Founder Fridays No. 169
Life After You Sell -- Stop Marketing, Start Partnering -- Open Source Is Warfare
Happy Friday!
Life After You Sell
Most founders think selling their company solves problems, but Johan Nordenström discovered the exit created a deeper crisis: losing his identity, community, and purpose all at once—what he calls “post-exit blues” that hit nearly every founder he knows. The real insight is that entrepreneurship’s core reward isn’t the payout—it’s the daily privilege of choosing who you work with and what you build, and that vanishes the moment you sign. This week, if you’re building toward an exit, write down three things about your current day-to-day that matter more than money (your team, the problems you’re solving, the autonomy you have)—then design your next chapter around protecting those, not maximizing the sale price. The payoff: you’ll structure a deal and transition that preserves what actually made you happy, instead of waking up post-exit with capital but no reason to get out of bed. Product Market Fit (6 minutes)
Stop Marketing, Start Partnering
Every B2B growth channel you’re relying on—inbound, outbound, virality, events—is simultaneously getting easier to execute (thanks to AI) and less effective (because everyone else has the same tools), which means the winning move isn’t better content or more emails, it’s ecosystem: leveraging partners who already own your audience’s attention and trust. The unlock is recognizing that ElevenLabs hit $100M ARR with 50 employees not because their product was 10x better, but because their Voice Library turned users into paid creators who generated viral content—a flywheel where partners create, you amplify, and each turn brings more customers AND more partners. This week, list the top five people or companies (consultants, agencies, influencers, adjacent SaaS tools, trade associations) who already talk to your ICP daily, then reach out to one with a specific collaboration offer: co-create content, give them early access, pay them to showcase your product, or build an integration they can monetize. The result: you’ll start every growth motion at 10,000 instead of zero, because you’re borrowing trust instead of building it from scratch in a feed nobody’s reading anymore. Lenny’s Newsletter (7 minutes)
Open Source Is Warfare
David Cramer didn’t monetize Sentry for three years after launching—instead he weaponized free, letting thousands of companies self-host for nothing, which systematically destroyed competitors’ revenue streams until “none of them exist anymore,” then captured those same users when they joined startups that chose Sentry’s paid cloud version. The insight: open source isn’t charity or community theater—it’s how you commoditize an entire market so aggressively that you remove the oxygen for competition, then monetize the next generation of users who inherited the muscle memory from their previous jobs. This week, identify your biggest competitor’s core revenue stream, then figure out what piece of functionality you could give away for free (self-hosted tier, API access, core features) that would make their customers question why they’re paying—not to convert those customers now, but to train the market that your category should be cheaper or free, collapsing their business model over 18-24 months. The payoff: you won’t just beat competitors on features, you’ll eliminate the economic viability of their entire approach, leaving you as the only company standing when the market matures. First Round (9 minutes)
Founder FAQ: Why privacy policy is important for a startup?
If you’re collecting even a single email address for your newsletter, you legally need a Privacy Policy—yet most founders treat it as boring compliance theater instead of realizing that not having one blocks user signups, exposes you to lawsuits, and signals you don’t take their data seriously in an era where trust is your only moat. The real insight is that your Privacy Policy isn’t about legal protection (though that matters); it’s a growth lever because users hesitate to share information without transparency, and one data breach or regulatory complaint without proper documentation can instantly kill your momentum and fundraising. This week, spend two hours drafting a basic Privacy Policy covering these six sections: what data you collect, how you use it, how you share it, how you secure it, how users can access it, and how to contact you—then get it reviewed by legal counsel (not ChatGPT) because inaccurate policies create liability, not protection. The outcome: you’ll unblock users who currently bounce at signup, you’ll survive due diligence when investors ask “do you have basic compliance in place,” and you’ll avoid the startup-killing scenario where you scale to 10,000 users before discovering you’ve been violating GDPR for 18 months. Westaway (4 minutes)
Startup Funding Guides
I’ve put together a series of guides to equip founders to excel at fundraising. These guides break down the deal term-by-term and give you negotiation tips so that you can speak to investors with confidence.
Convertible Note: Guide / Video
Extending Your Runway with General Counsel
In this economy, every startup is looking to lower burn rate and extend runway. We helped a Series A, generative AI company drastically reduce their legal spend by switching to our General Counsel service. When we first met the owners, they were working with a big law firm and felt they were overpaying for basic legal work. Nearly every month, they got a hefty bill just to cover equity grants, contract reviews and lawyer calls/emails. When they switched to General Counsel at Westaway, they:
Got more personal service and quicker response times.
Significantly reduced their legal spend.
With faster deal execution and lower spend, they extended runway and improved cash flow. If you’re looking to optimize legal costs and extend runway, click here to schedule a call. Let’s discuss whether on-demand General Counsel is right for your startup.
The Sentry case study on using open source as a competetive weapon is fasinating. The idea of training the market to expect free or cheaper alternatives while colapsing competitors' business models is ruthless but brilliant. It reframes open source from community building to strategic warfare.