That simple three-word message – Bitcoins on pizza – has become a catch phrase among GrowthX portfolio founders. I’ve been using it to quickly and delicately advise them that they may be spending their highly valuable time on relatively low or non-priority activities, which hurts their startup revenue growth. It snaps them out of it quickly (and with a grin on their face).
Spending Bitcoins on pizza in the early days of the cryptocurrency turns out to be a massively painful bad judgment call! Just ask Laszlo Hanyecz who, in 2010, bought two large pizzas with 10,000 bitcoins. At the time, those two-year-old Bitcoins were valued at about $30. Today, even with Bitcoin way off it’s high, Laszlo spent over $38 million (or $2 million per slice) on pizza. Ouch!!
I know that one of the common occupational hazards of being a startup founder is to struggle under the crushing weight of a never-ending to-do list in the face of very limited resources. It’s especially daunting when there is no seemingly “right or wrong” answer to the question of how to spend your time when you have much more to do than you have time to do it. If you spend time on low revenue activities, your startup revenue growth is affected.
Relax and enjoy your holiday season and as you gear up for another roller coaster of a year as a startup founder, make a habit of asking yourself and your team whether you’re spending Bitcoins on pizza.