// Morning!
The U.S. gov’t is shut-down, my Eagles just can’t lose 🦅, and founders keep chasing shiny objects. Some things never change.
And for any new readers, welcome to Signal // Noise — the newsletter read by founders, CEOs, execs, and scrappy builders every Thursday. Each week, what I’m listening to, one deep dive, notes from the field, three links worth your time. No buzzwords, no bullshit.
While I Was Writing Today’s Signal // Noise:
Want the whole vibe? The running playlist is right here. 🎧
From sound to signal, let’s get this baby rolling with what’s on my mind…

The Signal
One big idea, insight, or take - grounded in the real work, not theory.
Focus Over FOMO: The Hardest Skill for a Startup CEO
When Hampton, the founder community I previously ran as CEO, took off almost instantly, I ran face-first into one of the top challenges of my CEO run: saying no.
Our early traction created both internal and external pressure and unrealistic expectations. Cofounders, investors, partners, colleagues, friends of friends, everybody with ideas of where to take it next, how to monetize further, how to keep my foot on the gas.
The flood of opportunities and possibilities was almost overwhelming (I’m not whining like a lil’ B - it was definitely a first-class problem, but one that I bet many successful founders & owners experience as well).
Do we go downmarket and build Hampton for pre-seed founders? Or upstream to serve $100M+ CEOs? Do we spin up retreats as a service? What about an annual conference? Advertising? A “CB Insights Lite” off the back of our customer data?
Every week felt like a potential pitch meeting in some potentially new direction, and as time went on, the harder it was to justify why we shouldn’t do the shiny thing.
I had to ask myself, “Am I being too conservative”? Or, “Am I letting great opportunities pass us by?”
Now, fortunately, with the benefit of hindset, I realize I was doing the right thing:
I was being a focused startup CEO.
Jeff Solomon, who’s built and invested in more startups than most of us have had hot lasagnas, nails this in his piece On Startup Focus and Founder Distractions. His point: when a founder veers off focus, even a little, the ripple effect spreads across the whole org.
A squirrel-chasing founder means everyone starts hedging bets, chasing side quests, and the original mission becomes fuzzy AF.
Noam Bardin, former CEO of Waze, called it The Paradox of Startup Focus: the better your company does, the harder it is to stay disciplined. More traction means more inbound, more “what ifs,” more people telling you what you could be.
And saying no starts to feel almost irresponsible… like maybe you’re leaving chips on the table.
But again, in my experience, saying no is the only way to win long-term.
Every yes or maybe dilutes your focus, stretches your team thinner, and eats away at the compounding effect of working on one clear problem, with one clear audience.
So what do you do when success breeds opportunities?
A few tactics I’ve found useful:
Set a single “North Star” metric. If the new opportunity doesn’t strengthen or accelerate that north star metric, it’s a no.
Someday // maybe “idea parking lot.” Write it down, revisit in six months. Most shiny things fade.
Ask the question: Does this help our best customers today, or does it serve hypothetical ones in the future?
Hampton was a private community for high-growth founders. Hard stop. 🛑
So spending time on advertising, or harvesting data, or becoming a podcast incubator, or whatever the eff it was - none of those things directly benefited our current ICP.
So I said, “no”, again, and again, and again.
Make sure: when shiny objects fly in your face, ask if they serve your best customers today? Are you reacting to focus, or fomo?
The CEOs I admire most are ruthless - they’re not the ones with the most ideas, they’re the ones with the strongest filters.
👉Takeaway: As a founder, your edge isn’t finding new ideas. It’s killing the right ones. Remember, “Focus is what you say no to.” — Steve Jobs

Field Notes
Dispatches from the field - lessons, stories, interviews, experiments.
The 3R Framework for Brutal Sales Cycles
Long sales cycles are pipeline killers — one “no” and months of work vanish into a cold winter depression (dramatic!). This week I helped a founder who sells medical transportation to hospitals, and we built a downsell strategy to keep the door open.
The 3R Framework (Reframe, Reduce, Recover) is a good framework for how you turn a dead deal into an entry ramp for future wins.

👀 A few Jawns to Check Out
Smart reads, sharp tools, or internet gems.
🤖 Big Swing |Shopping Inside ChatGPT
Ask ChatGPT “best blenders under $100” or “gifts for a coffee lovers” and it’ll now surface product results ranked by relevance, not ads. If an item supports Instant Checkout, you can tap “Buy” and complete the purchase without ever leaving chat. Early partners = Shopify & Etsy.
🎧 Sweet Pod | $46 Billion of Hard Truths Here
Ben Horowitz on Lenny’s Podcast — I feel like he’s as good a guest as you can get: blunt, practical, and super honest on what actually matters when you’re leading. From making unpopular decisions, to moving faster than feels safe, this one’s worth a listen.
📕 Great Post | YouTube as Google’s Sharpest Spear
Ben Thompson shows how YouTube is driving Google’s strategy more than search itself. If you want a case study in using one wedge product to control an empire, this is it.

Stay focused. Kill the right ideas. Have a great weekend.
And until next time, thanks for reading.
Jordan
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