Get a laptop. Get $500. Get a domain. Get a problem worth solving. Do not tell your friends you’re starting a company. Do not tell your family. Do not update your LinkedIn to “Founder & CEO.” Do not spend $4,000 on branding. Do not hire a fractional Chief Vibes Officer. Do not start a podcast. Do not announce that you’re building in stealth. Nobody is looking for you. Build something that works. Find 10 people who desperately need it. Make them pay you. Do not raise a pre-seed round to celebrate your first $200 in revenue. Do not make a pitch deck. Do not spend 6 weeks deciding between two shades of blue. Get your first 100 users. Find out why 87 of them stopped using your product. Fix it. Get 100 more. Make your product so good that people start recommending it without being asked. Find one person on X with 100,000 followers. Do not ask them to “support your journey.” Make something they actually want to talk about. Get them to post it. Get 100,000 impressions. Get 2,000 website visits. Get 200 signups. Get 14 paying customers. Do not put “100,000 impressions” in your investor deck as traction. Do not call yourself a serial entrepreneur because you registered three LLCs. Do not hire a Head of Growth before you have anything to grow. Do not spend $30,000 on a launch party. Do not pay a marketing agency $15,000 to tell you to post consistently. Get rejected by Y Combinator. Do not write a 14-part thread about how they missed out on the next billion-dollar company. Go back to building. Find other founders who are equally insane. Get introductions. Get distribution. Get mentorship from people who have actually built companies. Get your first 1,000 paying customers. Do not give up 7% of your company for access to a network. Do not give up 5%. Do not give up 1%. Do not give up equity to someone whose primary contribution is introducing you to another person who wants equity. Apply to @SuperteamUSA . Get accelerated. Keep your cap table. Build something people actually want. Make your competitors wonder how the fuck you’re growing so fast. Protect your equity at all costs.