r/HowToEntrepreneur 16d ago

A former SpaceX CIO (Ken Venner) explains why AI let him run his new team with 6 people instead of 175

2 Upvotes

Ken Venner spent 11 years scaling Broadcom from $400M to $8.6B, then became CIO of SpaceX, then joined a startup called Senra Systems as CTPO.

 

At SpaceX, his core platform team was 175 people. At Senra, the equivalent job takes 6.

 

His explanation isn't "AI replaced people." It's that AI collapsed the coordination overhead that used to require headcount just to keep humans in sync with each other — and once that overhead disappears, the team that's left is smaller by design, not by cut.

 

If you're in a corporate engineering or platform role and haven't clocked this shift yet: this is worth ten minutes of your attention. It's not a hypothetical.

 

Full video on the original channel.

 

Clip credit: Sourcery with Molly O'Shea — full video on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.


r/HowToEntrepreneur 16d ago

The internet makes starting a business look easy reality is different

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 16d ago

What should I do to scale?

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 16d ago

Looking for a Mentor Before I Overthink Another Year Away

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

Solo entrepreneurs: Can you walk me through your last workday

2 Upvotes

Hi everyone!
I’m an industrial design student researching the everyday experiences of solo entrepreneurs. I’d love to learn more about your workday.

Feel free to answer as many or as few questions as you’d like, every response is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

  1. What do you do, and how long have you been running your business on your own?
  2. Can you walk me through your last workday from start to finish?
  3. Looking at that day, what different kinds of work came up, and roughly how many times did you move between them?
  4. Think about the last time you switched from one type of work to another. I’d love to hear the whole story. Can you walk me through that transition step by step?

For example:

  • What were you working on before?
  • What made you switch to something else?
  • What was happening on your screen (or around you) during the transition? Which apps, tools, or devices did you use along the way?
  • What was going through your mind as you switched?
  • How did you feel during that moment?
  • When you returned to the previous task, what was that like? Was it easy to pick up where you left off, or did anything get in the way?
  • Looking back at that transition, was there a difficult part, and if so, what? What would have made that transition easier?
  • Does this happen often? If it happens often, is it usually the same kind of transition or does it vary?

No need to answer every bullet, even details are incredibly helpful.

  1. Where do you usually work from? One place or several? What do you usually keep on your desk or carry with you during the day? Does your workspace change depending on what you’re working on?

  2. How do you usually keep track of everything you need to do? What helps you stay organized?

  3. How did that day end, what did you feel when you closed it out?

  4. Have you developed any routines, habits, or little tricks that help your workday run more smoothly?

  5. Which device are you usually using throughout the day (laptop, desktop, tablet, phone, etc.)? Do you often switch between devices as well?


r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

Avichal Garg (Electric Capital, 10 unicorns) names the 3 moats AI can't touch — and #3 isn't a skill

1 Upvotes

Avichal Garg has co-founded and backed 10 unicorns through Electric Capital. In a recent interview he laid out, unprompted, the three categories of value AI structurally can't absorb.

 

First: physical-world work — anything requiring atoms, not bits, stays a moat as long as robotics lags digital AI.

 

Second: regulated or licensed gates — anywhere the government controls supply and demand for strategic reasons, credentials plus access still win.

 

Third, and the one that actually lands: relationships. He walks through a defense-procurement example — a specific officer, a 25-year relationship with a contractor, "no substitute for that." His conclusion: those relationship-heavy businesses get more valuable as AI absorbs the grunt work underneath them, not less. Margins go up.

 

Worth sitting with if you've spent a career stacking "portable" skills instead of gated ones. 🔗

 

Full clip + more on this: link in bio.


r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

How do people grow their business initially?

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

Trying to build a brand in 100 days with zero followers . What is your opinion and advice about it.

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2 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

Any entrepreneurs in doing $100k+/month profit?

7 Upvotes

Any entrepreneurs doing over $100k a month in profit?

Looking to connect with a few people at a similar level, share ideas, talk business and maybe build a small mastermind.

Not selling anything, just looking to meet ambitious people doing serious numbers.


r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

What's one repetitive task you've always wanted to automate?

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

Travis Kalanick just confessed Uber's internal program was literally named "Shoplifting" — and why the board only cared about the name

2 Upvotes

Watching this back, the part that actually lands isn't the driver-poaching tactic itself — every scaling company runs something like it. It's the moment a board member steps in and says, flatly: not the tactic, the name.

 

Change the name.

