Quick Answer: No, a co-founder is not necessary. A good idea and the ability to execute on it — that’s necessary. But in my opinion, you want one anyway, and badly.

Here’s the tell. Some of you have reached out to me outside of class to talk through your ventures. I’m guessing you didn’t do that because I’ve built your exact company before — I haven’t. You did it because you wanted another viewpoint. Another set of experiences in the room. You wanted to not be the only brain on the problem. The entire consulting industry is built on this premise.

That instinct is the whole argument. None of us — not you, not me — has the capacity to think an entire strategic problem all the way through alone. I’m not talking about writing code by yourself; you can do that. I mean genuinely reasoning through a hard, multi-sided business problem with no one to push on it. Having a co-founder’s thinking alongside yours is like shipping a product and getting feedback from real customers rather than guessing. You’d never skip the customer feedback. Don’t skip it on the strategy either.

Let me be honest about what this actually feels like, because the brochure version is a lie. My co-founder at Acquis was, at times, the biggest pain in the ass I have ever met. And he was genuinely brilliant about things I’m not. I’m sure he’d say the exact same about me, in the same order. We did not agree on everything. What we did was sit down, fight it out, and work it out — every time. That’s the job. Different people, different opinions, willing to actually hash them through — because we had the same goal. That combination is worth more than the comfort of agreeing with yourself.

There’s a second payoff people miss. When you start hiring employees, a real co-founder relationship shows them a cohesive culture at the top — the way kids want to see Mom and Dad on the same page. (And for those of you without kids: I promise you, Mom and Dad do not actually agree on everything. They’ve just decided what to do in front of the children.) Your early hires are constantly reading you. Two founders who clearly respect each other through disagreements are a signal that money can’t buy.

Yes, taking on a co-founder means giving away equity. Do it. In my experience, your slice of a company, built by two complementary people, is worth more than your whole slice of the startup you tried to carry alone.

The right co-founder isn’t the person you most enjoy. It’s the person who makes the company smarter — even on the days you’d happily strangle them.

Cold is having its moment. Wim Hof made it a personality trait, the podcast guys made it a protocol, and somewhere along the way, a three-minute shiver turned into a $10,000 piece of furniture. So I did what I do with any pitch that’s suddenly everywhere: I asked what it’s actually claiming, and whether the evidence backs it.

Here’s the surprise: cold mostly passes diligence. What’s being sold around it mostly doesn’t.

What the cold actually does — the part that’s real.

The best evidence here isn’t a vibe; it’s a 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis in PLOS One pooling 11 studies and more than 3,000 people. It found that cold-water immersion genuinely reduced stress — the effect was strongest about twelve hours later — and improved sleep quality and overall quality of life. Separate meta-analytic work supports cold for post-exercise recovery and reduced muscle soreness. So if your claim is “cold helps me recover, sleep, and feel less stressed,” the science is more or less on your side.

Now notice what the same research didn’t find: no consistent mood boost, no immune superpowers, and — my favorite — a brief spike in inflammation right after immersion, not the magic anti-inflammatory reset the influencers promise (albeit, the consistent use of cold therapy can reduce inflammation from an injury). The benefits are real, and they’re specific. They are not “cold cures everything.”

Why it works — the part the bros get half-right.

Here’s the mechanism, because it explains both the high and the calm. The instant you hit cold water, your body panics in a useful way: it dumps norepinephrine (a.k.a. noradrenaline), the alertness-and-focus chemical, sometimes by a multiple of baseline. That’s the rush — the wide-eyed, “I can do anything” feeling people get addicted to. It’s real, and it’s why a cold plunge can feel like a double espresso without the jitters.

The more interesting part is what happens after. Cold is a hormetic stressor — a small, controlled dose of stress that nudges your body to adapt and come back steadier, the same way a hard workout does. Your nervous system spikes sympathetic (”fight or flight”) on entry, then rebounds toward parasympathetic (”rest and digest”) once you’re out and warming up. The leading explanation for that stress reduction showing up twelve hours later is exactly this adaptive rebound — you’re not relaxed in the ice, you’re relaxed because you trained the system that handles stress. (Mechanisms are the best current explanation, not settled law — but they line up cleanly with what the trials measured.)

This also explains the ceiling. A controlled stressor helps; an overwhelming one doesn’t. Colder and longer isn’t more adaptation — past a point it’s just more stress. Which is the perfect segue to the part you’re being oversold.

