Minimum Viable - Nov. 27, 2025

🚚 Thanksgiving Grocery Standby Service → 10 Items or less of delivery
📱Tips for Startup Founders Raising Capital
🧟 Investors Buying “Zombie” Startups
🖊️ The Art of Staying Motivated as a Founder
⬆️⬇️ Promotion Relegation Thanksgiving Seating Chart

🚚 Thanksgiving Grocery Standby Delivery Service

IDEA: Thanksgiving is one of, if not, the best holidays of the year. Great food, great company, and great football rounds out a near perfect day. Of course, family events come with their own set of problems, but usually we can put aside our political differences and just enjoy a home cooked feast. That is, unless we forgot a can of cream of chicken soup and now the broccoli casserole is ruined. Or lord forbid we forget the mashed potatoes (that one is actually personal. My mom forgot them one year and my uncle didn’t talk to her for a month). The point is, with all of the different food items being made from scratch, we are bound to forget an ingredient or two. And those missing ingredients can completely alter cherished traditional dishes. Yes, Instacart and UberEats exist, but they are often backed up on holidays and can take hours for delivery. There needs to be a way to get grocery items in an instant without having to step away from cooking.

PRODUCT: Partner with a local grocery store and offer instant delivery on small food orders. This can serve as the ‘10 item or less’ line for grocery delivery. Operate solely on holidays to maximize revenue from surge pricing. Hire gig workers to perform excess deliveries and complete as many orders as possible. People will be willing to pay a premium especially on a day focused on food.

MVP: Partner with a local grocery store to offer delivery to a 5 mile radius to validate the idea in a particular area.

REVENUE MODEL: Transactional, charge surge pricing for holiday delivery.

EXIT STRATEGY: Sell to a large grocery chain like Kroger or grocery delivery service like Instacart for 7-10x revenue.

Publication: Geekwire

Link: ‘Product won’t win. Distribution will.’ Tips for startup founders raising cash right now

Summary: The piece argues that today’s investors, especially in the AI-driven boom care more about a startup’s ability to reach customers than just the product itself. Founders who show deep domain insight, understand a real customer problem, and articulate a clever, repeatable distribution strategy earn greater conviction from VCs. While AI hype is everywhere, it’s really about how AI (or any tech) unlocks margin improvement, accelerates customer acquisition, or streamlines onboarding. Smart timing, transparency with investors, and highlighting distribution over product polish can significantly improve your fundraising odds today.

Spin: I am sure we can all think about a product that was before its time or just never found product-market fit despite being a great product. On the other hand, we can all think of pointless products that went viral despite having no purpose *cough cough labubus. Especially when it comes to a now saturated market like AI, you are going to need a brand or exceptional marketing to stand out. Otherwise, you will end up in startup heaven with Askjeeves and pets.com.

Publication: TechCrunch

Link: Why ‘hold forever’ investors are snapping up venture capital ‘zombies’

Summary: The article describes how firms are increasingly buying underperforming, stagnated startups, “venture zombies”, and turning them profitable under a “buy, fix & hold” model. Firms like Bending Spoons have acquired former-hot names (e.g. AOL, Vimeo, Evernote) and boosted valuations by cutting costs and raising prices with no intention of selling the businesses. Others, like Curious, are buying smaller SaaS firms with $1–5 M annual recurring revenue, tightening unit economics, consolidating operations, and immediately generating strong cash flow. This shift reflects a broader trend away from chasing high-growth/exit-dependent models toward sustainable profitability and long-term ownership.

Spin: Just like the first article listed, if you don’t have solid execution, it does not matter how good the product is. Sometimes it takes the right CEO to take the reigns and make the money machine go brrrrr. Especially companies that were once very successful like AOL and simply never adjusted to a changing economy, it is going to take a very different kind of leader to get the company back on the right path.

Today’s motivation comes from a Medium blog post by Patrick Mork. Back in 2018, Mork wrote a 12 point thesis on entrepreneurship and staying motivated as a founder. He even broke down hour by hour for what an average Tuesday looked like for him. Give it a read and see what works for you.

IDEA: The grownups table at Thanksgiving is a rite of passage. It took me 27 years to get invited. Before then, I was eating with my nieces and nephews having no idea what “what the sigma?” meant. And while I enjoy my nieces and nephews more than most of the adults, I looked at the grownups table wondering how some people got to sit there over me. There needs to be a scoring metric system to chart family seating on Thanksgiving.

Of course, some people are givens for their spot. Mamaw and Papaw get their spots at the head of the grownups table while the grade schoolers stay at the kids table. But what about the college kids or the recent grads? Johnny got a job offer for when he graduates this spring (+5 points), Kayla brought her Soundcloud rapper boyfriend that no one approves of(-10 points), Darlene brought a 30 rack of Miller Lite (+15 points), Cody turned off football to turn on the parade (is now eating outside).

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