Strategy is how you win in startups [feat. Jason Cohen]

Build In Public Podcast

Welcome to yet another episode of the Build In Public Podcast! 🎉

Today's episode was live recorded in Austin where I interviewed Jason Cohen at the SaaStock conference in May 2024. Jason Cohen is a four-time entrepreneur across 24 years who has built both bootstrapped and VC-funded businesses in his career. He had two exits and two unicorns and has been writing for 17 years on the Internet. You may have seen him on X as @asmartbear or read one of his articles at this blog: asmartbear.com

Jason is currently the Chief Innovation Officer of WP Engine which is a startup unicorn that he started in 2010. The company raised over $300m in funding, has over 1,200 employees globally and serves billions of web requests daily for 200,000 customers as one of the top-ten largest web platforms in the world.
In this episode, Jason and I discuss why "strategy" matters, how it is the key driver to help you win at every stage as a startup, how to get your team rallied around this, what signs tell you it's working vs it's not and Jason's advice on evaluating feedback coming from multiple sources.

Relevant links:
My Twitter: https://x.com/thisiskp_
Jason's Twitter: https://x.com/asmartbear
https://longform.asmartbear.com/jason-cohen

Past guests on the Build In Public podcast include Gary Vaynerchuk (CEO of Vayner Media), Sahil Lavingia (CEO of Gumroad), Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit), Sheel Mohnot (Better Tomorrow Ventures), Gina Bianchini (CEO of Mighty Networks), Adam Draper (MD of BoostVC), Arvid Kahl (Author of Zero To Sold), Tiago Forte (author of Building A Second Brain), Mariam Hakobyan (CEO of Softr), Kat Cole (COO of Athletic Greens) and more