Founder Fridays No. 178
Seek Rejection Daily -- Two Buttons Beat Twenty -- Chief of Staff Playbook
Happy Friday.
The Secretive Empire of Mars Inc.
Mars Inc. is a $50 billion global powerhouse that remains 100% family-owned and notoriously private. While famous for M&M’s and Snickers, the company is actually a pet care titan in disguise; that segment generates 59% of its revenue ($29.5 billion) and employs roughly 100,000 of its 140,000-person workforce. Much of Mars’ dominance stems from Forrest Mars, who built a European empire in exile after a falling out with his father. He eventually returned to execute a hostile takeover of his father’s company. Since the 1930s, Mars has enforced a strict open-office policy with no executive perks. Every employee, including the CEO, must punch a time card to earn a 10% punctuality bonus. With the recent $35.9 billion acquisition of Kellanova, Mars continues to transform from a candy maker into a diversified CPG colossus, all while the family ($117 billion net worth) avoids the public eye. Acquired Briefing (22 minutes)
Two Buttons Beat Twenty
The original Cuisinart had two paddle buttons that sound confusing to describe but feel obvious to use—because great interface design optimizes for physical intuition, not feature completeness, and most products fail by adding too many controls instead of perfecting the core ones. When users can operate your product with oven mitts on, in bad lighting, or while distracted, you’ve designed for real-world conditions instead of ideal demos; when you need a manual to explain it, you’ve already lost. This week, open your product and identify the one interaction users repeat most often—then remove every element that doesn’t directly serve that action until what’s left has satisfying tension, clear affordances, and works even when users aren’t paying full attention. You’ll stop losing customers to friction they can’t articulate and start building the kind of intuitive experience people describe to friends as “just works.” Jason Fried (2 minutes)
Chiefs of Staff Playbook
Most founders hire a Chief of Staff thinking it’s a permanent executive role, but the best CoS relationships last exactly 2-3 years before burnout or misalignment kills the value—because the role exists to fill your specific gaps today, not to scale forever, and what you need at 20 people (thought partner who preps decks) is radically different from what you need at 200 people (stealth COO designing org-wide systems). A CoS who complements your weaknesses (technical founder hires finance/ops background, visionary CEO hires operational grinder) becomes a force multiplier only when you’re brutally clear this isn’t forever and co-design their exit into a functional leadership role from day one. This week, if you’re considering a CoS hire, write the MOC (Mission, Outcomes, Competencies) for the next 12-18 months and explicitly include “transition plan at 24 months” as a success metric; if you already have a CoS, have the uncomfortable conversation about what they want to own next and start building toward that internally now. You’ll avoid the passive-aggressive deterioration that happens when talented people outgrow ambiguous roles, and you’ll get 10x leverage during the window when alignment is perfect instead of mediocre performance stretched across five years. A16Z (8 minutes)
Founder FAQ: How Important Service Legal Agreement for a Startup?
Most startups set aggressive SLA targets like 99.99% uptime to look impressive, then burn trust every time they miss by 0.02%—but the smartest companies promise 99.95% and consistently deliver 99.97%, because customers remember broken commitments far more than exceeded ones, and every SLA breach triggers compensation clauses that directly hit your margins. Your SLA isn’t a marketing tool to showcase your ambition; it’s a legal contract that defines when you pay penalties, lose customers, or face termination clauses—and vague promises like “high availability” or “fast response times” create expensive disputes instead of clear accountability. This week, audit your current SLAs (or draft your first one if you’re winging it) and reset every metric to a level you can hit 95% of the time even during your worst operational week, then add specific consequences for non-compliance (like 5% service credit per 0.01% below target) and measurement methods customers can verify independently. You’ll stop bleeding money on penalty clauses, eliminate the passive-aggressive “you promised” conversations that poison renewals, and build the kind of predictable reliability that turns customers into references instead of churn statistics. Westaway (5 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.
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On interface design, your point about physical intuition over feature completeness deeply resonates; how does that apply to complex AI system interfaces?
This is such a fantastic breakdown of interface design philosophy. The Cuisinart example nails why most products fail by chasing feature lists insted of perfecting core interactions. I've been on teams that added buttons just to check boxes for stakeholders, and it always backfired with users. The "oven mitts" test is something im gonna steal for my next UX review.