As I did last year, below is a collection of some startup & personal learnings from 2025.
entropy
Entropy in physics is the measure of uncertainty or disorder in a system.
According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it can only increase, which means that disorder increases over time.
We witness the same thing happening in startups. As time passes, things add up without anyone noticing. Tasks accumulate until they consume significant time across teams and the whole company. The focus shifts away from what truly drives the company's KPIs.
Unlike physics, and this is where the analogy falls apart, in a startup, we have full agency on its state and what people work on. So entropy can be, and must be fought as much as possible.
For instance, we’ve implemented a 'delete week’ similar to what Coinbase did. We’ve also thrown into the bin many products and projects that we’ve been working on. Even ones that we put a significant amount of work into. This is hard to prove to be insanely important over the long term.
positive feedback loop
One must create systems with positive feedback loops that autocorrect from the interior.
A concrete example: I'm spending more time teaching the team why we're making a specific decision rather than just sharing the conclusion. This gives team members the knowledge to operate independently and make the right decisions themselves, so they don't have to come back with questions for every problem they face.
do things that scale
Of course, there's this famous essay from Paul Graham advising young startups to do things that don't scale. But in the age of AI, many tasks can now be automated where humans add practically no value and gain no meaningful knowledge for the business. These tasks must be automated. Every team member should review their day-to-day work, identify repetitive tasks, and either discard or automate them. This should become instinctive, and I’m going to spend more time in 2026 to ensure everyone makes this effort within my team.
doubt = no doubt
This one is well known in recruitment. When there’s a doubt, there’s no doubt. But I’m still amazed at how hard it is for a human being to trust that gut feeling.
Our instinct is (very) often right. Evolution has done a pretty good job at giving us the senses to anticipate things without really knowing why. I’d personally try to listen more carefully to what nature has sharpened during the past millions of years. But we, as founders, tend to rely on frameworks, and if it does not rely on something explicit, we tend not to believe in the signal. This is something I’m going to work on more in 2026.
education
Always assume the people you're talking to don't understand what you're explaining.
This is especially true when talking to clients unfamiliar with your sector. Educating them is critical. Without it, they can't distinguish between your solution and the competitors’ one.
We've faced situations where we assumed listeners were familiar with our topic, only to discover much later they weren't. We had to reset the whole situation, which required far more energy and effort than doing it from the beginning.
As a result, we're investing much more in educational content so potential customers can make informed decisions and see us as partners, not just vendors.
learning as a requirement
Now with LLMs, it’s so easy to learn very fast about any topics that you come across. There won’t be any forgiveness for those who don’t understand the. If you don’t understand it, go find the answers. This is a requirement to make sure that decisions are made on 1st principle and not. We’re living in a time where laziness is not an option anymore.
own your narrative
The same events can be told very differently based on one’s understanding or intention. Thinking that others will understand the same event the same as you do is completely wrong, and we’ve faced that several times. Reality can be distorted almost at will; this is why pushing for your own narrative is so important. It prevents competitors from rewriting history and painting you in a bad light.
spend time on things that don’t work
There's a bias to focus on what's already working well. You think you'll scale it and make it more efficient. But if something works, it works. The real blocker is the company's bottleneck, not what's already flowing freely. Think of the company as a pipe: spend your time on the bottleneck, not where it's already wide open.
no hope = start of the end
Echoing one of the key takeaways from Men’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, in which he describes the life (and death) in concentration camps. When humans don’t see any hope, they quickly start to degrade and die, as if hope were what maintained them in life.
I’m noticing this in real life as well.
health
Christmas is the moment when you see your family again. Sometimes you haven’t seen them since last Christmas, and it can be easy to see what has changed, especially in their health.
On my side, I’ve been able to see the decline from some family members, and it’s scary how many people above 50y start to have a lot of health issues that accumulate quickly for many reasons
This convinces me even more that to be healthy over the long run, one needs to start early, taking care of it.
friends = anchor
I realized that over time, and I get absorbed by Morpho, that I tend not to see or talk to some of my closest friends as much as I should. And actually, I was missing this. So one of my goals is to revive those relationships. I see them as very important as they create a balance, anchor you on the ground, and nourish what’s actually necessary for humans to be happy: social interactions.
That’s it for 2025, and happy 2026!
