Edward Gorbis

I teach B2B sellers how to use AI to close bigger deals | $500M+ closed | I write Morning Sales ☕

I write Morning Sales ☕ — a free daily newsletter helping B2B sellers use AI to close bigger deals faster.Join 2,800+ subscribers → edwardgorbis.com-----Most sales reps are using AI wrong.They’re copying and pasting ChatGPT templates into cold emails and wondering why nobody responds. They’re automating volume instead of improving quality. They’re replacing the human element when they should be amplifying it.The sellers winning right now aren’t the ones sending 500 AI generated cold emails a week. They’re the ones using AI to research accounts in minutes instead of hours. To find warm paths into deals. To write follow ups that actually sound like a person wrote them. To prepare for discovery calls so well that the prospect thinks they’ve met before.I know because I’ve spent 15 years doing enterprise sales at AWS, WeWork, and high growth startups. I’ve closed over $500M in deals. And the biggest lesson from every single one: technology opens the door, but trust closes the deal.Today I lead a Generative AI sales territory at AWS. I see what the best sellers in the world are doing with these tools. And I see where everyone else is falling behind.That’s why I built Morning Sales.Every issue gives you one AI powered sales tactic you can use that day. Not theory. Not hype. One thing you can implement before your next call.Here’s what I cover:→ AI prompts that actually work for prospecting, follow ups, and deal strategy→ Frameworks for using AI without sounding like a robot→ Enterprise sales fundamentals that no tool can replace→ Lessons from closing 8 figure deals at companies like AWSIf you sell B2B and want to stay ahead of the AI curve without losing what makes you great at your job, follow along.📩 Get the newsletter free → edwardgorbis.com

SMB Growth

Peter Marriott just told me something that should make every sales leader uncomfortable.

"Never thought to reach out to a prospect merely asking for a referral from their company until reading the comment section on one of your posts."

Read that again.

A professional seller — someone who prospects for a living — never considered asking for a warm intro until they stumbled across a LinkedIn comment.

That's not a knowledge gap. That's an industry failure.

We trained an entire generation of sellers to send 200 cold emails a day. We gave them AI tools to send 2,000. We optimized subject lines, sequences, and send times down to the millisecond.

But nobody taught them to say: "Hey, I noticed you're connected to [name]. Would you be open to making an intro?"

Here's what AI can't replicate:

The trust your former colleague has in you. The favor your old manager owes you. The relationship you built over three years of working side by side.

AI made cold outreach faster. It also made it easier to ignore. Every inbox is drowning in AI-generated messages that sound polished and say nothing.

Meanwhile, one text from someone who knows you — "hey, take this call, this person is legit" — still closes more deals than a thousand perfectly crafted sequences.

Your network isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's the last channel AI can't commoditize.

The reps who figure that out first won't just hit quota. They'll be unhirable — because every company will want the person who brings relationships through the door.

Shoutout to Peter Marriott for the honest feedback. What's the one intro that changed your career? I'd bet it wasn't from a cold email.

Edward Gorbis 🇺🇸

I write Morning Sales ☕ for B2B sellers | Warm intros convert 10x better than cold — I show you how | Top 1% Seller @ AWS | 15 years enterprise sales | ₿itcoin

"Never thought to reach out to a prospect merely asking for a referral from their company until reading the comment section on one of your posts."



"Your price is too high."

Four words that separate closers from discounters.

I heard it on a $180K deal last year at AWS. My gut said cave. My training said don't.

So I asked one question instead:

"Help me understand — too high compared to what?"

Then I shut up.

What she said next changed the entire deal.

"Compared to what we budgeted." Not the product. Not a competitor. The budget.

Which meant I wasn't talking to the person who could actually approve the spend. I was negotiating with someone who'd already been told no.

That one question saved me from giving a 20% discount to someone who couldn't sign the contract anyway.

I've watched this play out hundreds of times. The answer falls into one of three buckets.

And it's almost never about the price.

When someone says "compared to [competitor]" — you have a positioning problem, not a pricing problem.

When someone says "compared to our budget" — you're probably talking to the wrong person.

When someone says "compared to what we expected" — you didn't set expectations early enough in the deal.