Where the theater begins — the part you’re overpaying for.

Three slides in this “deck” should make you put your pen down.

Slide one: cryotherapy. Standing in a −200°F nitrogen tube for three minutes is the most theatrical version of cold and the most hollow. The FDA’s own review found no evidence that whole-body cryotherapy treats any medical condition — and flagged real risks, including frostbite and asphyxiation. A $40 cryo session is a colder, riskier, evidence-free version of something you can do in your own bathtub.

Slide two: the $10,000 tub. The chilled, chrome, app-connected plunge tubs run five to fifteen thousand dollars. Here’s the diligence question no founder wants: what does that buy you over a chest freezer and a bag of ice? Physiologically, just about nothing. Cold water is cold water. You’re paying for design, a logo, and a sense of seriousness. I’ve tried this - both actually - and I can tell you the freezer works just as well; it just doesn’t look as good in your friend’s backyard!

Slide three: the overclaims. Fat loss, “metabolic transformation,” immune fortification — these outrun the data the second the camera turns on. The honest version of cold is unsexy: a little better recovery, a little better sleep, a little less stress. That’s a good product. It just isn’t the miracle on the label.

A quick word on the cooling beds.

Adjacent to all this is the Eight Sleep crowd — cooling your bed instead of yourself. Different mechanism (your core temperature drops at sleep onset, and cooling helps that along), and it’s legitimately supported. But it’s the same lesson in nicer packaging: the temperature effect is real; the $3,000-plus price and the monthly subscription to unlock features are the performance. A ~$200 cooling pad does the physics.

How to actually start — without buying anything.

If you want the real benefits, here’s the unglamorous version that costs roughly nothing to start.

• End your shower cold. 30 seconds to start, working up to a minute or two. This alone gets you the norepinephrine effect on most mornings.

• Graduate to immersion. A bathtub with a few bags of ice, or — if you fall in love with it — a chest freezer conversion. You do not need a branded tub.

• Temperature & time: cold enough to want out (roughly 50–59°F / 10–15°C), for 2–5 minutes. Colder and longer is not better; it’s just more stress.

• Frequency: a few times a week is what the studies that found benefits actually used. This is a habit, not a heroic event.

• Breathe slow and get out before you go numb. The goal is a controlled dose, not a dare.

• Safety first: skip it entirely if you have a heart condition, never plunge alone, and warm up gradually afterward (no scalding shower straight out).

The verdict, pitch-meeting style.

Cold passes. Of the eleven things I graded in the field guide, cold plunge was one of the few I filed under Worth It — and digging in didn’t change that. But the category is a textbook case of the tell I look for in every deck: someone pricing a discipline like it’s a technology. The discipline — get in cold water a few times a week — is nearly free and genuinely works. Everything bolted onto it is the markup.

So: get cold. A cold shower, then a chest freezer if you fall in love with it. Skip the cryo tube and the five-figure tub. The cold is real. The price tag is the performance.

The Operator’s Eye · Worth It or Wellness Theater. My experience, POV, and what works for me as an athlete, operator, and investor — not medical advice. Real caveat: cold-water immersion can be dangerous with a heart condition, and hypothermia is real — don’t go too cold, too long, or alone.

Open Tab → I dove deeper: this is the first single-subject teardown spun out of the wellness field guide. More coming — one buzzy product at a time.

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The first time, I came straight from work with a few friends from college. I made the rookie mistake of not changing out of my suit. Won Jo cooks over open, in-table grills — the smoke gets into everything — and that suit smelled like beef bulgogi for days. I’ve never made that mistake again. Lesson one of Won Jo: only wear clothes you can wash. Lesson two took me longer to appreciate, and it’s the reason I’m writing this.

The food has never changed. And in New York, that’s almost a miracle.

I have watched restaurants in this city open to a uber-hyped line around the block and close before the next summer. I have watched chefs chase trends, cut corners, get bought, get bored. Won Jo just… kept being Won Jo. Same grills, same quality, same impossible consistency, year after year, while the rest of the city reinvented itself around it.

Even the one big change proves the point. In 2010 it changed hands and changed names — technically it’s “New Wonjo” now. New owners, a few more tables. And here’s the thing that tells you everything: you can barely tell. They kept the name, kept the room’s soul, and kept the food exactly as good as it had always been. Most ownership changes are where a restaurant goes to die. This one was a transplant that took. They understood what was sacred and left it alone.

