The Shopify Paradox When What You Sell Isn’t What You Operate Last week’s piece, The Verb Problem, made the case that Shopify describes itself in verbs (enable, simplify, arm the rebels) while its customers describe it with a noun they never name: becoming. The company talks about what it does. The customers talk about who…

The Verb Problem What Shopify Teaches Every Founder About Positioning I spent several weeks studying Shopify. Not the product. Not the stock price. The language. How the company describes itself. How customers describe it. And the distance between those two descriptions. That distance turns out to be the most useful thing I found. The pattern…

Stop packaging yourself You don’t have a packaging problem. You have a framing problem. I was on a coaching call recently where the person spent the first fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to describe what they do. Better headline. Better bio. Better elevator pitch. The kind of work that feels productive but changes…

Palantir’s GTM Playbook TL;DR — Palantir didn’t sell software. It became infrastructure. A positioning masterclass hiding inside a GTM playbook. Most companies spend years perfecting their pitch. Palantir spent 17 years and $4 billion in losses perfecting its proof. And that’s the whole lesson. I spent the last week pulling apart Palantir’s go-to-market playbook. Revenue,…

How Bumble Gets Back to $13 Billion Today, we’ll dive into how a $13 billion company destroyed 97% of its value by abandoning the one thing that made it worth $13 billion. The highlight reel, first. Bumble had one job: be the dating app where women go first. That single rule — women message first,…

The $296 Billion Tumour There is a $296 billion tumour growing between marketing departments and the agencies they hire. It is fed by a $140 billion research industry that cannot see it, validated by a $35 billion consulting industry that will not name it, and sustained by a structural incentive on both sides of the…

I read labels A few of you have asked some version of this question lately: “Paul — what are you actually building? I see the posts, the Kit, Monopoly, and the GNYS stuff. How does it all connect?” Fair question. Let me try to answer it. There’s a thing I can’t stop seeing. I read…

Context isn’t the preface. It’s the work. Most bad decisions don’t come from a lack of intelligence. They come from skipping context. You’ve seen it. Someone asks a question that sounds clear: – “Should we do product-led growth?” – “Should we hire an enterprise seller?” – “Should we ship faster?” – “Can you help sharpen…

This week, I’m sharing something different. A full Gravity Report on Lovable. The fastest-growing software company in history. $100M ARR in eight months. $200M+ by month eighteen. 8 million users. $6.6 billion valuation. The business press calls it “vibe coding.” Investors call it the future. Customers call it magic. But what does Lovable actually own?…

What I built while fighting the superflu I’ve been down for three weeks. The superflu caught me right before the finish line. Still shaking it off as I write this. But I didn’t want to close out 2025 without saying thank you and giving you something useful. So here’s both. First, the thank you. This…

Just do it Why “Just Do It” Actually Works: The Neuroscience of Positioning Done Right Three words. Coined the night before a presentation. Inspired by a convicted murderer’s last words before a firing squad. “Just Do It” shouldn’t have worked. And yet, it’s become one of the most recognized phrases in commercial history. Nike’s market…

Distribution Delusion Why celebrity, distribution, and awareness don’t create business success Every founder has heard some version of this: “If only we had Elon’s reach…” or “We just need more awareness…” or “Once we get distribution, we’ll crush it.” It’s the most seductive lie in business. The story goes like this: Elon Musk’s 200+ million…