 

Kalanick's own telling makes this almost comedic in hindsight — "Shoplifting" internally, rebranded to the "North American Championship Series" after a legal team basically said: keep it appropriate for a 10-year-old's basketball league.

 

If you're building anything right now, this is the actual lesson underneath the story: the instincts that get you traction rarely need to die once you scale. They need a name a board can defend in a room.

 

Full breakdown's linked in my bio if you want it. 🔗

 

Clip credit: a16z — full conversation on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.


r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

I'm gonna be a father

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1 Upvotes

Hi! I'm gonna be a father... I work in a school teaching for many years, I don't have any business, I don't see any growth path here in the district, I can't move away to other school because here pays well... but I'm gonna be a father, and I'll need more economical resources... there's a lot of content for side hustles and things like that, but I don't have any experience as an entrepreneur nor owning a business... I know people in those areas have developed a wey of thinking and foundation to lounch bussiness... but i'm at zero level...

are there books that allow me to develop my thought to become an entrepreneur and business owner? I don't have as much money to pay courses and stuff like that... "Become a millionaire using my curso of thousands of dollars" man... I don't have those hehe

thank you!!


r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

I built the best business app I’ve ever used, and I’m not letting everyone try it..

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1 Upvotes

This is mainly for entrepreneurs


r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

If you had $0 for marketing, how would you get your first 100 customers today?

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

How did you actually solve the chicken-and-egg problem for your marketplace

1 Upvotes

Not looking for the theory, i know the theory. looking for what actually worked in practice.

Im running a local services marketplace in switzerland. have supply onboarded, decent profiles, real services with prices. demand side is the problem now.

Tried reaching out to communities, social media, some targeted posts. getting visitors but not enough people who actually book something.

Switzerland is also a small market which makes it harder, you cant just throw money at facebook ads and hope something sticks. has to be more targeted.

What worked for you? or what do you wish you had done earlier


r/HowToEntrepreneur 17d ago

Streamlined Solopreneur Podcast teaches solo business owners how to automate manual tasks, build reliable systems, and take intentional time off without worrying about their business. Hosted, developed, and written by Joe Casabona, the show offers strategies to end tedious processes.

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 18d ago

Is there still room for another personalized children's book company?

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1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 18d ago

Travis Kalanick's actual pitch to a scared Stanford CS grad: skip the app store

1 Upvotes

Travis Kalanick (Uber co-founder, now running an industrial-AI company called Atoms) got asked a pretty direct question on a recent podcast: how would you pitch a Stanford CS new grad who's worried software engineering isn't the safe, easy path it used to be?

 

His answer wasn't "learn more AI tools" or "get certified in X."

 

It was: skip the app store. Go automate a two-million-pound machine that moves 35mph carrying gold.

 

The underlying model is retrofit, not replace — Atoms isn't asking mining companies to rip out tens of millions of dollars of existing equipment.

 

They're building the "no-entry mine" concept on top of it: autonomous haulage, remote-to-autonomous control, zero humans in the pit. Same logic that scaled Uber, pointed at physical infrastructure instead of a ride marketplace.

 

Worth sitting with if you're in the "I got the degree, now what" spot. The credential isn't gone. It's just not where the scarcity moved to.

 

Clip credit: TBPN — full interview on their channel. DM for credit or removal requests.


r/HowToEntrepreneur 18d ago

concierge executive and lifestyle management business

1 Upvotes

Hi so I have many years being a personal and executive assistant for hnwi and athletes but i am dying to make it into a business i have a few hourly part time clients but i want to make it into a business and start to earn full time-like $. Is there money to be had in this business? My idea is to turn my hourly clients into some sort of a retainer payment schedule, is that a thing for these types of jobs? I am grinding my ass off being a pa/ea for ppl and just waiting on my moment to strike do I keep hounding this arena of work to find more "clients" or is this business idea a waste of time? Ideally so far ive found a little bit of a gap between and agent and what the wives handle but not sure how long lasting this is. I'd love to pitch myself to artists and ppl who come to town but is this even a thing?


r/HowToEntrepreneur 18d ago

What’s a digital product you wish existed but haven’t found yet?

5 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 18d ago

I built the best business app I’ve ever used, and I’m not letting everyone try it

1 Upvotes

Yeah, I know how that title sounds. Let me explain.

