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Operating philosophy

A. The 5 principles (locked in brand book)

Each is grounded in a post Gustavs has already published.

Speed beats perfection. "Ship the test. Read the data. Move again tomorrow. The day you wait for perfect is the day you lose the compound."
Real receipts only. "Show the $1,151,379 month. Show the day payouts paused at $810,628. Show the 0.43 ROAS day next to the 5.92 ROAS day. Stock imagery is for people who have nothing to show."
Money is energy. "It moves toward systems that respect it. It leaves the founder who treats it as proof of self-worth. Build the system, the energy follows."
Momentum is fragile. "A win is not a streak. The market does not owe you a second day. Treat every Monday like the first one."
Leaders grow leaders. "Ownership is the unlock past $1M. The founder who keeps every decision becomes the bottleneck. The system is people who can hire people."

B. Operating principles — how he runs as CEO

From telos/MISSION.md:

Set direction and hold the mission.
Remove the biggest constraint every 90 days.
Make the 10 decisions per week that only I can make.
Delegate everything else.

C. The 10 mindset items (Mindset & Philosophy archive)

Momentum cures everything.
Lows are tests, not problems.
Speed as a strategy.
Money should move.
Give before getting. "Not what you can get, but what can I give."
Find your destiny, don't outsource it.
Stop digging. "If you find yourself digging your own grave, it's important to stop digging — not dig harder."
Unreasonable people make money.
Timelines, not goals.
Durov influence. "We don't have time." (post-12.11.2025, after Durov's 41st birthday)

D. Voice DNA — how he writes / talks

Stoic-builder cadence. The pattern:

Hard fact. Philosophical line. Decisive next move.

Vulnerable and decisive in the same sentence. Latvian-English directness without the cold edge. Real numbers always. The lime green word carries the weight of the line, never the whole line.

Writes like he runs the business: short, real, no fluff. 5th-grade vocabulary, founder-to-founder voice. The reader is a builder, not a fan.

What he does NOT do

Gurus. Hype. Listicles without lived weight. Borrowed metaphors. Anything he has not actually paid for in cash or years.

E. North star

$100M ARR is not a target. It is the natural result of the structure we are now building.

The work is not chasing the number. The work is the structure that makes the number boring. Ownership, speed, clean responsibility, leaders growing leaders.