👋 Howdy to the 1,002 new legends who joined this week! You are now part of a 226,072 strong tribe outperforming the competition together.

LATEST POSTS 📚

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are some of our recent editions.

🎯 Leading Intercom’s AI Transformation. Des Traynor on zero-to-one mess, AI momentum, and leading with intent.
🎄 A Look Back At The Year That Was. Wrapping up 2025, with a look towards the future.
🎨 Unfiltered: The Creative Chaos Behind PostHog’s Success. PostHog spills the beans on hedgehogs, pivots, and the fun behind the brand.

PARTNERS 💫

Framer is giving early-stage startups a full year of the Pro Plan—completely free.

Framer is the design-first web builder that helps startups launch fast. Join hundreds of YC founders already building on Framer. What you get with this deal:

• 1 year of Framer's Pro Plan ($360 value). ✔️

• Fast, professional site—no dev team needed. ✔️

• Scales with your startup—from MVP to full site. ✔️

Spots are limited—apply before October 31st to claim your free year. _{*Pre-seed and seed-stage startups. New Framer users only.}

_{Interested in sponsoring these emails? See our partnership options here.}

HOUSEKEEPING 📨

Below is a 20-second NASA animation from the 2015 New Horizons flyby, showing Pluto's 11,000-feet-tall water-ice mountains—comparable to the Rockies—emerging from its hazy nitrogen atmosphere, captured after a 9-year, 3-billion-mile journey. Click and watch it for yourself, and tell me you aren’t inspired.

Humans, for all of our flaws, are an incredible thing. And to think one day, in the not-too-insanely distant future, our children’s children’s children will explore these stars. What a beautiful thing.

BUSINESS STORY 🗞️

Five Examples Of Founder Scrappiness

We’ve all heard the stories. Genrational founder builds rocket ship, stuck together with duct tape. These stories are real. And I think if every successful company out there were to document things from day zero, you’d find these incredible stories of scrappiness would be more common again.

Business is the act of staying alive longer than your competitors. Do that consistently, with a touch of growth sprinkled in, and you are likely to be successful. But it may also require some ingenuity along the way.

Today, we will take a look at five well-known companies that thought outside the box to get off the ground, and a bonus company I threw in for good measure. Let’s dive in.

Airbnb’s ‘cereal entrepreneurship’

One of the most famous examples of founder scrappiness came at the hands of Air Bed & Breakfast, or Airbnb as they are known today. This example is not only scrappy but also wildly off the mark of what they actually do as a product.

The year was 2008, and the Airbnb team was running out of money. They’d not yet made $5,000 in total in revenue and no one in Silicon Valley—or elsewhere for the matter—would back them. So these founders decided to take matters into their own hands.

Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, you see, had the idea during the Democratic National Convention of shipping their Airbnb hosts free boxes of cereal: Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s.

They thought it would make things unique, and therefore, the Airbnb stay would be more memorable. During the convention, though, they shelved the plan. But with no money coming in and one final last-ditch effort needed to keep the company alive, they decided to resurrect the idea. This time, not for a fun talking point for their guests but for revenue.

They originally planned to print off 100,000 boxes of cereal, which was absurd, but a friendly Berkeley alum who had a printing shop agreed to do a small run of 500 if he could share in the profits (of the box, not Airbnb, unfortunately).

They would go on to sell between $20-30k in political cereal over this period, enough to pay off some debt and give them hope. It wasn’t the funds from the cereal that saved them, though; it was the story.

After hustling their way to a Y Combinator interview, back in the days when Paul Graham was still running it, the guys bombed. It was only at the very last minute that—to the chagrin of Brian and third co-founder Nate Blecharczyk—Joe went and placed a box of Obama O’s on Graham’s desk.

After a few odd glances and an awkward smile from the investors, Joe blurted out that the cereal stunt was how they kept their company alive. “Wow,” Graham responded. “You guys are like cockroaches. You just won’t die.” The trio of founders was offered a spot in Y-Combinator’s Winter 2009 batch, and the rest is history.

Fun fact: The story is so famous internally, they went as far as to name their custom font after it.

Reddit & the fake user growth hack

When Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian launched Reddit in 2005, they were met with the sound of crickets. An empty platform is a lonely place, and they knew they needed to inject life into it to attract real users. Their solution: Fabricate the community.

The co-founders rolled up their digital sleeves and got to work, creating fake accounts to populate the site with content and discussions. This move was a masterstroke in community building. It gave the illusion of an active platform, which in turn attracted genuine users, intrigued by the conversations and diverse content.

This strategy highlights the importance of appearance in the early stages of a platform's life. An empty space is uninviting, but a lively one is magnetic. For entrepreneurs, the lesson is clear: sometimes you need to build the stage before the actors arrive.

The Reddit story teaches us that a little creativity and elbow grease can go a long way in turning a ghost town into a thriving metropolis.

Spanx and the reinvention of hosiery

Sara Blakely's journey to founding Spanx is a story of innovation born out of necessity. As a young saleswoman, Blakely was frustrated by the lack of seamless undergarments to wear beneath her white pants. This led her to a moment of inspiration: she cut the feet off a pair of pantyhose, creating a makeshift solution that sparked the idea for Spanx.