What did change is who’s in the room. When I started coming, Won Jo was Korean immigrants and Korean New Yorkers — a neighborhood institution that happened to let the rest of us in. It’s still heavily Korean, but now it’s everyone: every nationality, every kind of New Yorker, all crowded around the same smoking grills. The crowd globalized; the kitchen didn’t budge. That’s the trick to lasting decades in this city — be ruthless about your core and relaxed about everything else.

What I order, every single time:

• Beef Bulgogi — thin, tender beef in that sweet-savory soy-sesame-garlic marinade, seared right at the table. It comes with banchan: the kimchi, the cool cucumber salads, the sautéed vegetables, the leafy greens for wrapping. Building each bite is half the fun.

• Tteokbokki — chewy cylinders of rice cake in a thick, sweet-and-spicy chili sauce with onions and peppers. Korea’s great street food, and the dish I’d convert a skeptic with.

• Bibimbap, the dolsot version — the mixed rice bowl served in a screaming-hot stone bowl that crisps the bottom layer of rice into something you’ll fight over, topped with vegetables, meat, a fried egg, all pulled together with gochujang.

Let me be honest about what this place is and isn’t. Won Jo is not a gourmet restaurant — if you want this food elevated there’s Cote (trust me it’s amazing, see my Restaurant List Coming soon). There’s no tasting menu, no hushed room, no Michelin anything. What it has instead is something rarer: it’s an experience, every single time. The energy in there feels less like a neighborhood spot and more like a hip, buzzing room that happens to serve some of the best Korean barbecue in the city. I’ve brought my kids here more times than I can count — they love it. I’ve brought friends. I have never once had a bad night at Won Jo. Not one.

I’ve tried the other Korean BBQ places. The fancier ones, the newer ones, the ones people post about. I always come back here.

A city is mostly things that disappear. The few that stay — that refuse to change the one thing worth keeping — become a kind of home you didn’t know you’d chosen. Won Jo is mine. Just don’t wear the good suit.

The Long Table — food, restaurants, and the New York that survives at the table. My taste, not a star rating.

Open Tab → I dove deeper: Won Jo is one line on a much longer list. The full Randy NYC evolving list — the burgers, the tacos, the one martini worth the trip — is its own thread, coming soon.

I know people who spent three thousand dollars on a smart bed that cools itself — and then taped their mouth shut at night because TikTok told them to. Same person. Same week. That’s the thing nobody admits about wellness: being able to afford the good gear doesn’t make you immune to the algorithm. Smart, successful, busy people get sold just as hard as everyone else — sometimes harder, because they have the money to say yes.

So I did the obnoxious operator thing and ran the whole category like a diligence process. For each trend I asked the only two questions that matter in a pitch: what are you actually claiming, and does the evidence back it? Not “does it feel good.” Not “does a guy with great delts swear by it.” What does the real, cited science say — and where does the marketing sprint past it?

A note before the knives come out: this is my read from an operator and investor POV, not medical advice — and “no strong evidence” isn’t an insult. Most of these are physically harmless. The problem usually isn’t that they don’t work miracles. It’s that you’re being sold certainty the science doesn’t have. Here’s the whole field, sorted. I’m starting with the theater, because that’s where the money’s going.

🎭🧘 Wellness Theater — the emperor has no clothes

AG1 — a $79 multivitamin in a beautiful pouch. The most podcast-marketed product of the decade, and the tell is simple: there are no independent, peer-reviewed trials showing it does the things it implies — energy, immunity, “foundational nutrition.” Nutrition experts (and even Bryan Johnson, a man who spends millions optimizing his own biology) have called it a fancy greens-flavored multivitamin. If you invested as a day trader, great, but not for long-term value. Whole foods plus a $15 multivitamin covers most of it. Theater.

Methylene Blue — you’re drinking aquarium dye and calling it longevity. The freshest entry, and one that makes me wince. It’s a century-old drug, FDA-approved for exactly one thing (methemoglobinemia) — not cognition, not aging. Zero human trials support the brain/longevity claims; the case is animal data and vibes. And it isn’t harmless theater: methylene blue is an MAO inhibitor, which can cause serotonin syndrome if you’re on common antidepressants. A supplement that can land you in the ER is not a nootropic. Theater, with a real danger.

