Founder Fridays No. 207
An Enduring Company on One Product -- Fix Your Board Slides -- Never Abandon Your Team
Happy Friday.
An Enduring Company on One Product
Charles Brannock built a company in 1925, refused to ever expand beyond his single foot-measuring device, never took venture money, and it’s still profitable a hundred years later — while Payless, backed by private equity and “modernized” with debt, went bankrupt and disappeared. The lesson isn’t nostalgia, it’s that relentless focus on making one thing well, funded by real revenue instead of leverage, builds something that survives market shifts and cheap knockoffs because customers can feel the difference in quality. This week, pick the one part of your product you’d stake your reputation on, and go find where you’ve quietly let quality slip to hit a growth number — a Brannock exec once won a huge account just by showing the buyer a broken competitor’s part next to his own. Do that consistently and you get what most “hot” startups never do: a business that doesn’t need the next funding round or acquisition to survive the next decade. 99% Invisible (18 minutes)
Fix Your Board Slides
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: giving equal weight to all your quarterly goals doesn’t show discipline — it’s a confession that you don’t know how to prioritize, and it’s often how founders accidentally lie to themselves about how much trouble they’re in. A founder with four months of runway who lists “fundraising” and “ship feature X” as equal-sized boxes on a slide isn’t being balanced, they’re avoiding the one number that should be dominating every decision they make. So this week, rebuild your next board slide with sized boxes, not a bulleted list — runway under 12 months means fundraising takes up 95% of the slide in giant font, full stop, and every other goal shrinks to match its actual urgency. Do this and your board meeting stops being theater where you perform “fine” — it becomes the one recurring moment that forces you to check your plan against reality before a shrinking runway turns into a crisis nobody saw coming. NFX (5 minutes)
Never Abandon Your Team
Here’s the part most managers get backwards: when your direct report bombs in front of a board member, jumping in with hard questions or distancing yourself with “well, I don’t agree” doesn’t protect you — it just proves to everyone in the room that you’ll throw people overboard the second things get uncomfortable. The principle is simple but rarely followed: in any meeting, you and your team are always on the same side of the table, because their performance is a direct reflection of your leadership, not a separate event you get to spectate. Before your next high-stakes meeting where someone on your team is presenting, tell them explicitly beforehand — “if this gets heated, I’ll help navigate it” — and agree in advance on which questions you’ll field versus which are theirs, so you’re not improvising loyalty in real time. Do this consistently and you build the kind of trust that makes people want to stay and take risks for you, because they know you won’t let them stand alone when it counts. Stay Sassy (4 minutes)
Founder FAQ: How Delaware Franchise Tax Can Be Helpful For Startups?
That $75,175 Delaware franchise tax bill you just got isn’t actually what you owe — Delaware defaults to the calculation method that makes tiny, pre-revenue startups look massive on paper. This matters because the state gives you two ways to calculate the tax, and almost nobody tells you the second one exists or that it can cut your bill by 99%. This week, before you pay anything, pull your authorized shares, issued shares, par value, and total gross assets, and ask your accountant to run the Assumed Par Value Capital Method instead of just accepting the default Authorized Share Method number. Do this and a company like Gregarious Games — 10M authorized shares, $800K in assets — drops from a $75,175 bill to $350, freeing up real runway for a five-minute phone call. Westaway (3 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
An Innovative Law Firm?
Being listed among Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies” is an honor for our law firm, yet we believe innovation matters if it actually produces better outcomes for startups. Here’s how we’ve innovated to better serve startups:
Clear Pricing. Traditional billable hours can lead to misaligned objectives and unexpected fees. We’ve replaced this with straightforward, flat-rate pricing.
General Counsel. Most entrepreneurs want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a fixed, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business.
Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We’ve streamlined our operations through automation and AI (where appropriate), ensuring efficient, high-caliber results.
If you’re an innovative startup looking for an innovative law firm, let’s talk.