Three different problems. Three different fixes. None of them require a discount.

The reps who cave on price at the first pushback train every future buyer to push back on price.

The reps who get curious and ask better questions close at full margin.

Price objections aren't about price. They're about perceived value.

Fix the perception. Keep the price.

What's the best response to a price objection you've ever used or heard?

The 6 months that protect your ego are the same 6 months that make you irrelevant.

Justin Welsh as nailed it — most people would rather be average forever than look stupid for 6 months.

In sales, that’s fatal right now.

Every rep I know is “waiting for AI to get better.”

Meanwhile the ones actually using it — badly, awkwardly, in front of their whole team — are rewriting how they sell.

Not because the tools are perfect.

Because the reps are training themselves to think differently.

The gap isn’t AI skills.

It’s willingness to be the worst person in the room at something new — while everyone else polishes skills that are quietly expiring.

6 months of looking stupid with AI will teach you more about your buyers than 6 years of “trusting your gut.”

Your gut doesn’t read 10-Ks at 2am.

The 6 months that protect your ego are the same 6 months that make you irrelevant. 

Co-Founder & CTO @ Staq | Data Scientist

I’m a physicist turned data scientist, now a founder building The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter to help people learn from startup failures to become the top 1% founders.

I spent the first 3 years of my career helping companies solve business problems as a data scientist. Meantime, I was also a corporate trainer, speaker, and writer in data science. Then, I spent the next 3 years building startups. 1 failed, 1 acquired.

🧗🏻 This is how I got here:

• Got my degree in Physics from Nanyang Technological University.

• Started as a data scientist at SME (Titansoft), then MNC (Micron) before joining a startup (Hackwagon).

• Quit my job during COVID (wild timing), joined an incubator, found a co-founder, and built my 1st startup (Staq). Spent 1.5 years building Staq but we failed. Despite our mistakes, we learned a lot.

• Was very lost after my 1st startup’s failure. Spent the next 2 months doing self-reflection and exploring my curiosity.

• Started my 2nd startup building Leadgram at an influencer marketing agency (X10 Media). 8 months later, we got acquired by The Smart Local (TSL) Media Group.

***

After 3 years of building startups, I'm convinced that mistakes are the best teachers to become a better founder. For any startup, there are many ways to succeed, but only a few ways to die.

That’s why I started The Runway Ventures. 

Every Sunday, I analyse and share 1 failed startup story, 2 mistakes made, and 3 lessons learned with actionable tips to help you learn from startup failures.

Real life case studies, with key takeaways you can apply in your business.

No theories or BS.

99% of startups failed because founders made mistakes.

You’ll learn why and how startups failed to become the top 1% founder.

🤝🏻 Join us here (it’s free!): www.therunway.ventures

🔗 FB: @admond1994
🔗 Twitter: @admond1994
🔗 Instagram: @admond1994

Admond Lee Kin Lim

This is the lawyer letter I received.

"Remove the article. Apologise. Or we'll commence legal proceedings."

I've written 100+ failed startup stories.

Last year alone:
- 5 legal threats
- 2 cease-and-desist letters
- 1 founder tried to buy my silence

Everyone sees this: "21,000+ newsletter subscribers 📈"

Nobody sees this: Lawyer letters demanding I take down stories.

The truth? Most writers just quit.

Legal fees can kill you. Founders have lawyers on speed dial. And in Asia, truth doesn't always protect you.

But someone needs to tell these stories.
Someone needs to share the lessons.
Someone needs to help founders avoid these mistakes.

Might as well be me.

P.S. Ever been threatened for telling the truth?

Admond Lee

Helping you become the top 1% founder by learning from startup failures | 2x founder | 1 exit | Founder @ The Runway Ventures 🚀

$1.3B revenue. 50,000 employees. Supplying NATO.

CEO arrested. 10,665 workers laid off.

🇮🇩 Sritex started as a tiny textile stall in Solo, Indonesia, 1966.

H.M. Lukminto wasn't manufacturing anything — just buying and selling cloth. But he quickly realised trading margins were thin and quality was outside his control.

