This week, a founder wanted feedback on her sales pitch deck, so I sat in on her pitch. The company has hundreds of thousands in revenue from enterprise clients and product–market fit. The pitch deck was visually impressive, and the value proposition made sense. But I noticed a glaring problem with her pitch: her messaging wasn’t clear. Specifically, when I asked questions, it became apparent that the problem she’s solving is slightly different than what’s in her sales pitch. So the pitch isn’t as effective as it could be.

You might be thinking that your messaging and your sales pitch are the same, but they’re not. Your messaging is a clear articulation of what problem you solve, how you solve it, and why your audience should care. It quickly explains why your company exists and how it adds value. Having a clear message is important because it becomes the basis of lots of critical fundamentals of the company: the recruiting pitch, the investor pitch, the sales pitch, etc. Without clarity, everything built on top of the messaging is less effective, which is what this founder is experiencing.

I think there’s something to be said for founders working on their messaging independently, before beginning to use it in other collateral. Many founders start working on their messaging when they begin building a pitch for investors or customers. But I think messaging is so critical that founders should get clarity on it far in advance of building a pitch. They should clarify their messaging to gain clarity in their minds. If a founder has clarity on the messaging, they’re more confident, which permeates everything else they do. It makes many other facets of company building easier (not easy). For example, it’s easier to close deals with customers, recruit the right talent, and raise growth capital from investors.

In 2022, I shared that Figma was being acquired by Adobe for $20 billion (see here). A year later, the acquisition was called off because regulators wouldn’t approve the deal (see here), but it wasn’t all bad for Figma—it walked away with a $1 billion breakup fee for its troubles. Well, Figma is back in the news. According to Bloomberg, Figma is targeting an IPO this summer (see here).

Bloomberg says that Figma generated $821 million in revenue for the 12 months ending March 31 (a 49% growth rate) and is cash-flow positive. I haven’t confirmed these figures, but if they’re true, those would be amazing metrics. The devil is always in the details, and many times people don’t really understand a company’s financials, so I want to investigate for myself. I found a copy of Figma’s SEC S-1 registration statement (see here). I’m looking forward to digging into it to understand this company better, given that I know many entrepreneurs who love its product.

The more I read biographies, the more I learn about different historical periods. The early 1900s are fascinating, especially the 1929 stock market crash and its economic and psychological impact on society. Another interesting time that I keep reading about is the late 1960s through the early 1980s.

That was when inflation skyrocketed to double digits, resulting in the federal funds rate reaching roughly 20%.

This period had a profound impact on entrepreneurs, investors, and society. I want to understand what led to its extremes and how entrepreneurs and investors navigated them. I’ve heard stories from my parents about 18% rates on mortgages in the early 1980s, but I want to go deeper.  

To learn more, I’ll read a few books about this period and reread books that contain context about it and how people navigated it. I’m also going to reread the letters Warren Buffett wrote to investors in his hedge fund (pre–Berkshire Hathaway), given that he announced he was closing his hedge fund in 1969, the start of this volatile period.

I’ll likely have to read some political and monetary history books—obviously not my usual entrepreneur biographies—because I think it’s important to gain context about the period.

I’m curious about the late 1960s through the early 1980s  and excited to learn about that time in history. My gut tells me it has valuable lessons to teach that could be useful to entrepreneurs and investors in the not-so-distant future.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 70 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was a holiday weekend and my sixth weekend. I decided to push myself a bit and added four more books:

• How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
• Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor
• Security Analysis, Seventh Edition by Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd
• Hedge Fund Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager

That’s the update on my July 4th goal.

In May, I read A Short History of Financial Euphoria, which described famous financial bubbles from the 1600s’ tulip mania to the 1980s’ junk-bond frenzy and savings-and-loan crisis. One of the companies mentioned was Investors Overseas Services (IOS), a multibillion-dollar fund of funds built in the 1960s by Bernie Cornfeld. I’ve read about IOS and Cornfeld in other books and was always curious, so I read a biography about Cornfeld, The Bernie Cornfeld Story, written by an early IOS employee.

The biography provides an insider’s perspective on Cornfeld’s life, his personality, and how he built IOS. It details what allowed Cornfeld to rise from social worker in the United States to international financier in Switzerland, as well as his battles with the SEC and how his empire crumbled after IOS’s IPO in 1969.

Cornfeld’s story was pretty wild. It’s interesting to learn how he and IOS rode the bull market of the 1950s and 1960s to insane heights but then were crushed when the market began to reverse in the early 1970s.

I still want to learn more about Cornfeld and will look for more books on him and his associates.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 70
• Total blog posts published: 455

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read The Bernie Cornfeld Story, a biography about entrepreneur Bernie Cornfeld, who built Investors Overseas Services into a multibillion-dollar offshore fund-of-funds empire in the 1960s
• Added two more books that I read in 2023, these from Thomas Phelps and Chris Mayer, to the library on this site—see more here

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add four more books that I read in 2023 to the library on this site—see more here

Asks:

• Seeking technical lead or cofounder – I’m looking for a senior full-stack developer skilled in AI retrieval. If you know one who’d have an interest in working on the software project related to books, please introduce us!

Week two hundred seventy-five was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• I conducted demos to show the proof of concept (POC) that my engineer friend helped me build for potential engineering candidates. These meetings helped take the evaluation process to another level because the candidates could ask deep technical questions that showcased their thinking. Having my engineer friend on these calls was key so he could answer those questions and evaluate their thinking.
• Taking the POC to MVP will likely be a multistep process: (1) retrieval; i.e., reliably getting the information and chunks into the LLM; (2) model selection and parameter tuning; and (3) prompt engineering to achieve the desired minimum output quality threshold.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

I like to use holidays to unwind, but I’ve also established a habit of setting myself a challenge for each holiday. I enjoy a challenge, and it adds something different to the holiday. I don’t always knock these out of the park. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I fail (I chronically overestimate what I can accomplish). Either way, it’s fun to push myself toward a goal that I care about (even if others couldn’t care less). I always learn something during the process.

The Library on this site accurately shows every book I’ve read in 2024 and 2025, but not before that. I’ve been adding books that I read before 2024, but that’s a longer-term weekend project. I usually add two books per weekend.

I want to ramp that up a bit this holiday weekend. I’m aiming to add four books to the Library by Tuesday.

That’s the challenge. Very simple. Wish me luck!

Happy July 4th!

I hope everyone had a great holiday!

I’ve been seeing more IPO announcements recently. I had a gut feeling that IPO activity has increased materially, but I hadn’t looked at the data to confirm. In fact, I haven’t looked at the data since my last update in March 2025 (see here), so today I did. Here are the updated IPO stats through July 2, 2025:

• 2025: 175

Here’s the 2025 breakdown by month:

• January: 28
• February: 28
• March: 19
• April: 32
• May: 34
• June: 25
• July: 9 (so far)

For comparison, here are previous years’ IPO stats:

• 2024: 225
• 2023: 154
• 2022: 181
• 2021: 1,035
• 2020: 480
• 2019: 232

IPO activity picked up after March. At this rate, we’ll exceed 2019, which was pre-COVID and pre-ZIRP. We’re on track to have the most IPOs since interest rates rose rapidly in 2022.

We still have six months left in the year, and anything can happen. If the Q2 taught me anything, it’s that curveballs can come at any time (e.g., April tariffs). But I suspect lots of technology CEOs and their VC investors are watching the IPO stats and strongly considering going public while the window is open and public market investors are receptive to buying shares in technology companies.

If you want to see the IPO stats—recent or historical—try here (where I get my IPO data).