Startup Lessons from Paul Graham

Interop Ventures is my fourth company, following Epicenter, Stratumn, and Adan (a non-profit, but it still counts). Recently, I came across a post by Paul Graham that resonated deeply with my experiences as a founder.

In his “How to Start a Startup” one-pager–after the blog post of the same name–Graham offers simple but powerful advice for entrepreneurs, outlining the core elements needed to build a successful company:

• Good people
• Make something customers want
• Spend as little money as possible

Reflecting on my entrepreneurial journey, the concept of product-market fit (PMF) is something I’ve thought about constantly. Finding PMF is the make-or-break moment for any company, and identifying it as fast as possible should be every founder’s top priority.

The Hunt for a Real Problem to Solve

Stratumn, a company I co-founded in 2015, provided enterprise blockchain solutions for process traceability. We spent four years searching for the right problem to solve. Stratumn raised around €7 million from tech and institutional VCs (including Nasdaq)–the largest in France for a blockchain company at the time–and grew to a 20-person team. We engaged with over a hundred companies, building a dozen PoCs for enterprise clients. None of it stuck. Internal tensions eventually fractured the team. Investors pushed for new management, and the founders left. Stratumn was ultimately written off.

Paul Graham’s advice to “look at something people are trying to do, figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t suck” and “only hire when absolutely necessary” resonates with Stratumn’s failures. In retrospect, we were too focused on building PoCs without truly understanding our customers’ pain points. Unfortunately, this is a common trap for many VC-backed startups: building technology in search of a problem rather than solving a problem from the start.

Starting Small and Lean

Venture funds are products, too. At Interop Ventures, our product is our investment portfolio, and our customers are our LPs. When we launched, we kept it simple—offering access to our unique deal flow in the Cosmos ecosystem. Our early customers were the network of angel investors and some institutions built over a decade in the industry, including from hosting Epicenter. Our LPs invested in Interop Ventures because they believed in Cosmos and the appchain narrative. We built a product that our customers wanted.

During the early days of the pandemic, I spent a lot of time in the Indie Hackers community and listened to their podcast. Their philosophy centers on finding PMF and generating revenue as quickly as possible. Hearing stories of founders bootstrapping successful companies without VC funding was inspiring.

Prioritizing Early Adopters for Initial Traction

We started with small investors because they were easier to onboard. We spent a lot of time pitching larger institutional investors, convinced they’d convert sooner or later. But we didn’t fully grasp that their sales cycles are intentionally long. Building those relationships has been valuable, but realistically, they’ll pay off in future funds. In the early stages, we were better off focusing on smaller LPs who could commit quickly and helped us achieve initial traction.

As Paul Graham suggests, “Start with smaller companies as customers; it’s easier to sell to them.” This is a crucial lesson, and in our case, it proved to be the right strategy. Once we had validated our initial PMF with a small pool of LPs, we could expand and attract larger players.

Scaling Strategically After Proving Value

One of the books that has shaped my thinking around PMF is The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Their core argument is that every successful company starts by mastering one thing before expanding to new products or business lines. The same applies to companies like HP, Proctor & Gamble, Facebook, Apple, and Tesla. Peter Thiel’s Zero to One touches on a similar theme: focus and excellence in one area before scaling.

There’s a meme in the community that Interop Ventures is just a “Cosmos fund”—and there’s some truth to that. It’s how we started, after all. With our initial PMF validated, Interop Ventures is now in the process of broadening its scope. Since launching, we’ve expanded our thesis to include a wider range of investments beyond Cosmos.

Execution Over Ideas

One of Paul Graham’s most valuable insights is that “ideas are just starting points; execution matters more.” I find it strange when people get cagey about sharing their business ideas, fearing they’ll be stolen. Personally, I love sharing my ideas, especially in the early phases. It’s a way to validate them and get crucial feedback.

The feedback we’ve received from our initial LPs—and even from those who passed on investing—has been invaluable. It has allowed us to refine both our product and strategy. Execution, not just the idea itself, is what ultimately creates value.