Welcome to Easy, Breezi.

Your friend who sends you a weekly update on what she's working on, reading through, and thinking about – in a list.

The 5 most important traits for founders

1. A slightly delusional optimism

2. Must be relentlessly resourceful

3. Bias towards action

4. Obsessed with other people’s problems

5. Strong verbal and written communication

What does it mean to be “relentlessly resourceful”?

The concept for being relentlessly resourceful stems from Paul Graham’s essay – shoutout to Breezi’s dev Ben for sending me this over the weekend

• The key thing to remember here is it’s not one or the other – it’s both

• “Not merely relentless. You can't simply plow through them (obstacles), because you don't know initially how hard they are; you don't know whether you're about to plow through a block of foam or granite. So you have to be resourceful. You have to keep trying new things”

• To me, relentless represents determination, persistence, grit, strength and basically just refusing to give up no matter what the circumstances are

• And resourceful represents finding solutions, seeing what others don’t, innovating, flexibility and being able to make something out of nothing

• The best and most successful founders do both simultaneously

Here are 3 examples of other founders demonstrating their ability to be relentlessly resourceful

1. Selling coffee table books as a luggage brand: When Jen Korey and Steph Rubio didn’t have Away luggage in time to launch for Christmas (peaking shopping period) so they decided to make and sell hardcover coffee table books instead. The book came with a gift card that was redeemable for a suitcase in February. It was essentially a preorder with a complimentary book – they made 1,200 copies and sold out instantly.
   

2. Taking pictures of host’s listings for free: In the early days of Airbnb, the founders couldn't afford to hire professional photographers to take photos of the listings on their platform. Instead, they went door-to-door, taking the photos themselves to try and improve each listing – which led to conversations with hosts that unlocked insights they hadn’t even thought of prior.
   

3. Making Tartini’s: When Maureen Kelly was launching Tarte Cosmetics into the world, one of her first tasks was to sell through her counter at Henri Bendel. The problem was no one knew her line and this was 2000, before social media was popular. Maureen brought in $8 champagne, put sweet tarts in a glass and called them Tartini’s – which attracted tons of women off Fifth Ave. and into the store to try her makeup products.

Other essays by Paul Graham I swear by

• How to get startup ideas: “Look for gaps that interest you. Live in the future and build what seems interesting. Strange as it sounds, that's the real recipe”

• Startups in 13 sentences: “Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I'd choose if I could only keep one. Understand your users. That's the key”

• Copy what you like: “Even when you find genuinely good things to copy, there's another pitfall to be avoided. Be careful to copy what makes them good, rather than their flaws”

• Default alive or default dead: “Assuming expenses remain constant and revenue growth is what it has been over the last several months, do they make it to profitability on the money they have left? Or to put it more dramatically, by default do they live or die?”

• Life is short: “Relentlessly prune bullshit, don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That's what you do when life is short”

Startups are not for everyone. Your early-stage start-up is probably not a good fit for someone who…*

1. Has only worked at big companies with no relevant side projects

2. Has just come out of a bad experience at a competitor’s start-up

3. Is focused on work-life balance in their next chapter

4. Is planning some big life expenses, like buying a house

5. Operates best in an environment of structure and clarity

6. Dislikes failing more than they like discovering

7. Feels apathetic about the idea of personal growth

*This excerpt came from Julie Zhuo’s recent Substack article, I’m obsessed with her!

In case you don’t know who Julie Zhuo is

• Julie Zhuo joined Facebook in the early days of the company in 2006 s an intern during her summer break from college

• She was hired back full time, spent 14 years there working on many products (News Feed, Groups, mobile) and eventually becoming the Vice President of Product Design

• In 2019, she wrote the book "The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You" documenting her experience being a rookie manager at 25 years old

• Currently, she’s building Sundial (data insights software) and writes weekly posts on The Looking Glass (her product newsletter)

• I love that even after her tenure at Facebook, she’s still building new products and documenting her learnings (work and life) for others to learn from

• I’ve also heard through the grapevine she occasionally writes angel checks for consumer internet companies 👀

When I was 24, I had the title “Growth Marketing Manager” – here are 3 things I learned

1. Micromanage until mutual trust: it’s a lot easier to increase autonomy as you build rapport than it is to tighten the reigns as things start going wrong

2. The smaller the team the better: everyone performs at a higher bar and the intensity of work is stronger

3. Their output is your output: “the most important task of a manager is to elicit peak performance from his subordinates” – from the book High Output Management

Random hot takes that I’ve thought of recently*

• Room temperature water is better than ice water

• IKEA is so boring

• Hot dogs taste bad unless you’re at a baseball game

• You’re only allowed to listen to John Mayer in the fall

• Wishing your ex happy birthday is healthy

*PLEASE reply to this and tell me if you agree or disagree to any of these, I would be so happy to hear

If you found anything in this newsletter helpful, I'd love to connect on Twitter – tweet me a screenshot of your favorite part and let's chat 👋

I'll be back next week with more lists!