My favorite part of building a business - Ben's 1x1x1 - July 11, 2025 🚀
For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
One thought from my week.
One interesting find/tool from my week.
One image from my life.
Let’s dive in 👇
Thought from the week
There’s a lot that goes into building a business.
Ideas, product-market fit, funding, growth… yada yada yada.
But my favorite part?
Building the team. Setting the culture.
Turning the company from a PDF doc into a living, breathing, decision-making organism.
The part that gets me especially jazzed is setting values.
Not because it’s a cute exercise where we pick words like “Integrity” and “Excellence” and slap them on a Notion page nobody reads…
But because it actually works.
Good values = cheat codes for decision-making.
If someone on the team hits a fork in the road, they don’t need a manager, they just need the map.
And values are the map.
We just ran this exercise for Pono, and it was 🔥.
Clarity for the team. Clarity for me.
And a big ol’ jolt of energy for what we’re building.
Interesting find/tool of the week
Currently up in Canada doing a ton of mountain biking.
(No, I haven’t seen a moose. Yet.)
And my secret weapon?
It’s basically Google Maps for mountain bikers… but smarter.
New terrain? No problem.
Sketchy-looking trail? I check the app to make sure it’s not secretly named “Widowmaker” or “Regret Ridge.”
Because while I like adventure… I also like my collarbones intact.
Image from my life
A taste of the trails out here.