Mouth Taping — a debunked hack with an asphyxiation footnote. A 2025 peer-reviewed systematic review found essentially no benefit (a sliver for mild sleep apnea, nothing meaningful otherwise) — plus a genuine warning: if you have any nasal obstruction, taping your mouth shut is a suffocation risk, and it can mask undiagnosed apnea. Theater. See a doctor, not a label.

Cryotherapy — the FDA literally says there’s no evidence. Standing in a −200°F nitrogen tube for three minutes feels hardcore. The FDA’s position: no evidence whole-body cryotherapy treats any medical condition, plus real risks (frostbite, asphyxiation). The kicker — a cold plunge delivers the same recovery upside for a fraction of the price. Theater.

Infrared Mat — a warm, relaxing mat wearing a “detox” sticker. The heat is real and relaxing. The “detox,” “negative ions,” and broad PEMF-healing claims aren’t validated — and the brands’ own sites carry the “not evaluated by the FDA” disclaimer. You’re paying $700–$1,300 for a heating pad with a bigger vocabulary. Theater (minus the genuine pleasure of lying on something warm).

CGM for the non-diabetic — fascinating data, no proven benefit, free side of food anxiety. Strapping a glucose monitor to a healthy body is genuinely interesting, and the FDA cleared over-the-counter versions in 2024. But there’s no evidence it improves health outcomes in people without diabetes, and glucose “spikes” in healthy people are mostly… normal. The real risk is manufacturing orthorexia out of ordinary physiology. Theater for most — a curiosity, not an upgrade.

⚖️ Mixed — the real thing, oversold or overpriced

Eight Sleep — the science is real; the price tag is the theater. Cooling your bed genuinely helps you fall asleep — core temperature drops at sleep onset, and the research on temperature regulation is solid. The mechanism is legit. But you’re paying $2,500–$5,900 plus a monthly subscription to unlock features, when a ChiliPad does the temperature part for ~$200 and no subscription. Buy the effect, question the invoice.

Whoop — accurate sensor, oversold promise. Independent validation says the hardware is genuinely accurate (~99% on heart rate). The leap the marketing makes — that accurate data automatically becomes better performance — is on you, not the band. And the subscription model means the day you stop paying, your hardware dies. You can have a gold medal-winning coach, but without doing the work yourself, you’re not winning any races. Great for the data-driven; easy to over-fixate on a recovery score.

Vibration Plate — one real use, buried under viral nonsense. The legit use is narrow: small bone-density gains in postmenopausal women, as an adjunct to actual exercise. The “10 minutes equals an hour at the gym,” weight-loss, and “lymphatic drainage” claims are not supported. A niche tool cosplaying as a workout.

✅ Worth It — survived the skepticism

Cold Plunge — the practice is worth it; the $10,000 tub is theater. A 2025 meta-analysis found real benefits: reduced stress, better sleep and quality of life, plus solid evidence for post-exercise recovery. This one works. The catch: a chest freezer and a bag of ice gets you ~90% of it. So plunge — just don’t let anyone sell you a five-figure stainless tub and call it longevity.

Red-Light Therapy Mask — modest, but actually real. The one the skeptic in me has to concede. Sham-controlled randomized trialsshow measurable (if subtle) improvements in fine lines and collagen, and meaningful help for mild acne. It won’t erase a decade, and home devices are weaker than a dermatologist’s — but the mechanism is real and the evidence is there. Worth it, with realistic expectations.

The pattern

Here’s what I actually look for, and it’s the same tell I look for in a pitch deck: the slide where someone prices a discipline like it’s a *technology.* Cold exposure, good sleep, sunlight, moving your body — these are mostly free, mostly boring, and mostly work. The moment a product wraps one of them in a subscription, a chrome finish, and the word “optimize,” you’ve stopped buying the result. You’re buying a story about yourself.

Buy the ones that work. Do them cheaply. And the next time your feed tells you to tape your mouth shut, remember that the person posting it probably has no idea either.

*The Operator’s Eye · Worth It or Wellness Theater. This is my experience and POV as an operator and investor — not medical advice. Talk to an actual clinician before changing anything about your body, your sleep, or your medications (especially the methylene blue — I mean it).*

Open Tab → I dove deeper: this is the field guide. In future editions, I’ll put a single product on the table and take it fully apart, pitch-meeting style.

Quick Answer: most of the time, no. You didn’t find a new ocean. You found a slightly different way to do the same thing — and that’s a completely different business to evaluate.

