The secret to scaling is stopping
Why myself and my co-founders of a delivery company spent months doing deliveries ourselves, and how that’s the opposite of what most scaling advice tells you.
I’m Rob.
I’ve been starting, running, and occasionally saving companies for over 30 years… Now I’m co-founder and COO of Trexity. We’ve done over 2 million deliveries. I’ve personally done more of them than I’d like to admit.
Brand new to the site? I suggest you start here
I’ve actually spent my last penny
The story of the Christmas I wrote a cheque I couldn’t cash — and what it taught me about the difference between “tight” and “broke.”
A simple price to pay
We tried dynamic pricing. It made perfect sense on paper. Here’s why we killed it.
How Long to Stay Confused at Scale
We spent $20K a month on marketing. Got 700 downloads. Ten deliveries. Seven customers. My cofounder wanted to kill it. I wanted data. Here’s how we structured the uncertainty instead of pretending we knew the answer.
Set the pace
A customer wanted us in six cities. So we opened six cities. Here’s what a year of bleeding taught us about the difference between following and pace-setting.Retry
Fast Software: Build What You Need, When You Need It
Building custom software for your exact needs is now faster and cheaper than subscribing to platforms built for everyone. Generic software is dying because you can build exactly what you need in days, not months—and keep it only as long as it’s useful.
10X Forces You to Stop Bullshitting Yourself
When you’re trying to double revenue, every initiative looks promising. You can chase 50 different opportunities and convince yourself they all make sense. You’ll waste months testing marginal improvements while your core business stays mediocre
AI is just another layer, not the destination
AI isn’t a destination but a service layer that will fade into the background of how business works.
With AI it’s the question, not the answer
With AI and operations, your answer will only be as good as your own experience.
5 biggest mistakes I’ve made as a startup founder
No one is perfect and at the pace that startups operate at, mistakes happen often. What makes startups completely unique is that mistakes often mean progress, they mean you are testing the boundaries, trying new things.
Making it manual
Senior team updates are important. Strike that. Senior team updates are VERY important. Something of this importance should not be left to automation.
Dilution
There is a cost of doing business — any business — and that cost always comes in the form of dilution.
The Entrepreneur Mindset
I’ve never really thought about what “being” an entrepreneur means. I figured it was pretty simple — you are one or your aren’t.
Startups are hard to keep moving forward
Being a leader of a startup — especially in any operations role — is one of the hardest things to do properly in business.
Challenge your team
The most important thing that leads to startup success (even more-so than luck, timing, hard work and persistence) is solving a problem in a different way from competitors.
What’s in your control
There are two business types: one you control and one that controls you. A co-founder who survived the pandemic and thrived by managing conservative cashflow and growing from profit shares insights. Unlike many overly reliant on investments, he prioritized sustainable, self-sufficient growth, illustrating the essence of true business control.
Reasons NOT to join a startup
Startups are different beasts. If you’ve never been a part of one, it’s really hard to explain just how unique and challenging it is to be part of one during its early stages. I’ve seen so many people think they want to be involved in a startup only to have the reality punch them in the face when they get what they want.
Don’t hate the VC
It’s really easy to fall into the trap of hating on VCs if you are a startup looking for funding.
The Founders bluff
When I started my first “real” company in the early days of the Internet era I was traveling with my immediate family to visit my mother in Bangladesh. I remember distinctly the fear I had but it wasn’t about flying or malaria or anything related to the actual journey. It was what my answer was going to be when someone asked me “what do you do for a living?”
Nurture vs Nature
This is a slight departure but for good reason. Both my kids graduated from high school today with a flourish.
Get aligned
Co-founders need to be aligned. Unified. Clear on objectives. To have a voice.
The best laid plans
Startups, by their nature, are designed to be an uncontainable, uncontrollable and unstructured mess.
Should you say yes?
How often do you say “yes” to customer requests?
The Startup Culture
Lots has been written about the importance of company culture and how to encourage it to develop and flourish in the right way.
What do you do for a living?
This is the hardest question to answer for founders.
Politics is a dirty word
As the US and potentially Canada gear up for elections, the ideological divisions are obviously quite deep. Each side feels that theirs is the righteous one and their party alone is the one that speaks the truth.
From anarchy to…less anarchy?
“Just f@cking do it.”
Identity
Title or outcome.