So he built his own factory. Then another. Then another.

By 2019, Sritex had become Southeast Asia's largest vertically integrated textile empire:
- $1.3B in annual revenue
- 50,000+ workers across multiple factories
- Supplying military uniforms to 35 countries (including NATO)

But all of it was built on borrowed money.

$500M in USD bonds. Fixed costs that didn't care if global demand vanished overnight.

Then COVID hit.

The same scale that made Sritex powerful became its biggest burden. Restructuring failed. Operations ceased. 10,665 workers lost their jobs.

And in May 2025, the former CEO was arrested on corruption charges.

Tonight at 8pm, I'm publishing the full story — how a market stall became a $1.3B empire, the 2 mistakes that brought it down, and what founders can learn from one of Southeast Asia's biggest corporate collapses.

Subscribe to read it → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Market stall to NATO supplier to bankruptcy. 59 years of building, gone.

$18M raised. 20 showrooms. 430 employees.

Then employees were told: "We're waiting for investor funds."

🇮🇩 Fabelio wanted to become Indonesia's IKEA.

Founded in 2015, they built a DTC furniture brand with local manufacturing, online convenience, and offline showrooms.

At its peak:
- $18M in funding from 500 Startups, Venturra Capital, AppWorks
- 20 experience centres across Indonesia
- 430 employees
- 750+ sub-district delivery coverage
- Unit economics positive since late 2017

They were taking on IKEA and winning.

Then salary payments stopped. Vendors waited months. Customers who paid for sofas and wardrobes were told to be patient.

By October 2022, the Commercial Court declared bankruptcy.

Everything collapsed when:
- they scaled too fast in a capital-heavy business (every showroom = monthly rent, every sofa in warehouse = cash locked up)
- operations depended on incoming investor funds to pay salaries

The business didn't fail because demand disappeared. It failed because liquidity timing broke.

Tonight at 8pm, I'm publishing the full story — how Indonesia's "local IKEA" went from unit economics positive to bankruptcy in under 2 years.

Subscribe to read it → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Furniture retail is not software. Every sofa sitting in a warehouse is cash you can't spend.

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HK$30 million of personal savings.

Still couldn't save a 33-year-old business.

🇭🇰 Ocean Empire Food Shop was Hong Kong's most iconic congee chain — founded in 1992 by two partners determined to modernise congee.

Congee was beloved. But the experience? Cramped dai pai dong stalls, inconsistent hygiene, unreliable quality.

They wanted to fix that.

At its peak:
- 30+ outlets across Hong Kong and Macau
- 16,000 bowls sold per day
- ISO 22000 and HACCP certified
- Founder awarded the Silver Bauhinia Star (SBS)

From street food to city-honoured institution.

Then 2019 hit (protests). Then COVID.

The founders didn't walk away. They injected HK$30M+ of personal funds. Sold property. Took loans. Did everything to keep the business alive.

It wasn't enough.

By 2025:
- Branches shrank from 30+ to 7
- Rent arrears piled up
- Employees chased unpaid wages
- Founder declared bankrupt

33 years of building. Gone.

Tonight at 8pm, I'm publishing the full story — why pouring HK$30M of personal money couldn't save a business that was already structurally broken.

Subscribe to read it → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

$9M raised. 34,000 bikes. 16 cities.

Then 90% of the fleet got stolen or destroyed.

🇭🇰 Gobee.bike was Hong Kong's first dockless bike-sharing startup.

Founded by Raphaël Cohen and Claude Ducharme in 2017, they wanted to solve the "last mile" problem — that annoying gap between train stations and your final destination.

At its peak:
- $9M Series A from Grishin Robotics and Alibaba HK Fund
- 300,000 app downloads
- 34,000 bikes across 16 cities
- First Asian bike-share company to launch in Paris

They beat Ofo and Mobike to Europe.

Bikes got thrown into rivers. Locks got smashed. Entire fleets vanished in Brussels, Lille, and Reims within weeks.

But vandalism wasn't the real killer.

The unit economics never worked.

Revenue was HK$5 per 30 minutes. After bike costs, operations, and maintenance — every bike was losing money. Even before theft.

