Jason Cohen — Two Exits & Two Unicorns
Jason Cohen’s journey from bootstrapping to raising millions with WP Engine provides a fresh perspective on the funding debate.
He discovered the potential for growth after two years of bootstrapping and decided to raise money.
Understanding competitors is important for developing a unique business strategy.
Rather than demonizing them, it is crucial to analyze and learn from them.
If you don’t [hire people better than you], then the company will never get better than you personally are at every function, which is a complete failure of leadership. – Jason Cohen
As a founder, who thinks you know everything, how fun is it? When other people have an idea? And you’re like, oh, okay, that design is amazing. That feature was incredible. – Jason Cohen
To me, building in public sort of pushes or nudges you towards not having secrets, not trying to be something you’re not, and trying to win on your own actual merits and weaknesses…that is a better strategy. – Jason Cohen
Being a relatable human being makes you immune to the allure of being a persona. Just being upfront about it, just saying it diffuses so much. It’s very, very different. – Jason Cohen
So why did you do it again? Because he still needed to? I mean, maybe that’s it? – Jason Cohen
And I needed to do something that gives back to the community that allowed me to do the first thing. So I started another business. – Jason Cohen
But yeah, it’s the nature nurture thing that bothers a lot. That bothers me a lot. Like not knowing if the thing that I’m doing is because I meant to… or if it’s something that I think I should do. – Unknown
Building in public is you have to build a product and a strategy in which being a secret is not part of your strategy… It’s forcing you to make a strategy of growth, and even have competitive advantage that isn’t based around some sort of secret that probably other people can just rip off. – Arvid Kahl
So there’s a lot of nice things. One nice thing is you are constantly evaluating yourself… So that kind of meta conversation is good. And then having some feedback. Now, of course, you’re gonna get feedback from all over the place online. So who knows which of it is valid or not? – Jason Cohen
To me, what’s nice about it is being able to be a human being and a successful entrepreneur and a dynamic human being and not have to pretend that I’m just sort of like this one way, but to be able to say, yeah, I have flaws, and I can talk about them. – Jason Cohen
