Insights
The Engine Room.
Essays and cheatsheets on growth, capital and AI, from the operator who leads GetFresh Ventures. Originally published on the Growth by Design newsletter by Diraj Goel.
Start with these three.
Exit
Stop Building for RevenueMake decisions that add enterprise value every quarter — the CEO's framework for building toward a successful exit.
Growth
Sales Pipeline: From Dread to Dominate with AIA step-by-step system for turning a scattered deal list into a pipeline that tells you what to do next. Skim it, or hand it to your AI and let it walk...
Capital
These Are Not the VCs You're Looking ForA founder's cheatsheet for reading the capital room
All the essays.
New
Good People. Good Tools. So Why Doesn't It Work?I wrote "patched together" on a slide in my first weeks at Vision Critical in 2009. Here's what I've done about it since, why we're launching Growth by Design, and four questions you can ask today.
Stop Paying Your Best People to Copy and PasteEveryone's busy, yet work still moves slowly. How to find the manual drag on your key people, and hand the first piece to an AI agent within two weeks.
Market
Captivated (Part 1): The Audience That Changes Everything
Captivated (Part 2): Mission-Critical Problems — The Oxygen Customers Breathe
Captivated (Part 3): The No-Brainer Solution — Turning Urgency into an Effortless “Yes”
Captivated (Part 4): Mission Critical x No-Brainer - The Market Wedge
The Path of Least Resistance: How to Build Startups That Customers Are Desperately Searching For
The Illusion of Value: Why Founders Keep Solving the Wrong Pain
Nobody Wants To Buy Your Software
The Wedge That Sticks: Build for the Practitioner, while Serving Users - A Growth by Design Cheatsheet
The Founder’s Playbook for Category Creation - a Growth by Design CheatsheetGrowth
Growth by Design: Why This Is the New Standard for Building Businesses - Software, Services, and Everything Else.
Build Your Early-Stage Revenue Rhythm - A Growth by Design CheatSheet
Secrets of a Defensible Go-To-Market Strategy
“I built my product, now what?”- A Growth by Design Cheatsheet
“No SOC2 Yet” Guide To Close Enterprise DealsCapital
Founders
Growth by Design
More from the people who do the work. Read the field notes
Common questions.
What topics do you cover?
Our essays cover how companies grow: Growth by Design, go-to-market, revenue operations, AI, capital and exits. All of it comes from real operating experience.
How often do you publish?
We publish through our Growth by Design newsletter on Substack, and some essays also appear on this page.
Who writes the content?
Diraj Goel writes it. He's Founder and Managing Partner of GetFresh Ventures, and he writes from what he's seen building and scaling companies.
Can I subscribe to updates?
Yes. Subscribe to our Growth by Design newsletter on Substack, and the essays come to your inbox.
Can I suggest topics?
Yes. Tell us through our contact page what you'd like us to write about and why.
Recognise your company in these essays?
These work together.
- AI Operations EngineeringPut what these essays say about AI to work.
- Growth EngineeringRun these ideas on your company, in sprints.
Want the next essay when it's out?
What Diraj is working through, from the Growth by Design newsletter.