Let me give you the example I always reach for, because it kills the romance fast. The iPod. Ask a room full of smart people whether the iPod was a blue ocean and most hands go up. Of course it was — it changed music forever.

It wasn’t.

There was a digital music player before the iPod, made by a company much bigger than Apple at the time: the Sony Network Walkman. It was tiny — about half the size of my Cornell ID. Solid-state memory, no spinning hard drive, so it didn’t break if you dropped it. On paper it was ahead of its time. The problem was getting music onto it. It could take a couple of hours to load a CD, you couldn’t easily reorganize anything, and it was just painful to live with.

Apple didn’t invent the category. Apple made it simple. Drop the CD in your computer, it’s on the iPod. Want to reorder your tracks? Change them in the software, synced instantly. Faster, cleaner, obvious. They did something better in a market that already existed — and they did it so well that everyone now misremembers it as the thing that created the market.

So here’s why this matters for how you value your company. If you’re genuinely first — doing something nobody has seen — there are no comps. You can’t point to a competitor’s revenue multiple. What you can do is walk into a firm that actually invests early, lay out the milestones you’re going to hit, and say: if we do these things, we think we reach X customers. They write a check against that story and that team, and whatever they’re willing to pay is the valuation. The market sets it, not your spreadsheet.

But if you’re the better-grocery-store — same game, sharper execution — then you get valued the boring, beautiful way: on revenue, on profitability, on the numbers. And honestly, that’s a great place to be. “Slightly better than everyone else at something people already want” has made a lot of fortunes. It just isn’t a blue ocean, and you’ll make worse decisions if you tell yourself it is.

So before you fall in love with the word: are you discovering a new ocean, or are you the iPod — about to win a market someone else opened first? Both can be huge. They’re just not the same bet.

Note: for reference, “Blue Ocean” is referring to the term coined by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their incredible book Blue Ocean Strategy.

_{(this link will take you to my Amazon Affiliate page to purchase and for other recommendations as well)}

Why “No Shuffle.” That’s the whole point. A shuffle button treats every song as interchangeable. A run isn’t — it has an arc, and the music has to follow it. Press shuffle on this and you’ve broken the tool. Play it in order and it does the work for you.

Here’s the arc I built into Go Run — No Shuffle — 40:56 from first stride to cooldown:

• Warm up (≈120 BPM). Diet Pepsi and Who’s Got Your Love — easy, rolling, don’t-go-out-too-hot tempo while your body figures out it’s running.

• Settle into the plateau (≈125). Illegal, Five Past Three, REACT, Sacrifice — your steady-state cruise. This is most of the run and it should feel almost boring. That’s the point.

• The deliberate dip (104 → 123). City Boys pulls the tempo back on purpose — a built-in recovery so you don’t redline at the middle of the run — then Houdini eases you back up. Most playlists never let you breathe. This one does, by design.

• Build the push (135 → 140 → 140). Overdrive, ExtraL, redrum. — the climb, right when you’d normally start bargaining.

• Peak (166). good 4 u — the highest gear, saved for the last hard stretch when you need someone yelling in your ear.

• Bring it home (145). Love You For A Long Time — still strong, but a finish you can ride out instead of a cliff.

That’s the BPM curve in the graph. Not random. Engineered.

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🎧 Listen (free) / your platform, your call:

[ Apple Music ] | [ Spotify ]

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I’ll refresh these as I train, and the full library — tempo days, long runs, the marathon block — is coming for paid subscribers. This starter is, and stays, free!

If it carried you through minute 40, do me one favor: screenshot it, tag a running friend, and subscribe so you don’t miss the next drop.

— Randy

On the Run. This is my experience as a lifelong athlete and a first-time marathoner — a pacing tool I built and use, not coaching or medical advice.

Quick Answer: give back, don’t take.

That’s the whole strategy, and almost nobody does it. Most people treat networking as extraction — they walk into a room, or slide into a LinkedIn message, quietly doing the math on what the other person can do for them. People feel that instantly, and they close up. So flip it. Show up asking what you can do for them: an intro, a read on a problem, a name they should know. Do that long enough without keeping score and one day you look up and you have a network. You didn’t “build” it. You earned it.

Here’s the part people don’t want to hear: the reason networking feels hard isn’t strategy. It’s that putting yourself out there is uncomfortable. