If you’re willing to accept the risks of blitzscaling when others aren’t, you’ll be able to move faster than they will. If the prize to be won is big… - Reid Hoffman

So play with your assets, aspirations, and the market realities until you see compounding potential in one of the combinations. Sure, being faster, better, or cheaper for a given job will make you more competitive. But if you find a growth loop for the intersection of what you do well, what you value, and what the market wants, then you’ve got something even better.

You turn the flywheel once and it keeps spinning on its own.

It’s tempting to assume she achieved this despite the “Nos.” But in truth, each of those 148 “Nos” was a clue that ultimately made her business even stronger. Some sharpened her view on who her user was — and who her user wasn’t. Some helped her grasp how her competition might think. And some gave her an early warning about the ways her company might fail. At the end of the fundraising process alone, Kathryn had a roadmap marked with every potential pitfall she’d need to navigate around — and the unexplored territory she could explore ahead of any competitors.