Scaling the fleet just scaled the losses.

By July 2018, Gobee shut down globally.

Tonight at 8pm, I'm publishing the full story — how Hong Kong's first bike-sharing startup went from beating Chinese giants to bankruptcy in 15 months.

Subscribe to read it → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Great product. Strong investors. None of it matters if your model depends on strangers playing nice.

✌🏻

Airwallex just made traditional banking feel like fax machines.

A few days ago, they launched their AI Assistant.

I opened a USD account in 4 seconds.

Not 4 days. Not 4 hours. 4 seconds.

I was testing it — and honestly, I wasn't expecting much.

Most "AI assistants" are glorified FAQ bots. Ask something slightly complex and they break.

This one didn't.

So I tried it:

→ Told it I needed to receive USD from customers — helped me open a USD account instantly
→ Wanted corporate cards to categorise my business expenses — set it up in minutes
→ Confused about the dashboard — walked me through step by step
→ Wanted to check my revenue and spend — pulled the breakdown instantly
→ Had a payment tracking issue — auto-escalated to human support without me asking

That last one surprised me most.

It knew when it couldn't solve something — and handed it off seamlessly. No dead ends. No "please contact support" loops.

No more clicking through 10 screens or digging through docs. Just ask, get it done, move on.

Finally, an AI that actually gets stuff done.

Try for yourself → https://lnkd.in/gvwbNc5Y

P.S. Traditional banks: "Please allow 3-5 business days." Airwallex: "Done."

After writing 100+ failed startup stories, one pattern keeps showing up.

They ran out of cash.

Not because they lacked effort. The model didn't work.

- acquisition didn't pay for acquisition
- margins were thin
- no upsell
- no continuity
- revenue reset every month

Runway disappeared.

Most founders think the fix is more funding. Or more traffic.

It's not.

It's fixing how money flows through your business.

That's why I chose this book for my referral program — $100M Money Models by Alex Hormozi.

The book shows you how to:
- make customers pay for acquisition
- add upsells that increase revenue immediately
- build continuity so revenue doesn't reset to zero

Already subscribed to The Runway Ventures?

Refer 10 founders → I'll personally buy and ship you a physical copy.

If you can't find your referral link, DM me.

I only have 50 copies. Once they're gone, that's it.

TLDR:
1. Refer 10 founders
2. Get one of the 50 copies
3. Strengthen your cash engine

P.S. Haven't subscribed to TRV yet? Join 21k+ founders here: https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

✌🏻

One podcast episode. Page 1 of Google within days.

Last year, I started doing founder podcasts as an experiment. No strategy. No playbook.

My bet was simple: founders want to learn from other founders — the ups, the downs, the comebacks, the mistakes.

Karl Chan was one of our first guests.

His episode went viral. Traffic was so high that Sourcy's story on our website ranked on page 1 of Google within days.

So I tried it again with other founders. Same playbook. Worked again.

After a year of iterations, here's what I've learned:

If you're a founder trying to attract customers or investors — your founder story is what matters most.

Not your pitch deck. Not your product features. Your story.

A great founder podcast does more than content:
→ Builds trust with your audience
→ Amplifies your reach to the right people

And when you have trust + reach? Customers become a byproduct.

Only 2 slots left for Q2 founder podcasts.

If you have an interesting founder journey to share, DM me.

P.S. Your story is your unfair advantage. Most founders underestimate it — and you'd be tapping into TRV's 80,000+ network of founders, operators, and investors.

Building Sourcy.ai to help consumer brands launch products faster and better | We’re hiring!

Sourcy

They launched a HK$10 all-you-can-eat congee buffet.

It went viral. Crowds lined up. The internet loved it.

6 months later, the company shut down.

🇭🇰 Ocean Empire Food Shop was a 33-year-old Hong Kong institution. At its peak:
- 30+ outlets across Hong Kong and Macau
- 16,000 bowls of congee sold daily
- Founder awarded the Silver Bauhinia Star

This wasn't a VC-backed startup burning runway. It was a 33-year F&B empire built on standardisation, ISO certifications, and decades of trust.

Then COVID hit. Foot traffic vanished. Rents didn't.

