can't bend reality stay trapped by it. Founders who can **build new realities** survive.

## How to Build Your Founder Reality Distortion Field

Here's the tactical playbook:

1. **Anchor to a Giant Mission**
   - People don't rally to small goals. They rally to massive transformations.

2. **Project Emotional Certainty**
   - Rational belief won't move markets. Emotional conviction will.

3. **Reframe Every Obstacle**
   - Deadlines aren't barriers—they're design constraints.
   - Competition isn't threat—it's proof the market matters.

4. **Speak in Outcomes, Not Features**
   - Sell the destination, not the vehicle.

5. **Collapse Time Horizons**
   - Make distant successes feel immediate and inevitable.

6. **Use Small Proof Points**
   - Early hires. Early customers. Tiny wins build gravitational pull.

## Examples of Reality Distortion in Startup Life

**Fundraising:**
Investors rarely back what is—they back what they *believe could be*. Founders who can reframe their traction, their vision, and their inevitability win checks.

**Recruiting:**
Top engineers have options. They join startups because a founder convinces them they're joining something inevitable—not risky.

**Sales:**
Early customers take risk on young startups because a founder frames the decision as visionary, not reckless.

**Product-Market Fit:**
Reality distortion helps teams keep iterating even when the market feedback is confusing or negative. It protects morale until real product-market fit appears.

## Common Mistakes When Wielding a Reality Distortion Field

Not all reality distortion is healthy. Here's where founders go wrong:

- **Believing your own hype blindly**
- **Ignoring real market signals**
- **Refusing to pivot when evidence demands it**
- **Manipulating instead of inspiring**

The best founders **bend perception**, but **listen ruthlessly to truth** at critical points.

## Building Your Personal RDF: A Founder Checklist

✅ Believe bigger than you can prove.
✅ Tell stories that create emotional buy-in.
✅ Reframe every constraint as fuel.
✅ Project inevitability at all times.
✅ Celebrate tiny wins aggressively.
✅ Adjust course secretly, not publicly.
✅ Show, don't tell, whenever possible.

## Other Startup Founders Who Mastered Reality Distortion

- **Elon Musk**: Sold investors on reusable rockets long before they were viable.
- **Brian Chesky (Airbnb)**: Raised seed money on the idea people would let strangers sleep in their homes.
- **Patrick Collison (Stripe)**: Convinced skeptical devs that payments could be easy.
- **Melanie Perkins (Canva)**: Sold simplicity to a world that thought design had to be complicated.

## Final Reflection: Your Job is to Build New Reality

Founders are reality architects.

Your job isn't to live inside what exists. Your job is to create what doesn't exist yet—and pull the world toward it.

Mastering your Reality Distortion Field is how you:

- Recruit when you shouldn't be able to.
- Raise money when the numbers say no.
- Win markets before products are perfect.
- Lead people when logic says they should walk away.

### Reflection Questions for Founders:
- What 'rules' in your industry are waiting to be broken?
- Where have you accepted limits that you could be challenging?
- If you believed your startup's success was inevitable, what would you change today?

Because the startups that survive are the ones that refuse to live in the world as it is.

How Startup Founders Use Reality Distortion Fields to Build the Impossible

## Introduction: AI Wrappers Aren’t the Problem—They’re the Path

You've probably heard the slur by now—*“It’s just an AI wrapper.”* Dismissive. Lazy. Sometimes even accurate.

But here’s what no one tells you: **the fastest companies to product-market fit often start as wrappers**. And in a world where code is commoditized and models are public, **distribution, speed, and insight win.** Not technical purity.

So let’s cut through the noise and unpack what AI wrappers actually are, when they’re useful, and how to move beyond them once you’ve earned the right.

## What Is an AI Wrapper?

An AI wrapper is a thin software layer built on top of an existing large language model (LLM) or AI API. It doesn't train its own model. It wraps functionality—like summarization, code generation, or chat interfaces—into a user-facing product.

Examples:
- A Chrome extension that summarizes YouTube videos
- A customer support tool powered by GPT-4
- A pitch deck generator using Claude or Gemini

The codebase is small. The backend is often just an API call. Critics call this unoriginal, but users don’t care. They care if it solves their problem.

AI wrappers are fast to build, easy to test, and the perfect way to find signal.

## Why AI Wrappers Get Hate

The hate is mostly ego, not economics.

VCs call them 'derivative.' Engineers mock the lack of IP. Twitter dunks on clones.

But here’s the truth:
- Most apps are wrappers—just not around AI.
- Your users don’t care if it’s 'just a wrapper.' They care if it works.
- Some of the best consumer apps started as wrappers (think: Twitter clients, browser front-ends, even early mobile apps).

**Hate comes from people who aren’t in the arena.**

## The Strategic Value of Starting With a Wrapper

Here’s why wrappers are underrated:

1. **Speed to Market** — You can launch in days, not quarters.
2. **Test Real Demand** — You can validate actual workflows and use cases.
3. **Reduce Build Risk** — You’re not spending months training before knowing if anyone cares.
4. **Explore Edge Cases** — Where the model fails is where you can innovate.
5. **Move From Wrapper → System** — The wrapper is the probe. If it hits, you build the stack underneath.

## Startup Examples: From Wrapper to Weapon

- **Jasper** started as a simple GPT-3 blog generator. Then it layered brand voice, templates, and teams.
- **Perplexity** started as a QA interface over search and LLMs. Now it’s building its own infra.
- **Descript** wrapped transcription, then added editing, collaboration, and became its own suite.

The lesson? **You start as a wrapper. You end as a platform.**

## When to Move Beyond the Wrapper

You don’t stay a wrapper forever. Here’s when to evolve:

- **You hit PMF.** Time to defend.
- **Margins start to hurt.** Inference cost grows with scale.
- **Users demand more reliability, speed, or features.** You’ll need control.
- **You discover use-case specific data.** Now you can fine-tune or pre-process.

The wrapper gets you signal. You build depth afterward.

## Reflection Questions for Founders

- What am I wrapping—and why does it matter to my user?
- Am I solving a real workflow, or just demoing a capability?
- Do I have a plan to expand beyond the wrapper?
- Where can I go deeper or build proprietary edge?

**If your wrapper gives you insight and adoption—you’re doing it right.**

## Tactical Checklist: Building the Right Kind of AI Wrapper

- Build for a narrow, high-pain workflow
- Wrap around the outcome, not the API
- Add UX, automation, or integrations that AI alone can't
- Track every edge case and user complaint—it's your roadmap
- Don't pitch the tech. Pitch the benefit.
- Use wrappers as fast learning vehicles, not permanent moats

## Final Take: Wrappers Aren’t the Problem—Staying One Is

If you’re a founder, ignore the noise.

**You’re not here to impress purists. You’re here to find signal fast.**

AI wrappers let you:
- Ship instantly
- Learn faster than anyone else
- Build insight through usage

Then? Use that signal to go deeper. Add infrastructure. Build your data loop. Layer workflows. Add your own models.

Because the real threat isn’t starting small—it’s staying small.

Launch fast. Learn faster. Expand out.

That’s how wrappers win.

Blog

Get Out Of StartUp Stealth. No One Cares.

The StartUp OODA Loop

Startup Founder Equity Split: How to Get It Right Before It Breaks You

How Startup Founders Use Reality Distortion Fields to Build the Impossible

AI Wrappers: The Fastest Way In, Not the Final Form