Essays

On startups, failure, and building things

• Product Led Growth vs Sales Led Growth: Choosing Wisely

  The debate between product-led growth (PLG) and sales-led growth (SLG) has become one of the most consequential strategi

  5 min read

• Product Led Growth Examples That Drive Real Results

  If you're building a startup in 2026, here's a reality check: traditional sales-led strategies are bleeding money. Produ

  5 min read

• Remote Team Management Tips Every Startup Founder Needs

  If you're building a startup in 2026, chances are you're managing at least part of your team remotely. Nearly 80% of emp

  5 min read

• Product Led Growth Strategy: A Founder's Guide to Scale

  If you're building a startup in 2026, you've likely heard the term "product led growth" thrown around in founder circles

  4 min read

• Founder Market Fit: Your Hidden Competitive Advantage

  When investors evaluate early-stage startups, they're often making bets in the dark. There's no revenue to analyze, no c

  5 min read

• Validating Business Ideas: A Founder's Essential Guide

  Here's a sobering truth every founder needs to hear: 42% of startups fail due to lack of market need . That's nearly hal

  4 min read

• Remote Team Management: A Founder's Survival Guide

  Building a startup is hard enough. Managing a remote team while doing it? That's a whole different beast. Yet here's the

  4 min read

• What is Product Led Growth? A Founder's Guide

  If you're building a startup in 2026, you've probably heard the term "product led growth" thrown around in pitch meeting

  5 min read

• Building in Public: Your Startup's Secret Growth Engine

  The startup playbook is being rewritten in real-time on Twitter threads, YouTube videos, and founder blogs. While tradit

  6 min read

• Product Led Growth: The Founder's Playbook for 2026

  If you're building a startup in 2026, you've probably heard the term "product led growth" thrown around in founder circl

  6 min read

• Startup Marketing Tactics That Actually Drive Growth

  Here's the uncomfortable truth about startup marketing: twenty-two percent of startups fail because of marketing problem

  5 min read

• Technical Debt Management: A Founder's Survival Guide

  Every founder faces the same brutal trade-off: ship fast or build perfect code. Choose speed, and you'll reach customers

  4 min read

• Startup Exit Strategies: A Founder's Complete Guide

  Here's a truth that catches many founders off-guard: M&A accounts for over 85% of VC-backed exits in the last five years

  5 min read

• About Donive

  Donive exists because most startup advice is garbage. It's written by people who've never built anything, optimized for clicks rather than insight, an

  Long-form thinking on building companies

• Archive

  Everything we've published, in chronological order.

  All essays

• Beehiiv Breakdown: How They're Winning

  In a market dominated by Substack and Mailchimp, Beehiiv has carved out a significant position in under three years. This isn't luck. It's a mastercla

  12 min read

• Bootstrapped vs Funded: The Real Tradeoffs

  The bootstrapped vs funded debate has become ideological, with true believers on both sides. This is stupid. Both paths work. Both paths fail. The que

  11 min read

• Failed Startup Post-Mortems: What We Learned

  We've collected post-mortems from over 200 failed startups. The patterns are depressingly consistent. Here's what actually kills companies, based on w

  15 min read

• Why Most Startups Die at the Same Stage

  After following hundreds of startups through their journeys—some successful, most not—I've noticed a pattern. The failures aren't random. They clu

  13 min read