The founders poured HK$30 million of personal funds to keep it alive. Sold property. Took loans. Did everything they could.

Still wasn't enough.

The HK$10 buffet was a last-ditch survival move. It drew crowds — but crowds don't pay rent arrears. Crowds don't cover HK$270,000/month leases.

By May 2025, the shutters came down. Employees chased unpaid wages. By January 2026, the founder was declared bankrupt — by a finance company he'd borrowed from to save the business.

33 years of building. Gone.

I broke down the 2 mistakes that turned a 33-year empire into a bankruptcy filing.

Read it here → https://lnkd.in/g-PdNq_a

P.S. In F&B, reputation is built slowly. But liquidity runs out fast.

S$6.6B disbursed. 45M users. 2 founders who've seen it all.

They're sharing the mistakes that almost killed their companies.

🇸🇬 Startup Fxckups is back — this time with Kelvin Teo, CPA ☀️ (Funding Societies | Modalku Group) and Justin Lee (ShopBack).

Kelvin built Southeast Asia's largest SME digital financing platform. S$6.6B+ disbursed to 100,000+ SMEs across 5 countries.

Justin scaled ShopBack to 45M+ users and paid out US$1B+ in cashback.

They've seen the highs. But more importantly — they've survived the lows.

This isn't a polished success story panel.

It's founders sharing the bad decisions, painful pivots, and hard lessons they learned the expensive way.

📅 8 April, 6:30pm – 9pm
📍 Airwallex Office

What to expect:
- Panel sharing (the real stuff)
- Q&A with both founders
- Open mic (share your own fxckups)
- Dinner, drinks, and networking

Huge thanks to Airwallex and Endeavor Indonesia for making this happen.

If you're building a high-growth company, you'll feel right at home.

Only 50 spots. Register here → https://luma.com/wwheggis

P.S. These two have built $2B+ in combined value. The lessons they'll share? Priceless.

$1.3B revenue. 50,000 employees. NATO supplier.

CEO arrested on corruption allegations. 10,000+ workers laid off.

🇮🇩 Sritex was Southeast Asia's largest textile empire.

It started as a tiny market stall in Solo, 1966. H.M. Lukminto was just buying and selling cloth.

By the 2010s, Sritex had become a vertically integrated powerhouse — spinning, weaving, dyeing, and garment production all under one roof.

At its peak:
- $1.3B annual revenue
- 50,000+ employees
- Exported to 55 countries
- Supplied military uniforms to 35 countries (including NATO)

Then they issued $500M in USD bonds to scale even faster.

COVID hit. Global demand collapsed. The debt crushed them.

Restructuring failed. Courts stepped in. Operations ceased in March 2025.

Then came the corruption charges.

The former CEO was arrested in May 2025 over allegations tied to IDR 1.35 trillion in loans.

From market stall to empire to collapse — in one generation.

I broke down the full story, the 2 fatal mistakes, and what founders can learn from this.

Read it here → https://lnkd.in/g5NnMXNj

P.S. 59 years to build. 4 years to collapse.

RM47M raised. $104M valuation. 500+ brands.

Then FashionValet collapsed with RM127M in accumulated losses.

🇲🇾 Founded by Vivy Yusof and her husband Fadza Anuar in 2010, FashionValet was a Malaysian e-commerce platform that promoted local fashion through its digital marketplace.

Thanks to Vivy's influencer presence (1.8M+ followers on IG), FashionValet expanded to 500+ fashion brands and launched their own in-house brands like dUCk and LILIT.

At its peak, FashionValet raised RM47M from Khazanah and PNB in 2018. Physical stores in Malaysia and Singapore. The poster child for Malaysian startups.

However, the capital became a curse in disguise.

Everything collapsed when:
- their in-house brands cannibalised other brands on the marketplace
- the marketplace model wasn't sustainable (thin margins)
- founders expanded aggressively (too many retail stores)
- COVID-19 severely impacted operations
- didn't plan for a rainy day

By 2023, accumulated losses hit RM127M. Khazanah and PNB exited with RM43.9M in losses.

The founders said it themselves: "We expanded too aggressively, and did not sufficiently plan for a rainy day."

