Uninvent Table of Contents
Uninvent is designed to help startup founders build successful companies and stay healthy and sane while doing it. Please see the overview in Welcome to Uninvent and links to past and future chapters in Uninvent Table of Contents.
In this table of contents, you’ll find links to all published chapters as well as previews of future ones, which will come out about once per week. Please subscribe to get notified about new chapters. The Uninvent Substack will always be free.
Introduction: Welcome to Uninvent
Part 1: Leading Yourself
1. Start Where You Are — Or why you should embrace where you are since you can’t be anywhere else.
2. Know What You Believe — Or why belief is the engine that powers your startup.
3. Start Out the Right Way — Or why so much of your startup’s fate is sealed right when you start it.
4. Ignore the Noise — Or why distractions, excuses, and haters don’t matter.
5. Embrace Contradiction — Or why you shouldn’t seek simple explanations and easy answers.
6. Choose Abundance — Or why a leap of faith can land you in a pile of cash.
7. Grasp Why You Get Paid — Or why if you make it big, it won’t be for the reasons you think.
8. Be a Learn it All — Or why you’re back in school but with no graduation party.
9. Be the Adult in the Room — Or why it’s disorienting to look up and see no one there.
10. Nail the Easy Things — Or why money is no excuse when you aren’t even doing the free things.
11. Unmask Imposter Syndrome — Or why our greatest critic lives rent-free in our heads.
12. Face the Abyss — Or why the abyss staring back at you might have something to tell you
13. Embrace the Grind — Or why winning comes from the day in day out grind
14. Train like a Startup Athlete — Or why taking care of yourself is taking care of your startup.
15. Stop "Crushing It" — Or why you have more important things to worry about than other people.
16. Never Arrive - Or why your startup is a spiral staircase.
Part 2: Leading Your People
Build a Talent Magnet — Or why you can only hire great people if you build something they want to join.
Learn to Part Ways — Or why some people need to leave if you want the right people to stay.
Master the One-on-One — Or why you should learn to use your startup’s steering wheel.
Learn the Ladder — Or why a ladder can help avoid chaos.
Pay People the Right Way — Or why it’s expensive to pay people too much or too little.
Show Respect — Or why if you’d rather be liked than respected, you’ll end up with neither.
Seek Different — Or why you won’t build anything different if everyone is the same.
Talk Hard — Or why difficult conversations make everything easier.
Budget the Stress — Or why stress, like any other currency, should be invested wisely.
Know When to Overrule — Or why you have the master the core dilemma of management.
Keep it Classy — Or why you need to act like an adult if you want a grown-up outcome.
Build a See Through Startup — Or why an abundance mentality for sharing information causes abundance.
Explore Personality — Or why you can get the best out of people when you’re curious what makes them tick.
Delegate Til It Hurts — Or why, as special as you are, you aren’t as special as you think.
Do Hard Work — Or why much of the work you do is probably a waste of time.
Evade the Curse of Knowledge — Or why your team might have no idea what you are talking about.
Part 3: Leading Your Startup
Build your Operating System — Or why if you want your company to run like a machine, you need an operating system.
Focus Your Strategy — Or why you have a strategy, whether you know it or not, and it needs to answer several questions.
Plan, Plan, Replan — Or why planning gets things done and getting things done makes good plans.
Keep it Tight — Or why although startups are full of surprises, there are some you should avoid.
Continue to Continuously Improve — Or why the best way to get better is a little bit at a time.
Pick Your Position — Or, why you can’t win a championship if you don’t know what game you are playing.
Make Decisions — Or why you have to get great at the most important thing that startups do.
Give Good Meeting — Or why the best and worst things about working for your startup are the meetings.
Keep It Moving — Or why you should never give up the main advantage you have as a startup.
Stalk the Competition — Or why beating the competition doesn’t mean focusing on the competition.
Knock Down Silos — Or why silos grow naturally, like fungus, unless you fumigate often.
Curate Your Culture — Or why culture is both nebulous and tangible.
Build a Learning Machine — Or why you and your team are in a race to learn fast enough to keep the wheels on.
Tell Stories — Or why you can get people excited about your company by simply telling your story.
Work Backwards — Or why when you want to move forward, you need to work backwards.
Build a Town Hall — Or why gathering the company together keeps you from coming apart.
Fire Yourself — Or why you should accelerate your slide to irrelevance.