Helping startups to scale 🦄 ✦ Driving Halo Lab 7 → 8-figures ARR & having fun ✦ Founder with Design in ❤️

I run Design & Tech Agency helping brands become TOP 1%.

✦ $530 M raised + 9-figure exits by client startups 
✦ 500+ projects delivered
✦ 99+ international awards
✦ 4.9 / 5.0 average rating on Clutch from 80+ verified reviews

This is a real impact in numbers.

—

Over the past 15 yrs I’ve been shaping digital products and brands for category‑defining companies — from NOKIA and OPERA to high‑growth SaaS and Web3 start‑ups.

My core focus is design leadership at scale: I enter as a strategic partner, craft a vision, and lead multidisciplinary teams all the way from concept to launch.

—

I specialize in:

⤷  B2B SaaS Product Design | Guiding startups and enterprise spin‑ups from 0 to 1 — turning complex tech into intuitive, emotionally resonant experiences.

⤷  High‑Performance Digital Presence | Building conversion‑focused brand websites that turn first impressions into lasting growth.

—

Have BIG idea in mind?
Contact me directly: inquiry@halo-lab.com

Artem Borysenko

You can hire a designer.

Or you can hire a design brain.

One gives you beautiful screens.
The other gives you a product that thinks.

When you hire a single designer, you get skills.
When you hire a team that works as one brain, you get experience that compounds.

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, our teams don’t work in silos.
The UX researcher sees what frustrates users.
The product designer connects it to business goals.
The UI designer turns it into clarity and trust.
The developer translates it into something fast and functional.

Each person covers a blind spot the others can’t.
And together, they don’t just design, they solve.

That’s the difference between design as a task and design as a system.
Between a pretty interface and a product that scales, converts, and feels effortless to use.

When founders realize this, everything changes:

1. They stop hiring portfolios.
2. They start hiring thinking systems - teams that anticipate problems before they appear, align design with ROI, and build products that last.

If you’re scaling your product, don’t just hire a designer.
Hire a brain that’s trained to think like your users and build like your business depends on it.

Find you team https://bit.ly/49wqB0p

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

Founder @ Halo Lab ✦ Design & Tech Agency Helping Brands Become TOP 1%

You’ve raised your Series A.

Now you’re proving you can deliver at scale.

And every week of delay costs runway, users, and momentum.
The big question?
Who’s actually going to build this thing?
You have three choices and each comes with a hidden price.

1. The dedicated team.
(Agency/product squad model)
Fastest to launch.
Move as one unit.
Cross-functional by default.
→ Best for: founders who need traction now and can’t afford to spend 3 months hiring.

2. Freelancers.
They’re flexible, affordable, and perfect for low-risk experiments.
But you become the PM, the QA, and the glue holding everything together.
When people churn, rework kills speed.
→ Best for: quick feature spikes or marketing tests, not your core product.

3. In-house team.
The long-term bet.
You get culture, domain memory, and control.
But it’s slow and expensive.
Median SWE comp in the U.S. sits around $187 K/year, and that’s before benefits or churn.
→ Best for: protecting core IP and scaling once product-market fit is locked.

My take? Go hybrid by design.
1. Dedicated team: ship your core product in < 90 days.
2. In-house team: retain knowledge and own the moat.
3. Freelancers: plug niche gaps when speed matters.

Re-evaluate every quarter: velocity, cost per feature, defect rate.
Because at Series A, your biggest risk isn’t cost, it’s time.

✦ At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we help Series A founders scale with dedicated product squads - ready to ship fast, adapt faster, and grow alongside your in-house team.

♻️ Share this to help make a good choice.
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 Dedicated Team vs. Freelancers vs. In-House 

“We need a redesign.”

This is how half of discovery calls begin.

However, 10 minutes into the discussion and it’s obvious - they need a problem statement.

The product is not broken. 
The understanding of the problem is.

Founders say: “Our checkout flow is poor.” 
Users say: “I don’t trust this payment form.”

The difference? One adds a feature. The other builds the right feature.

A good problem statement is not an educated guess.
It’s that moment that your research turns into clarity. 
It translates chaos into focus.

Here is what strong product teams do completely differently:

1. They do not start their process around “what to build.” 
They start their process around “who’s struggling – and why.”

2. They use data and real voices, not assumptions. 

3. They state the problem in a way that the whole team- designer, PM, and CEO can read and ingest in an instant.

When you get the problem right the design almost builds itself.
Your next big UX breakthrough will not come from adding another feature. 
It will come from rewriting the question you are trying to answer.

♻️ Share if it resonates.
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The hardest thing about building an AI product is getting people to trust what it does.

You can create a great model all you want, but as soon as users feel the slightest bit of uncertainty, they are going to ponder, hesitate, and leave.

When founders build trust into the product experience, three things happen fast.

1. Users stop second-guessing and start exploring. First session activation goes up because they understand the what and whys.

2. Every click of trust compounds itself into usage, retention, and upsell. Without trust, the best AI feature will remain unused.

3. You do not have to wait for product market fit to learn how users actually feel. Trust patterns can save you weeks of guessing, and reduce the launch chaos.

4. Transparent UX with design-based trust cuts confusion before it even reaches support. No more "I am left wondering why it said that?" tickets or bad reviews for hallucinations.

Most AI products are built for power. 
The real winners are built for confidence.

✦

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we help founders design AI products users trust enough to actually use and pay for.
If that’s the stage you’re at, let’s chat.

♻️ Share this to help others build AI products.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

UI for AI products

Most companies still treat a design system as a visual asset.

In reality, it behaves more like infrastructure.

When a design system is used by a company, it can help reduce costs for all the products the company already has. Also, using a design system can reduce the costs of making new products by different teams in the company.

Here’s where the real financial return shows up:

1. Reduction of duplicated efforts across teams.

When multiple teams are rebuilding and recreating similar elements, there are three new associated costs for each team: a new design, a new coded version, and the need for each team to perform QA. With the implementation of a design token system, this cycle is not necessary.

2. Component scalability across product portfolios.

When a company builds a system to support a group of products, they make more money by creating one design and using it many times for all the products in the group. This is why companies have been able to reduce the time it takes to get products to market by 20-40% without adding more staff.

3. Patterns decrease cognitive load and time spent deciding.

Once an organization sets up design patterns to support their onboarding, dashboards, permission systems, navigational structures, and error state designs, teams won't have to argue about the most important design principles. 

4. The cost of change decreases dramatically.

With no design system: A rebrand, accessibility update, or micro-interaction change triggers weeks of redesign and recoding..
With a design system: Update the source → every product updates automatically.

✦

A strong design system improves:

- Time to market.
- Cross-platform trust.
- Developer throughput.
- Conversion and activation.

✦

Build your design system for the next three products you launch. 
You will begin seeing returns on your investment in the early years.

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

Your product already makes users feel something.

The question is what?

If your users don’t feel the right thing, they won’t do the right thing.
They’ll bounce, hesitate, mistrust, churn.

Over 500+ products, I’ve learned that the best products aren’t the ones with the most features. They’re the ones with the clearest emotional tone.

Every product leans into one of three emotional modes.

1️⃣ Calm → “I feel safe here.”
Perfect for: health, finance, productivity, wellness.
How it’s built: soft palettes, clear language, gentle interactions, no pressure.

2️⃣ Competent → “I trust this.”
Perfect for: SaaS, B2B, dashboards, enterprise.
How it’s built: structured layouts, predictable behavior, strong signals of reliability (performance, clarity, proof).

3️⃣ Empowering → “I can do this.”
Perfect for: fitness, learning, creativity.
How it’s built: energetic visuals, progress celebrations, milestones, personalization.

When the emotional tone doesn’t match the product’s purpose:
1. A data tool feels playful → trust drops.
2. A wellness app feels intense → stress rises.
3. A learning app feels sterile → motivation dies.

Emotion either reduces friction or adds it. 
What to do before your next sprint.

✦ Pick your emotional tone before UI design.
✦ Build it into your design system (colors, spacing, motion, language)
✦ Test the gut reaction early (“How did this flow make you feel?”)
✦ Make sure every new feature reinforces that emotional mode.

We design products that make users feel the right thing.
It’s about building experiences users want to return to.

♻️ Share this to help others catch hearts.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

You didn’t just hire a team.

You hired a risk.

That’s what most founders realize by Sprint 2, but by then, momentum is already bleeding out.

What starts as “a good fit” quickly turns into:

→ Delayed updates.
→ Vanishing senior talent.
→ Quiet budget drift.
→ Process that feels more defensive than proactive.

It rarely breaks all at once.
It just slowly stops working.

At Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner, we’ve inherited dozens of these “almost there” projects.
And we’ve learned to spot the early signals that most teams ignore.

Here’s how experienced founders filter for risk before it shows up on a roadmap:

1. Ask who stays after kickoff.
Bait-and-switch team structures are common. 
Real partners show you the core team from day one.

2. Low prices don’t remove cost. 
Into rework. Into scope creep. 
Into things no one “thought about” until it’s too late.

3. Their process should flex around your product.
If their workflow can’t adapt to your stack, roadmap, or internal rhythm, you're buying overhead.

4. Silence isn’t a “working phase.” It’s a liability.
Communication isn’t a nice-to-have. 
It’s part of delivery.

5. IP, code ownership, and access - settle it early and in writing.
No smart founder leaves this vague.

6. Domain experience is a requirement.
A capable team isn’t enough. 
You need people who’ve solved your kind of problems before.

7. If there’s no post-launch plan, you’re the plan.
Support, iteration, and continuity should already be mapped.

We partner with founders who know that reliable execution is rare and valuable.
If that’s where you are, you’ll feel the difference from day one.

♻️ Share this to help others fint a right partner.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

I can’t remember the last time I used an app that didn’t ask me to share, rate, or “engage.”

Every product today (even in B2B) is designed for an algorithm.
Google’s. LinkedIn’s. App Store’s. TikTok’s.

We’ve quietly shifted from designing for people to designing for distribution.
The algorithm rewards speed, volume, stickiness.
And so we chase it - with notifications, widgets, and “viral moments.”

But something gets lost along the way.

When was the last time a product was designed for:
✦ Silence?
✦ Reflection?
✦ A human mistake that wasn’t punished instantly?

You've trained our teams to ask,
“How will this perform in search?”
“Will this trigger engagement?”
“Will this help retention metrics?”

Not:

“Will this make someone feel seen, understood, or at ease?”
We measure time-on-page, not peace of mind.
We optimize funnels, not flow.

And in doing so, we risk turning our users into an interface between two algorithms, feeding signals back and forth.

Maybe the next wave of great design won’t be about more engagement.
Maybe it’ll be about creating digital spaces that breathe.
Moments that respect our attention instead of stealing it.
Because the best products don’t just perform, they pause.
They make us feel something.

What’s one product you’ve used lately that still feels designed for humans, not algorithms?

♻️ Share this if it resonates.
🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

I sat in a meeting where a CEO said something I'll never forget:

“I don’t need it to look beautiful. I need it to make money.”

At the time, it stung a little.
We’d poured weeks into crafting the perfect interface.
But he was right.

If your design doesn't move revenue or retention, it's wallpaper.
That moment changed how we work at Halo Lab — Your Digital Partner.
Now, every design decision starts with a business question:

1. What does this screen earn?
2. How does this feature reduce churn?
3. Can this interaction build trust faster?

We stopped chasing “nice-to-have” visuals and started designing for impact: shorter time to value, higher conversion, more clarity.

Last quarter, applying this thinking helped a SaaS client cut trial-to-paid time by 40%. Design decisions became revenue decisions.

What's one screen in your product that looks great but doesn't move the needle?

🔔 Follow Artem Borysenko for more updates!

Founder | Startup Consultant | One Exit | Angel Investor | Fundraising

I am an expert in my field with 18+ years of diverse business experience, from startups to established enterprises with one exit under my belt!

My business journey is not linear and has been a blend of creativity, strategy and hustle!

I have guided and collaborated with hundreds of startups from Pre-seed to Series D. My expertise is helping startups tell their story to get funded and accelerate growth!

I am very good at preparing:

✔Pitch Decks: a compelling story to setup investor meetings 
✔Executive Summaries: a comprehensive but concise overview of startups condensed to 1-page 
✔Sales Presentations: a winning deck to land more clients and/or strike partnerships.
✔Business Plans: a detailed plan covering your operation from A to Z 
✔Branding: brand guidelines including visual identity, logo, color palette, and typeface.
✔Financial Projections: an editable and dynamic model with 3-5 year projections, balance sheet, and cash flow statement

My experience spans many sectors: Technology, Education, Real Estate, Fintech, Fashion, Health and Wellness, SaaS, Consumer Goods, Life Sciences, Adtech, Media and entertainment, Legal, Hospitality, Tourism, Financial Services, and Aerospace.

Why Work With Me?

✔Proven Success: $1M+ sales generated on Upwork and an approach that's helped startups raise $2B+
✔Customized Strategy: Each project is tailored to peak investor interest and secure capital
✔Efficienct: Ensured maximum productivity within the agreed timeline
✔Credibility: Endorsed by clients as professional, approachable, and exceeding expectations

I'm excited to be part of your success with a proven process and a passion for seeing startup ideas come to life.

✉️ Send me a message and let’s discuss

Peter Korbel

Your potential = how much uncertainty you can handle.

The magic you’re looking for is in the:

Uncertainty you’re avoiding.

Most people never do anything great.
Because they don’t get this.

They pick the safe route.
The certain path.
The easy choice.

Because of:

Conditioning. Parents. Teachers. Peers.

But look closer:

→ Starting a business? Uncertain.
→ Talking to someone new? Uncertain.
→ Learning a skill? Uncertain.

Great things only happen when you step into the unknown.

At first, it’s uncomfortable.

But repeat it enough times . . .
And uncertainty becomes your new certainty.

That’s how growth works.

Not in the safe zone.
In the uncertain one.

Agree?

---

For more of my content, check out my newsletter Startup Anatomy.
https://lnkd.in/gCcWi-iw

We break down founders like you who built something real online — how they did it, what worked, and what they’d do differently.

---

Let’s go!

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

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Startup Strategist | Founder | One Exit | Angel

Uncertainty Wins

How do you get funding for your startup?

It comes down to three things:

1️⃣ Market Size
Customers × price per year.
If it’s under $2B?

Investors don’t care.

2️⃣ Risk
At every stage, there’s a “biggest risk.”
Idea stage? Will anyone buy?
One customer? Will more people buy?
Multiple customers? Will they stay?

Your job: kill the risk before the next stage.

3️⃣ Volume
Don’t pitch 5 - 10 investors.
People hear 100+ “no’s” before the first yes.
You need dozens of intros.

Every. Single. Week.

And when you finally get to the pitch, you have to nail it.

Raising investment isn’t magic. It’s a formula.

Big market.
De-risk the business.
Relentless outreach.

Mix that with the right pitch skills, and you’ll be well on your way to landing your first check.

What do you think?

Let’s go!

---

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

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How do I get funding for my startup?

Why do some startup ideas die fast?

They don’t start with:

A framework!

Most founders dive into building right away.

They begin with a cool solution, 
or a new piece of tech.

Then they search for a problem to fit it.

The result: Wasted time and confusion.

This is the "solution in search of a problem" trap.

It makes growth painfully slow.

Instead, use this simple 3-part framework.

1️⃣The Problem

Define your initial condition.
Who has it?
Is it urgent, expensive, or mandatory?

That’s your foundation.

2️⃣The Solution

This is your experiment.

You don't need a finished product.
You need proof it solves the pain.

3️⃣Your insight
Show your unfair advantage.
Why will you win and grow quickly?
Nail this narrative before you write a single line of code.

It turns an idea into a viable path.

What’s the problem you’re solving first?

---

For more of my content, check out my newsletter Startup Anatomy.
https://lnkd.in/gCcWi-iw

We break down founders like you who built something real online — how they did it, what worked, and what they’d do differently.

---

Let’s go!

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

And follow Peter Korbel for more content!

 The Startup Trifecta

If users do not stay, nothing else matters.

Here’s why:

→ The retention curve

Plot % of monthly active users vs. days since acquisition.

If the curve flattens → you have product-market fit.

If it keeps dropping → you don’t.

A flat line = users are sticking around.

That’s the signal you’ve built something worth scaling.

If your curve doesn’t flatten:

Don’t chase virality.

Don’t hire a “growth hacker.”

Don’t pour fuel on a weak fire.

Most startups think they have product-market fit when they don’t.

That’s why growth stalls.

Great products grow.

Weak products don’t.

Retention isn’t a metric. It’s the truth.