With no background in fashion or manufacturing, Blakely was up against it. She spent two years researching the industry and developing her product, only to be rejected from countless hosiery mills. Undeterred, she finally found a manufacturer willing to take a chance on her idea. Blakely's scrappiness extended to her marketing efforts; she wrote her own patent, created the packaging, and even used her savings to buy product placement in department stores.

Spanx launched in 2000 and quickly became a hit. The success was due in part to Blakely's marketing tactics, such as sending samples to Oprah Winfrey, which led to Spanx being featured on her show. This exposure catapulted Spanx into the spotlight, and the company's sales skyrocketed to boot.

Blakely's story is a testament to the power of perseverance and creative problem-solving. Her ability to turn a simple idea into a revolutionary product shows that with determination and a willingness to think outside the box, anyone can change an industry.

The Patagonia rugby club

Although Patagonia’s roots date all the way back to 1965 with the successful Chouinard Equipment, the first threads they sold were rugby shirts out of the back of founder Yvon’s car, or so the story goes.

Yvon found the first garments he would later sell during a climbing trip to Scotland in 1970. The Scottish rugby shirts were of a very high quality and durable. The perfect kit for climbing in Scotland, or in the frosty Northern California conditions arround Yellowstone National Park.

This first unofficial foray into clothing had no manufacturing, no inventory management, just high-quality supply and ‘dirtbag’ climber demand to match. These famous kits are much of a collector's item with climbers, fashionistas, and Wall Street analysts alike. The moral here is that you don’t need much—or even your own product—to get started.

Craigslist’s original email blasts

In the mid-90s, Craig Newmark (yes, that Craig) started an email list to share information about local events with friends. These humble beginnings laid the groundwork for what would become Craigslist, one of the most popular classified ads websites in the world, and the best place to buy dirty underwear.

The key to Craigslist’s early success, though, was its simplicity. Newmark didn't set out to create a complex platform; he just wanted to help people connect and share information.

As the list grew in popularity, it evolved into a website, expanding its offerings to include various categories of classified ads—missed connections, anyone? This story highlights the power of simplicity in building a successful platform. You don’t need to start with bells and whistles. Just a simple product that gets the job done.

For builders, the lesson is clear: focus on solving a specific problem or fulfilling a particular need, and do it well. Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the most effective.

Me, AdventureFit, and a gambling ring

The final example is my own. In 2013, long before Athyna (hire with us), I founded my first startup, AdventureFit Travel. The tagline was clear: improving the world through travel, exercise, mindfulness, and conversation. The TL;DR was that we took people all around the world on adventure holidays for the fitness community.

Think Intrepid Travel, if it were run by a bunch of crazy yoga-loving, CrossFit junkies who enjoyed a beer from time to time.

The brand was great, the product was second to none, but we never really made any money. And by “never really made any money,” I mean the business was kept alive on credit cards, with me Airbnb’ing my room and sleeping on my own couch. Oh, and a very grey-area sports betting ring.

First, let me start by saying that I despise sports betting, and don’t even get me started on prediction markets. They are a scourge on our society. But a friend of mine, an English geezer named Adam, whom I met at the gym, knew a system to rob the bookmakers blind using their own promotions.

Think Robin Hood of the modern era if my buddy Adam and I were Robin Hood and ‘the rich’ we were robbing were the likes of Sportbet, DraftKings, etc.

Suffice to say, AdventureFit was never going to make it. But I can say that it was not without me pulling out every stop—including robbing online bookmakers—to try to keep it alive.

Summary

The moral from reading above is simple. Business is hard. But here's what connects all these stories: none of these founders waited for permission or ideal conditions—they just moved. Airbnb made cereal, Reddit faked users, Sara cut up pantyhose, and Patagonia sold rugby shirts from a car.

The scrappiness isn't just about being resourceful with limited capital. It's about being willing to look ridiculous and do things that have nothing to do with your core product. Paul Graham invested in Airbnb because they proved they were unkillable cockroaches. So the next time you're stuck, ask yourself: What's my cereal box move?

Extra reading

• How Attio Creates Beautiful, Functional Design - May, 2025

• From 150k Waitlist To $30 Million Series A - October, 2025

• Brand Breakdown: Does Liquid Death’s Brand Convert? - July, 2025

And that's it! You can follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, and also don’t forget to check out Athyna while you’re at it.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

TWEETS OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE RECOMMEND 🛠️

Every week, we highlight tools we like and those we actually use inside our business and give them an honest review. Today, we are highlighting Framer*—the site builder trusted by startups to Fortune 500.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

P.S. Want to work together?

1. Hiring global talent: If you’re hiring tech, business or ops talent and want to do it 80% less, check out my startup, Athyna. 🌏

2. See my tech stack: Find our suite of tools & resources for both this newsletter and Athyna here. 🧰 

3. Reach an audience of tech leaders: Advertise with us if you want to get in front of founders, investors and leaders in tech. 👀