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As I did last year, below is a collection of some startup & personal learnings from 2025.
entropy
Entropy in physics is the measure of uncertainty or disorder in a system.
According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, it can only increase, which means that disorder increases over time.
We witness the same thing happening in startups. As time passes, things add up without anyone noticing. Tasks accumulate until they consume significant time across teams and the whole company. The focus shifts away from what truly drives the company's KPIs.
Unlike physics, and this is where the analogy falls apart, in a startup, we have full agency on its state and what people work on. So entropy can be, and must be fought as much as possible.
For instance, we’ve implemented a 'delete week’ similar to what Coinbase did. We’ve also thrown into the bin many products and projects that we’ve been working on. Even ones that we put a significant amount of work into. This is hard to prove to be insanely important over the long term.
positive feedback loop
One must create systems with positive feedback loops that autocorrect from the interior.
A concrete example: I'm spending more time teaching the team why we're making a specific decision rather than just sharing the conclusion. This gives team members the knowledge to operate independently and make the right decisions themselves, so they don't have to come back with questions for every problem they face.
do things that scale
Of course, there's this famous essay from Paul Graham advising young startups to do things that don't scale. But in the age of AI, many tasks can now be automated where humans add practically no value and gain no meaningful knowledge for the business. These tasks must be automated. Every team member should review their day-to-day work, identify repetitive tasks, and either discard or automate them. This should become instinctive, and I’m going to spend more time in 2026 to ensure everyone makes this effort within my team.
doubt = no doubt
This one is well known in recruitment. When there’s a doubt, there’s no doubt. But I’m still amazed at how hard it is for a human being to trust that gut feeling.
Our instinct is (very) often right. Evolution has done a pretty good job at giving us the senses to anticipate things without really knowing why. I’d personally try to listen more carefully to what nature has sharpened during the past millions of years. But we, as founders, tend to rely on frameworks, and if it does not rely on something explicit, we tend not to believe in the signal. This is something I’m going to work on more in 2026.
education
Always assume the people you're talking to don't understand what you're explaining.
This is especially true when talking to clients unfamiliar with your sector. Educating them is critical. Without it, they can't distinguish between your solution and the competitors’ one.
We've faced situations where we assumed listeners were familiar with our topic, only to discover much later they weren't. We had to reset the whole situation, which required far more energy and effort than doing it from the beginning.
As a result, we're investing much more in educational content so potential customers can make informed decisions and see us as partners, not just vendors.
learning as a requirement
Now with LLMs, it’s so easy to learn very fast about any topics that you come across. There won’t be any forgiveness for those who don’t understand the. If you don’t understand it, go find the answers. This is a requirement to make sure that decisions are made on 1st principle and not. We’re living in a time where laziness is not an option anymore.
own your narrative
The same events can be told very differently based on one’s understanding or intention. Thinking that others will understand the same event the same as you do is completely wrong, and we’ve faced that several times. Reality can be distorted almost at will; this is why pushing for your own narrative is so important. It prevents competitors from rewriting history and painting you in a bad light.
spend time on things that don’t work
There's a bias to focus on what's already working well. You think you'll scale it and make it more efficient. But if something works, it works. The real blocker is the company's bottleneck, not what's already flowing freely. Think of the company as a pipe: spend your time on the bottleneck, not where it's already wide open.
no hope = start of the end
Echoing one of the key takeaways from Men’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, in which he describes the life (and death) in concentration camps. When humans don’t see any hope, they quickly start to degrade and die, as if hope were what maintained them in life.
I’m noticing this in real life as well.
health
Christmas is the moment when you see your family again. Sometimes you haven’t seen them since last Christmas, and it can be easy to see what has changed, especially in their health.
On my side, I’ve been able to see the decline from some family members, and it’s scary how many people above 50y start to have a lot of health issues that accumulate quickly for many reasons
This convinces me even more that to be healthy over the long run, one needs to start early, taking care of it.
friends = anchor
I realized that over time, and I get absorbed by Morpho, that I tend not to see or talk to some of my closest friends as much as I should. And actually, I was missing this. So one of my goals is to revive those relationships. I see them as very important as they create a balance, anchor you on the ground, and nourish what’s actually necessary for humans to be happy: social interactions.
That’s it for 2025, and happy 2026!
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