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. Raised $25M from First Round and Andreessen Horowitz, served 27,000+ students, and helped instructors earn $18M to date.
Co-founded the altMBA with bestselling author Seth Godin. Created the category of cohort-based courses, scaled to thousands of students in 55 countries.
Currently teaching tech operators through my 2-day intensive course: Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers. Students are from Uber, TikTok, Grammarly, Google, Wealthsimple, Pinterest, Expedia, Sephora, Twilio, Spotify, GitHub, Zillow, PayPal, Netflix, Square, and more.
Since 2010, I’ve written on my blog to document my learnings, which has evolved into this newsletter. Over 50,000+ tech operators and leaders read this newsletter each week.
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, follow along on Twitter, and LinkedIn to 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. Because most individuals and organizations have the same growth goals and access to the same levers, 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.
If you want to go deeper
While I try to be as specific as I can in my posts, a newsletter is still a one-directional medium. I’m not there to see how you’re applying the concepts or to answer your questions—and there is a lot of nuance with executing well.
If you’re looking for hands-on practice on any of the topics in this newsletter, I created a 2-day intensive course called Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers. I realized my coaching rates were less accessible for early and mid-career folks. In the course, you’ll get 9 hours of live instruction from me for the price of less than one hour of 1:1 private coaching.
The course is for ambitious operators who want to continue improving for themselves and their organizations. You’ll learn alongside fellow tech operators from organizations like Uber, TikTok, Grammarly, Workday, CVS, Google, Wealthsimple, Pinterest, Expedia, Sephora, Twilio, Spotify, GitHub, Zillow, PayPal, Netflix, Square, and more.
If you’re interested, learn more about the course.
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.