What do you think?

Let’s go!

--

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

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Want to work with high-ticket clients?

Understand what actually moves them.

Here’s what I’ve learned after working with hundreds of founders:

✅ Make them more money
They’ll say yes faster if—
your offer directly increases revenue or profit.

✅ Save their time
Time is their most precious asset. 
If your service buys them back hours, it’s a win.

✅ Boost their status
Clients like looking smart — to their team, board, or audience. 
If your work helps them win recognition, you’re in.

✅ Prevent risk
If you can shield them from failure or embarrassment—
they’ll value you even more.

You don’t need to guess anymore.

Frame your offer through these four lenses,
and watch your conversions go up.

What do you think?

Let’s go!

---

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

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What motivates high ticket clients

Getting funded isn’t about revenue, product, or plans.

Every investor is driven by two forces:

Greed and fear

That’s it.
That’s the whole game.

When you walk into a pitch, they’re silently asking:

👉 How does this make me rich?
👉 What could go wrong?

Your job is to hit both.

First, fuel the greed.
Forget the tech deep dive.
Forget the market analysis.

Tell a story.

Show the arc where you win big . . .
And they win even bigger.

Then, face the fear.
Never hide the risks.
If you do, they’ll assume the worst.

Instead, say it straight:

“Yes, this is risky.”
Here’s the risk.
Here’s how we’ve already thought about beating it.

That’s what lands.

Big upside.
Clear plan.
Fear disarmed.

What do you think?

Let’s go!

---

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

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Stop overthinking your business idea.

The companies that win? 

They’re the ones constantly adapting and adjusting.

Here’s the play:

➡️ Start Narrow
Own a small segment.
Big players won’t waste time there.

➡️ Chase Fit, Not Size
Even if it’s “only” 20M people . . .
If unit economics make sense, build it.

➡️ Grow in Steps
One niche → next niche → next niche.
Each win compounds into the next.

➡️ Small TAMs First
Big TAMs attract giants.
Small TAMs let you build network effects without burning millions.

➡️ Expand Later
Prove it small.
Then go wide.

That’s how you build something that lasts.

Agree?

Let’s go!

---

Subscribe to my Substack newsletter here:
https://lnkd.in/gCcWi-iw

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 Stop Overthinking Your Product Idea

There’s no formula for building a company.

And anyone who says there is . . .
hasn’t built one.

But if there was a formula—
it would look like this: 👇

1️⃣ Pick a great co-founder

You can go solo.
But it’s like raising a kid alone. 
Possible? Sure.
Smart? Probably not.

Find someone with:

→ High intelligence (they should make you feel slower)
→ High energy (they never need a push)
→ High integrity (because a smart, hardworking crook is a nightmare)

2️⃣ Pick a large market

Ideas are cheap.
Markets aren’t.

Find a space that’s massive, growing fast, and you actually care about.
When you live in that space long enough—
the right idea finds you.

3️⃣ Build before you raise

Don’t lead with “I’ve got a great idea.”
Lead with proof.

→ Build the MVP
→ Test it
→ Iterate
→ Get to product-market fit
→ Then raise from people you trust

No hacks.
No investor magic.
Just people, passion, and persistence.

Because the real formula?

There isn’t one.

You do it because you love it.

Even when everyone says it’ll never work.

---

For more of my content, check out my newsletter Startup Anatomy.
https://lnkd.in/gCcWi-iw

We break down founders like you who built something real online.
How they did it, what worked, and what they’d do differently.

---

Let’s go!

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

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The Real Startup Formula

Startup Anatomy // Newsletter Edition 10

Most founders chase growth.

Andrew Gazdecki chased exits.

As a teen, he flipped baseball cards on eBay.
In college, he built and sold a job board.
By his 20s, he bootstrapped a SaaS startup to $10M ARR.

Then sold it.

Twice more.

Instead of treating exits like a one-time event,
Andrew turned them into a career.

And then he built the engine behind thousands of founder exits.

Acquire.com

2,000+ startups sold.
$500M+ in deals.

He didn’t make M&A complicated.
He made it simple.
Transparent.
Even fun.

Most people think exits are only for unicorns.
Andrew proved everyday founders can win too.

