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martinoleary.bsky.social
Fintech CMO. Built Ireland's first digital bank. Scaled startups to $300M+ (Dublin/Dubai). Sharing lessons in 'Uncharted': Real growth, no fairytales. Dubai-based 🇦🇪 My Uncharted Newsletter -> https://www.dotmartin.io
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Nothing exposes AI hype quite like AI companies still needing to verify human capabilities. Turns out even the robots need humans who can think for themselves.

How Non-Tech Founders Are Shipping Real Apps with AI An Interview with Viral Shah, Co-founder & CPO of Databutton Databutton is one of Europe’s fastest-growing startups. www.dotmartin.io/p/ai-coding-...

Watching your finance team simultaneously tell investors you're "efficiently deploying capital" while creating elaborate spreadsheets to justify why engineers can't have second monitors.

Turns out the real unicorn isn't your startup - it's finding childcare that matches a founder's schedule without requiring a spouse's sacrificed career.

I'm a dad too" in founder speak usually means "my wife had to quit her job to become our family's CTO (Chief Time Officer).

How Non-Tech Founders Are Shipping Real Apps with AI An Interview with Viral Shah, Co-founder & CPO of Databutton Databutton is one of Europe’s fastest-growing startups. www.dotmartin.io/p/ai-coding-...

Founder dads talking about balance is like VCs talking about bootstrapping. From a safe distance, with someone else doing the heavy lifting.

Three years isn't the time it takes to build an online business. It's the time it takes to become the kind of person who can build an online business.

Everyone starting out thinks they're six months from their TechCrunch feature, then realises they're actually six months into their three-year reality check.

If your startup's running like a "normal business," congratulations. You're building a gravestone with a better pitch deck.

Europe's startup revival begins with 125 founders. Project Europe unites top entrepreneurs to mentor & fund new talent. A necessary step forward. Europe needs investors with the guts to back deep tech from €1M to €1B without demanding premature exits to Silicon Valley acquirers.

"Playing it safe" in startups is like wearing a helmet while jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

99% of people on planet earth do not validate ideas with real customers. Which means by talking to 100 potential users you are in the top 1%.

Nothing exposes founder psychology quite like watching someone run a cost-benefit analysis on every hire but never calculating the cost of their own burnout.

Founders will spend six months debating a $60k hire while casually burning $200k worth of their own time doing tasks they should've delegated yesterday.

We convince ourselves we're saving money by doing everything ourselves, right up until we calculate the cost of all the opportunities we missed while drowning in tasks.

When VCs talk about your "compelling growth narrative," but your parents still introduce you as "between real jobs."

The real Series B isn't about scaling your business. It's explaining to your date why you still have 5 roommates despite raising $10M.

I turn off all notifications. Every notification is just someone else knocking on your skull asking if their thought can crash on your mental couch for a while.

If you think hiding your co-founder breakup from investors is smart, wait until you try explaining it to their lawyers.

The gap between "technically impressive" and "someone will pay for this" is where most founder dreams go to die.

Engineers will spend six months perfecting their architecture and six minutes thinking about who's going to use it.

Resourcefulness > Resources Starbucks watched this man turn their table into a gaming command center and had to respect the audacity.

Real insights aren't what you get after averaging every thought that's ever been thought.

While dream hoppers are busy manifesting their Series A, real founders are fixing bugs.

Your parents will fund you longer than any VC, but their due diligence process involves weekly guilt calls about your life choices.

Investors stop asking questions after your metrics look good. Parents never stop asking when you'll get health insurance.

I sat down with @armankassym.com, to break down the game of raising VC funding for startups. What we cover: 🔥 The biggest fundraising mistakes founders make 🔥 How to avoid losing control of your startup 🔥 The brutal truth about valuations in 2025 www.dotmartin.io/p/startup-fu...

Nothing makes you question the future quite like hearing a billionaire casually suggest we might need to rewrite how humans interact with each other.

VC: Tell me about your go-to-market strategy Founder: frantically Googles 'what is go-to-market strategy'"

Success isn't just about knowing what to do. It's about having enough people in your phone who owe you favors.

The biggest mistake ambitious operators make? Thinking startups are meritocracies. They’re dictatorships. www.dotmartin.io/p/startups-f...

Second time founders can skip the "prove you're not crazy" phase of everything.

Founders aren't masochists. They're just allergic to knowing exactly what their paycheck will be next month. Regular jobs are the real torture.

Everyone's worried about AI replacing senior engineers while senior engineers are still trying to get AI to stop suggesting deprecated functions from Stack Overflow 2015.

Engineers will add seven layers of abstraction to a problem that could've been solved with a checkbox.

Your users don't care about your elegant architecture. They care about getting their thing done before their coffee gets cold.

The biggest mistake ambitious operators make? Thinking startups are meritocracies. They’re dictatorships. www.dotmartin.io/p/startups-f...

Entrepreneurship is just controlled delusion.

More research does not mean better decisions. More often, it’s just an excuse for inaction. www.dotmartin.io/p/make-smart...

Entrepreneurship is just controlled delusion. You have to believe in something before there’s proof it works.

The most dangerous phrase in software isn't "we should rewrite it" -> it's "wouldn't it be cool if..."

When you're running on 4 hours of sleep and your last three meals were coffee, picking clothes becomes a Series A level decision.

Everyone's a visionary in a bull market. In a bear market, that same strategy is suddenly "reckless gambling with investor money."

Finally, AI has achieved what Silicon Valley promised. Turning simple tasks into complex workflows with better marketing.

Exit interviews aren’t about the past. They’re about making sure history doesn’t repeat itself.