Hey there, I’m Wes Kao. My goal is to share honest insights and practical advice as an operator in a fast-moving startup. I’ve been a founder, marketer, and operator for 15+ years. A few highlights:
Co-founded Maven, a platform for live online courses. We raised $25M from First Round & Andreessen Horowitz, served 27,000+ students, and helped instructors earn $18M to date.
Co-founded the altMBA with bestselling author Seth Godin.
Advised CEOs of Section (Professor Scott Galloway), Outlier (co-founder of Masterclass), and Morning Brew on go-to-market, positioning, and growth.
Now working with founders and senior leaders via 1:1 executive coaching, typically on areas like setting a high bar of excellence, leveling up your strategic communication, and managing lean teams with ambitious goals.
Since 2010, I’ve written on my blog to document my learnings along the way, which has evolved into this newsletter. Over 35,000 marketers and founders read this newsletter every week. I hope you’ll join us.
New issues are published on Wednesdays at 8am ET because I love a good alliteration re: Wes on Wednesdays.
Each week, I tackle the “why” and “how” of topics to help you drive the business:
managing up
rigorous thinking
communicating effectively
positioning, messaging, framing your ideas
how to get people excited about what you're excited about
navigating organizational dynamics
creating a culture of direct feedback
setting a high bar of excellence
If you’re looking for bite-sized nuggets during the week, I write for 230,000+ readers across Twitter and LinkedIn, so feel free to follow along and learn together there.
Who is this for?
This newsletter is for individual contributors, managers, leaders, and strategic doers. It’s for you if:
You are on a lean team punching above your weight class
You believe there’s no upper boundary to how good you can be at your craft
You are ambitious and you want to sharpen your ability to execute
You want pragmatic ideas to apply in a fast-moving organization
You care about quality, rigorous thinking, and setting a high bar
I’m fascinated by topics that are deceivingly basic. Topics that seem tactical or minor on the surface, and are usually spoken about in broad strokes, but underneath there’s more nuance than most people realize. I believe by unpacking what’s usually taken at face value, you’ll have a more accurate mental model of the world and gain an advantage in pulling levers other people don’t even know exist. Almost every category and function is getting increasingly competitive. Most individuals and organizations have the same growth goals and access to the same levers. So I believe the way to stand out is by learning to see and act on what others miss.
I also care a lot about judgment. As you advance in your career, variables like skills and years of experience matter less, and your judgment matters more. Judgment can be contextual, subjective, and hard to learn, so with every essay, I try to break down the “why” behind what I’m saying so you see my thought process and can better form your own perspective.
It’s fun to be good at your job. I’m hoping this newsletter will help you get even better at what you do.
If you have questions you think I can help with, hit reply and let me know. I’ll keep it anonymous and share some suggestions in an upcoming newsletter.
Thanks for being here,
PS See you in your inbox this Wednesday at 8am ET.