This week on Startup Anatomy, I’m breaking down:

→ How Andrew built and sold multiple startups before 30
→ Why MicroAcquire became Acquire.com
→ The marketplace model behind $500M in exits
→ How brand + transparency beat traditional M&A

You don’t need billions to exit.
You need a system.

Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/gjCyuYqE

—

Let’s go.

♻ Repost to help more builders see another path.

And follow Peter Korbel for more stories from founders who chose differently.

The #1 mistake founders make?

They pull the sales trigger way too early.

Here’s what happens:

→ They finish the product
→ They think it’s a sales problem now
→ They start hiring and spending

But sales can hide the real truth:
You don’t have product–market fit yet.

And GTM isn’t cheap.
It’s insanely expensive.
Way more expensive than R&D.

Ten years ago, it got cheaper than ever to start a company.
AWS. Open source. Lower legal costs.
But rounds kept getting bigger.

Why?

Because the easier it got to start . . .
The harder and more expensive it is, the more it has to stand out.

Here’s the trap:

Most founders are product people.
They hate selling.
So they hire a VP of Sales way too soon.

Big mistake.

Because you, the founder, are the only one who can feel a real market pull.

Do the sales yourself.

Wait as long as you can.

Then wait a little longer.

That’s how you avoid burning through $10M without ever finding product–market fit.

Sales don’t fix the problem.
Product–market fit does.

What do you think?

Let’s go!

---

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Startup Anatomy // Newsletter Edition 8

Not every great founder sells.

Some keep building and win bigger.

Nathan Barry didn’t start with a grand plan.

He started broke, freelancing, and launching tiny projects that barely worked.

An ebook made $12,000 in a day.
Another crossed $200,000.
That was the spark.

Then came the risky part.

He killed his profitable business.
Put his own money on the line.
And went all in on a struggling email tool called ConvertKit.

For a long time, it looked like a mistake.

Revenue dropped.
Friends told him to quit.
Even investors said shut it down or commit fully.

He chose fully.

He onboarded customers by hand.
Migrated email lists for free.
Did things that made no sense on a spreadsheet.

And slowly, it worked.

Years later, ConvertKit became the operating system for creators.
$45M+ ARR.
Tens of thousands of customers.
A $200M valuation, without selling control.

When the acquisition offer came, Nathan already knew the answer.

This week on Startup Anatomy, I break down:

How a freelancer turned ebooks into leverage
Why killing a “successful” business unlocked something bigger
What most founders get wrong about exits
And how playing the long game quietly builds real freedom

From $1K MRR to a nine-figure company.
From pressure to sell, to the confidence to wait.

Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/guf6Kkm7

—

Let’s go.

♻ Repost to help more builders see another path.

And follow Peter Korbel for more stories from founders who chose differently.

You don’t “find” clarity. You earn it.

By figuring out what you actually want.

Most founders wait for the perfect idea.

The right plan.

The “aha” moment.

That moment doesn’t exist! 

Clarity comes from:

→ Planing
→ Executing
→ Testing
→ Failing
→ Iterating
→ Repeating

Here’s the real framework:

1️⃣ Guess what you want
See a problem in the market

2️⃣ Do everything in your power to get it
Go all in on solving it

3️⃣ Realize it was just an experiment
Learn from the outcome

4️⃣ Start over—with more clarity
Refine and pivot

And then?
Repeat steps 2 - 4 for life.

That’s how you learn what you don’t want.
That’s how you sharpen what you do want.
Every cycle = higher highs and lower lows.
But also deeper clarity.

That’s the founder’s edge:

Not certainty.
Not perfection.

But the ability to keep experimenting.

Agree?

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For more of my content, check out my newsletter Startup Anatomy.
https://lnkd.in/gCcWi-iw

We break down founders like you who built something real online — how they did it, what worked, and what they’d do differently.

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Startup Anatomy // Newsletter Edition 9

Most founders want an exit. 

Matt Gray wanted an engine.

In 2012, he built a coding bootcamp. 
In 2014, he scaled the world’s biggest cannabis site. 
By 2024, he hit 12K leads a month with $0 ad spend.

He stopped hustling and started building systems.

Most people think growth means working harder. 
Matt proved it means working smarter.

He scaled Herb to $14M and 14M followers. 
But he realized the "product" wasn't the goal. 
The system was.