⚠️ 2 mistakes that killed them:

1. Prioritised growth over profit — no financial visibility, no spend controls, just bleeding cash

2. Took loans to survive, not grow — by the time they needed runway, it was too late

Every dollar raised should extend your runway. Theirs shortened it.

FashionValet had no real-time visibility into their cash burn. No systems to make their runway work harder.

I've been using Airwallex — and it solves exactly that:

→ Yield on idle cash (runway works harder)
→ 1% unlimited cashback on cards
→ Near-zero FX fees
→ Real-time spend visibility

They just launched "Airwallex for Startups" — zero collection fees, zero FX on first S$20k, CFO mentorship, plus perks from OpenAI, Notion, HubSpot.

Limited spots for the startup program.

Apply here → https://lnkd.in/gvwbNc5Y

P.S. 38% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Know your numbers before it's too late.

Airwallex

People dumped their bikes into rivers for fun.

That's not even why they failed.

🇭🇰 Gobee.bike was Hong Kong's first dockless bike-sharing startup — founded by Raphaël Cohen in 2017 to solve the "last-mile" problem between train stations and your home.

$9M raised. First Asian bike-share to hit Paris. 34,000 bikes across 16 cities. 300,000 app downloads.

They beat Ofo and Mobike to Europe. They were winning.

Then the bikes started disappearing.

Stolen. Vandalised. Thrown into rivers. 80–90% of their European fleet was destroyed within months.

But vandalism wasn't the real killer.

The unit economics never worked. Scaling the fleet only scaled the losses.

By July 2018 — just 15 months after launch — they shut down globally. Users scrambled to claim back their HK$399 deposits.

I broke down the 2 mistakes that killed Hong Kong's bike-sharing pioneer.

Read it here → https://lnkd.in/gFevz7jN

P.S. Never bet your business on strangers behaving nicely.

First physical podcast - quite fun actually haha. Thanks for having me Michael Smith Jr.!

P.S. Now I know why you love Poddster Singapore so much Keith Yap 🫡💪🏻

Oracle Cloud Evangelist :: The Generalists Show :: Part-time 🦄 herder

Awesome to meet Admond Lee and get a chance to have him on the show. It’s gonna be an awesome episode !

After writing 100+ failed startup stories, the same 5 mistakes keep showing up.

Most startups don't die because the market was unfair.

They die because founders make the same mistakes.

1. They grow too fast

Twelve Cupcakes started as a tiny shop in Singapore. Two people. Cupcakes selling out by lunchtime.

So they expanded. 1 outlet became 17. Then franchising. Then other countries.

But systems never caught up. Payroll stayed manual. Compliance got sloppy.

Years later, those cracks turned into investigations, fines, and liquidation.

2. They spend too much

VC money hits the bank. Frugality feels optional.

Propzy wanted to modernise Vietnam's real estate. Over a thousand employees. Billions flowing through the platform.

Then COVID hit. Revenue dried up. But the costs stayed.

3. They pivot too slow

Hooq had big partners, big budgets, first-mover advantage in SEA.

But the market shifted fast. Content costs exploded. Consumers resisted paying.

Decisions crawled through layers of stakeholders. By the time reality was undeniable, the runway was gone.

4. Unsustainable business model

Tink Labs put free smartphones in hotel rooms. Raised $170M. Hit unicorn status.

Then roaming got cheap. Wi-Fi got everywhere. eSIM exploded.

Demand evaporated.

5. Lack of governance

This doesn't start with bad intentions. It starts with pressure. Valuations. Expectations. The fear of missing the next round.

eFishery was Southeast Asia's pride. Then a whistleblower came forward. Inflated revenue. Dual books. Shell companies.

If you simply don't make any of these 5 mistakes, you're already ahead of 90% of startups.

Just don't die.

Every Sunday, I break down one failed startup like this — so you can spot the warning signs before they turn fatal.

Join 21k+ founders here → https://lnkd.in/gdDrhgtq

P.S. Learning from your own mistakes is expensive. Learning from others is free.

Employees stopped getting paid. Vendors waited months. Customers who already paid for sofas were told to "be patient".

