What Working with 1000 Startups Taught Me

After a decade working with over 1,000 founders and startups, I had a front-row seat to more successes, failures, pivots, and surprises than I can count. The patterns that kept re-emerging were never really about strategy, funding, or market timing. They were about behaviour, belief, and the stories people tell themselves under pressure.

Now we are entering a moment where AI is rewriting the rules faster than anyone can track. We no longer know what to learn, what will create value, or which careers will still exist in ten years. In that kind of uncertainty, stories are not a soft option. They are the most reliable map we have.

Here I share the stories of patterns, contradictions, anecdotes, and insights observed along the way. Not as a roadmap, but as a compass.