He turned those growth playbooks into Founder OS. 
Now, 4,000+ founders use his frameworks to escape the hustle trap.

This week on Startup Anatomy, I’m breaking down:

→ The "Content GPS" for massive reach
→ How one post becomes 30 pieces of content
→ The "Ladder" model for scaling offers
→ Why quitting drinking was his best business move

Stop burning out. Start building an OS.

Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/gDRtGjMP

—

Let’s go.

♻ Repost to help more builders see another path.

And follow Peter Korbel for more stories from founders who chose differently.

Want to think like billion-dollar founders?

Read this before you build another thing.

Most startups don’t fail because the idea is bad.

They fail because the founder playbook is broken.

Here are 8 rules to fix that:

1️⃣ Goals Make Demands
Big goals aren’t free.
They demand energy, focus, and a relentless push.
You either rise to meet them or fall short.

2️⃣ Perfection Is a Myth
Waiting for perfection kills momentum.
Every option has pain.
The smart move? Choose the pain that pays off.

3️⃣ Define Your MTP
Your Massively Transformative Purpose is fuel.
Real people. Real stories.
That’s what carries you when money won’t.

4️⃣ Burn the Boats
Backup plans breed hesitation.
Want momentum?
Cut the escape routes. Commit fully.

5️⃣ Think in First Principles
Forget “that’s impossible.”
Break the problem into parts.
Rebuild from scratch.
Find your own way through.

6️⃣ Linear ≠ Exponential
15% growth feels good, until it doesn’t.
Exponential doesn’t come from “more.”
It comes from something different.

7️⃣ Less Is More
Resources are limited.
Time. Money. Energy. Talent.
Focus them where they matter.
Everything else is noise.

8️⃣ Build a Financial Model
A business model shows what.
A financial model shows how.
Know your levers.
Pull the right ones.

8 rules.
One mindset.

Which one of these rules hits you hardest right now?

---

For more of my content, check out my newsletter Startup Anatomy.
https://lnkd.in/gCcWi-iw

We break down founders like you who built something real online — how they did it, what worked, and what they’d do differently.

---

Let’s go!

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

And follow Peter Korbel for more content!

8 principles that will make you UNSTOPPABLE

The AI race is officially over.

And things are getting interesting.

Everyone keeps arguing about
“Which AI model is best?”

In 2026, it won’t matter.

The real winners won’t be the smartest models.
They’ll be the smartest users.

Here are 6 AI trends shaping 2026, 
based on insights from McKinsey, OpenAI, Stanford, and top analysts 👇

1️⃣ AI models are becoming commodities

The gap between top models is shrinking fast.
They’re getting cheaper.
They’re getting similar in performance.

→ Focus on integration and real use cases.

2️⃣ Workflows will beat AI agents

Everyone is hyping “autonomous agents.”

But real value is coming from AI built into workflows.

Companies redesigning processes with AI are already cutting:

• Costs by 50%
• Errors by 50%+
• Time by 60%

→ Turn your best prompts into repeatable systems.

3️⃣ The technical divide is disappearing

Non-technical teams are now:
• Writing code
• Automating reports
• Building dashboards

AI is becoming the great equalizer.

→ If you understand the business problem, 
you can now build the solution too.

4️⃣ Prompting is fading. Context is everything.

AI doesn’t struggle with wording anymore.

It struggles with missing information.

The winners will be the ones who:

• Organize their files
• Centralize their data
• Feed AI real context

→  Clean systems will beat clever prompts.

5️⃣ Ads are coming to chatbots

Not because companies are greedy.
Because it’s how powerful AI stays accessible for everyone.

Just like YouTube.

→  Free AI at scale will likely be ad-supported.

6️⃣ AI is moving into the physical world

Robots are already:

• Driving cars
• Running warehouses
• Optimizing factories

And they’re getting better through software updates.

→ Machines are becoming platforms.

There are no real “AI experts” yet.

This is a reset moment.

Those who learn quickly will win.

---

For more of my content, check out my newsletter Startup Anatomy.
https://lnkd.in/gCcWi-iw

We break down founders like you who built something real online — how they did it, what worked, and what they’d do differently.

---

Let’s go!

♻ Repost to help your network reach its full potential.

And follow Peter Korbel for more content!

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