3 Moves That Change Everything for New Founders

Most of what I watch kill new businesses isn't the market, the product, or the moment. It's the founder waiting to be ready.

Here are the 3 moves I tell every founder in my orbit to make in the first 90 days. They are unglamorous. They work.

1. Charge money on day 1

The fastest way to find out if you're right is to put a price on it and see who pays.

Free pilots, free advice, free beta access, all of that is data with the wrong incentive structure. People who pay you tell you the truth. People who don't, never will.

Charge before you feel ready. Charge less than you think you should. Charge anyway.

2. Build the room before you need it

The funding round, the customer intro, the hire that saves your company, none of these come from a cold email when the wheels are coming off. They come from relationships you started 18 months earlier with no ask attached.

Spend 2 hours a week, every week, on people. Not pitches, people. The compounding is silent until it isn't.

3. Get it in writing

Every cofounder split, every partnership, every client engagement, every advisor share. In writing. Signed.

The handshake deal is how founders, especially Black and brown ones, end up paying for someone else's lesson. If a person won't put it on paper, that is the answer.

The decision underneath

These 3 moves don't require capital. They don't require a network you don't have yet. They require a decision.

The founders I watch break out are the ones who make these moves early, before the data tells them they should. The ones who wait, wait their way out of the business.

Build the damn thing.