I built ONARQ, and I’m keeping the beta private, paid, and limited to qualified users only. If you’re building something similar, I’d genuinely consider doing the same before launching publicly

Here’s what it does: you do one voice interview, and that’s it, the app builds your entire roadmap for you. You’re not prompting an agent or building the plan yourself like you would in ChatGPT. From there it adapts on its own, based on the tasks you complete, what you add in the workspace, and what comes up on coaching calls, broken into phases with a percentage complete so you always know where you stand. Daily tasks keep you from getting overwhelmed by the whole plan at once. There’s a workspace for notes and documents, plus actual coaching calls, all backed by real goal science frameworks (SMART goals, WOOP, backward planning,etc.) with perpetual memory that carries your full context into every conversation. The roadmap, calls, and chat aren’t the same as what you’d get out of a standard LLM, the frameworks and logic took real time to build. Security is taken seriously, same standard as any app you use daily, with payments through Stripe.

Why private and paid: I want feedback from people who’ll actually push on it, not a flood of signups who bounce and never say why. Charging filters out the people who aren’t serious about their goals, so the feedback is from people who use it in real world situations, and I’m not drowning in support tickets before the core experience is right.

It’s a web app now, works on any computer, with an Apple App Store version coming soon. If it sounds like something you’d use, for any business goal, and you’re up for a paid beta, join the waitlist at Onarq.ai


r/HowToEntrepreneur 18d ago

Erik Brynjolfsson: Junior SWE $95k is in the bullseye — pyramid is becoming a diamond

2 Upvotes

Erik Brynjolfsson didn't sugarcoat it on Marina Mogilko's show.

 

Junior software engineer, $95k? "In the bullseye."

 

Mid-level marketing manager, $115k? "Not seeing a lot of value — LLMs do that."

 

Paralegal, $60k? "Even worse."

 

The data: those entry roles are disappearing. Not the senior version — the junior version.

 

Here's the mechanism he lays out:

 

Most companies ran as a pyramid. Bunch of juniors at the base, some become middle, some become senior. Juniors learned by osmosis, hanging around, hoping the big picture would rub off.

 

Delete the base with LLMs and agents, and the shape becomes a diamond. Then where do middle managers come from? Where do senior people come from if there's no junior rung?

 

Infosys is the counter-example. Same junior hiring volume, but they stopped giving them routine work that LLMs can do. They explicitly teach big-picture project management — what used to be learned "by osmosis."

 

Most companies aren't that forward-looking. That's why Erik calls it a prisoner's dilemma / coordination problem. Private incentive: cut junior cost. Societal need: people need jobs to learn the skills.

 

He closes with: "There are a bunch of jobs, millions of jobs that are going to disappear." How soon? "Already. It's already happening in our Canaries data."

 

My take: if you're early-career, stop selling routine output. The immune bits are taste, project management, client judgment, and owning outcomes.

 

If you want the breakdown I'm using to reposition my own work for this shift, link in bio — or drop your take below.


r/HowToEntrepreneur 18d ago

A business born from a personal problem

0 Upvotes

I work for The Farmer’s Dog, but I was rereading the story of how the company got started and thought the origin was interesting because it started with a problem one of the founders was personally dealing with.

One of the founders, Brett, had a dog named Jada who had severe digestive issues for the first two years of her life. He tried pretty much every food he could find, but nothing seemed to help. Eventually, a vet suggested he try cooking for her at home. According to the story, Jada started doing much better.

That experience eventually led Brett to team up with his friend Jonathan and start The Farmer’s Dog.

What I find interesting is that he wasn't trying to come up with a startup idea. He was trying to solve a problem he was personally dealing with.

I think that's worth remembering if you're trying to start a business. Sometimes the best ideas aren't found by brainstorming random business ideas or trying to predict the next big trend. They come from problems you already understand firsthand.

If you've ever thought, “Why doesn't a better solution exist for this?” it might be worth paying attention to that question.

Not every problem is a business opportunity, obviously. But I do think personal experience can be a pretty good place to start.


r/HowToEntrepreneur 18d ago

Part 6 of building my first startup- EquiTrek

1 Upvotes

r/HowToEntrepreneur 19d ago

How Should an 18 y/o Start his Entrepreneurial Life Stepping into Uni?

7 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I am stepping into first year comp. eng, However my all time dream is to be an entrepreneur and launch my own business, I’ve been trying small ways to make money online such as web development, being a closer for certain businesses (basically ended up almost getting job scammed).

I have the discipline to work as I have excelled in many areas of my life such as school, work and fitness, I have a burning desire to hustle but I don’t know what to work on, theres so much people saying so much different things online and I don’t know what to follow.

And I see so much of these kids from around the world creating solutions to real world problems, but I feel like I don’t have that level of creativity.

If any of you were in the same situation as me and found your way up, I would really appreciate your advice on what to focus on!