When To Go All In

On Saturday I shared a deep dive on how founders can save 20+ hours a week with a VA. Join the community to get access to my library of 50+ deep dives, and a new one in your inbox each Saturday.

Today at a glance:

💡 Opportunity: B2B Visa Process

This sounds fake but there are 1.8 million people in the employment-based green card backlog in the US. These are skilled workers we’re missing out on. The legal immigration system needs a serious overhaul.

Additionally, hiring an engineer and relocating them to the US is a terrible process.

I’d love to see a ruthlessly efficient operator take this challenge on and build a company that makes this process as more efficient by cutting through government red tape wherever possible.

Companies would pay you to handle all the legal requirements of applying for a visa and ensuring the company is complying with the guidelines and regulations.

This would be a high-ticket service you could start creating by working 1:1 with startups and over time building the processes to package a high-ticket service to sell to large companies at scale.

There’s likely also a software component you could build out, with a dashboard for the companies and more, but I don’t see this as venture-scale. Your costs and headcount would likely scale too linearly. But I’d love for someone to prove me wrong on this one!

🧠 Framework: Double Diamond Framework

Founders know their product strategy will change early and often as they learn more about their users.

The Double Diamond framework is provides the required adaptability — particularly for software products and services:

• Understand → When you’re triggered by a new idea, learning from users, macro change in the market, or new technology you return to this phase. Understanding the why behind these changes are essential. Consider how they’ll impact customer behavior going forward.

• Define → Once you understand a shift, define the promising opportunities and create an initial strategy. Don’t skip this stage, as your solution should be rooted in this vision. It’s what sets you apart.

• Explore → This phase is all about finding a solution that will work in your market, and for your users. Many founders make the mistake of setting a vision and jumping right into creating. Don’t be that founder. You don’t want to build any more than you need to in the early days. Building too much too soon is expensive and limits flexibility.

• Create → Only after you’ve explored pathways with your users, move onto creating a full solution. But even as you progress through this phase, build in as small increments as possible, and then return to the Explore phase frequently to get new feedback. It may change your assumptions in unexpected ways.

📈 Trend: Single Parents

The r/singleparents subreddit has exploded in the past year. It’s a community where single parents can find support and connect with each other. There are over 10M single parents in the US alone (and this number is rising), so this community may end up being very large.

Being a founder is really hard. Being a single parent is harder. Building products or services to make it easier would feel good. Some ideas:

💬 Quote: How to know when to go all-in on your idea

I loved this answer from Shishir in Lenny’s Newsletter when asked how he knew when it was time to go all-in on Coda. I’ve written an entire piece on how to know when to go all-in on an idea — it’s the most important decision a founder makes.

The most successful startup founders usually have these two things in common. I can’t stress how important it is to find something you can’t imagine not working on. And, if you want or need co-founder(s), make sure it’s with someone you can’t imagine not working with. When both of those things work out it’s true harmony.

🔗 Houck’s Picks

• Insights on how SaaS startups grew to over $30M ARR (Link)

• How to create a great startup pitch (Link)

• The two hallmarks of good company culture (Link)

• Two contradictory elements about AI investors seem to agree on (Link)

💡 How I Can Help