🇮🇩 Fabelio wanted to become Indonesia's IKEA — modern, affordable furniture for the rising middle class.

At its peak:
- $18M in total funding (500 Startups, Venturra, AppWorks)
- 20 experience centres across Indonesia
- 430 employees
- Unit economics positive since late 2017

But payroll started depending on investor funds that hadn't arrived yet.

By October 2022, the Commercial Court declared them bankrupt.

The business didn't fail because demand vanished. It failed because cash ran out before the next round came in.

Yesterday, I published the full story — the 2 mistakes that killed Indonesia's "local IKEA" and why positive unit economics didn't save them.

Read it here → https://lnkd.in/g9k7aHGU

P.S. VC money isn't revenue. The moment you need it to make payroll, you're already in trouble.

Most founders are using AI wrong.

They jump into tools before understanding their own workflows.

A few days ago, I invited Alexander Lee to run an AI masterclass for Beyond Runway —  a private founder community for high-growth operators in Southeast Asia.

Alexander is the founder of 41Labs.ai, where they design and deliver custom AI-powered business systems for companies. He's seen what works and what doesn't.

AI only does 2 things:
1. Save time and reduce cost
2. Create new revenue streams

If you can't map your use case to one of these, you're experimenting without direction.

His 3-step framework:

1. Audit your time first

Before tools, before automation — ask yourself:
- What do I spend the most time on weekly?
- What repetitive workflows drain my energy?

If you don't understand your workflow deeply, you cannot automate it.

2. Try off-the-shelf tools before custom AI

Most founders jump to "let's build custom".

Wrong move.

70% of your needs can be solved by $20/month tools:
- Fireflies.ai → meeting transcription + summaries + action items
- NotebookLM → upload SOPs, docs, videos → turn into slides, summaries, chatbots

3. Focus on one pain point at a time

Break workflow into chunks. Automate 1 small part. Test at 10–20% capacity. Increase gradually.

Think iteration, not revolution.

What NOT to automate:
- Core relationship building
- Client management (after conversion)
- Strategic decision-making

AI = 180 IQ intern
You = Final decision maker

Never let AI fully control decisions or replace empathy.

Huge thanks to Alexander Lee for sharing this with the community.

Alexander's session was one of several masterclasses we've run at Beyond Runway — curated sessions, real operator insights, no fluff.

We now have 25 founders doing $100k–$20M in annual revenue. If you want access to sessions like this and the community, apply here → https://lnkd.in/gzYZj_3t

P.S. We're keeping it small to keep the signal high.

AI systems expert helping teams make faster, better decisions | Founder @ Altivra

41Labs.ai

Fireflies.ai

After writing 100+ failed startup stories, here are the 5 common mistakes I see founders tend to make and why their companies die.

Thanks for having me Ben Bagg!

I coach founders to scale properly, Host Founder F**K up nights, and tell Founder stories @ The F**K up Fridays Podcast.

Today, we have a special episode of Founder F**K ups. We’re taking a break from individual failure stories to zoom out and look at the patterns.

The repeatable mistakes that kill startups time and time again, and we have the perfect guest to guide us.

Admond Lee is the founder of The Runway Ventures, a weekly newsletter that has become required reading for over 60,000 founders by dissecting the anatomy of startup failures across Southeast Asia. 

A physicist-turned-data-scientist-turned- founder himself, Admond has a unique lens on what goes wrong. 

He’s not just reporting on the failures; he’s reverse-engineering them to find the signals.

Today, we’re not talking about one f**k up. We’re talking about the five most common red flags Admond sees in his research - the critical signals that a startup is on the path to failure. 

This is a masterclass in pattern recognition for every founder listening.

Watch on Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gsKmWGam
Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g-QgP-wN

#Podcast #5redflags #startups #failure #mistakes

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Edward Gorbis

Admond Lee Kin Lim

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Performance ScoreAdmond Lee Kin Lim's LinkedIn Performance

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Edward Gorbis

Admond Lee Kin Lim

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Edward Gorbis's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAdmond Lee Kin Lim's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreEdward Gorbis's LinkedIn Performance