US SuperFounders Find Heaven in Mexico City
I belong to an extraordinary group of company founders originally known as “The SuperFounders Project.” We recently changed the name to “The PathFinders.” While I liked the original better, there was some sort of conflict that required the new moniker.
It’s an amazing group, and recently I spent a heavenly four days with some of the best in the business, and came away with a very unexpected lesson.
Culminating this past Sunday, some 35 SuperFounders and I attended a four-day startup retreat in Mexico City, Mexico. Most hailed from the Silicon Valley, San Francisco, or Austin, Texas, but a few came from back East. We commandeered the CondesaDF Hotel (wonderful) and ate HUGE quantities of great Mexican food, consumed HUGE volumes of fantastic tequila and mescal, and discussed a wide range of topics, including:
how to structure a GPT startup
what’s new and required among AI-based and (relatively) old school technologies?
the state of angel investors-VCs-PE-banks and other financial players
how to do an equity split (short answer: Carefully!)
and lots and lots of other things
Only company founders who’d realized an exit of at least $50 million and also received a personal invitation from Mike Maples could partake.
Mike is the inspirational founder of this group and has actual operator experience. He is also the co-founder and managing director of Floodgate Ventures.
In my experience he’s one of the most intelligent, adept, and effective early-stage VCs working today. His wife, the equally amazing Julie Maples, is also an early-stage VC who devotes tremendous time and energy to cancer charities. They are an extraordinary couple with five kids who actively participated in the SuperFounders debauchery in Mexico City. Fortunately, they brought along Ryland Pampush, Floodgate’s Chief of Staff, for adult supervision.
Based on purely unscientific surveys I conducted over food and mescal, I discovered that many attendees were either between projects, advising companies in the earliest stages of technology and organizational development, and/or just taking a break—or so they said.
Almost all of them highly recommended taking a break between ventures. This allows them to simultaneously recharge their batteries, gain distance from their last project, and ideate about the next one.
To quote the Mandalorian: “This is the way”.
Many of these SuperFounders said they had dozens—and in some cases “many hundreds”—of things they’d do differently the next time around. Rather than fixating on mistakes, they planned to use them as operating knowledge, character builders, and as points of reference for future experiences, especially since, in many cases, they’d enjoyed great exits even despite these errors.
One big takeaway and often quoted: in general, about 80% of founders who had a great exit are able to repeat these successful outcomes over and over and over again. (Source unknown)
One interesting dilemma many of these SuperFounders are facing centers on where to live next. Some are thinking about full-on relocation. Others are just looking for the right place for their next startup. Still others are searching for a location with a different dynamic.
Mexico City got ample votes among the handful of cities in this beauty contest. For most, the desire to achieve a better work-life balance was a major driver.
The common conclusion: The COVID pandemic spurred new thinking about both working remotely and/or working in a new locale.
Unsurprisingly, GPT dominated the technology discussions. The most compelling chats included:
What is the right business model for GPT applications?
Are traditional segmentations (B2B, B2C & B2G) still relevant?
What are the total capital requirements for this technology/business, and how are they different from what was required in old-school startups as recently as six months ago?
What are the use cases or applications that make for a defensible and true product market fit (PMF)?
If this is the first wave of GPT technologies with more evolution and iteration to come, what will the tech-industry look like in a year? 5 years? 10 years?
Is Microsoft and OpenAI benevolent technology or fundamentally and unchangeably evil?
What’s with Google and Bard? Will search eventually disappear? Can the search business model survive? Is Google a one-trick pony or just slow to emerge as generative AI leaders?
It was clear from all these SuperFounder discussions, theorizing, and analyzing that PMF is the single most important criteria for starting, funding and building a great new company. But after quietly biding its time on the back burner of due diligence in recent years, technology risk has re-emerged as a crucial consideration, thanks to but cognisant of:
the incredible improvements in and array of Cloud technology – especially AWS & Azure services and dev tools
the sturdy and vast open source software corpus, and attendant security threats
As a wall smasher, I never thought I’d need an extended break from the tumult of starting, building, and exiting successfully from edgy technology companies. At most, after a startup exit (success or loss), I celebrated with an extra 30 minutes of watching ESPN with a cappuccino, and then I’d get back to work.
I learned something important and useful this weekend in heavenly Mexico City, sitting among these SuperFounders, that I plan to apply to my life in the years to come, and inculcate into the thinking of everyone I work with, including you, gentle reader. I’m paraphrasing the Bard here (the original, non-GPT one that lived from 1564 to 1616), but it’s important always to stop once in a while and smell the roses, the best insight I took away from my time in Heaven.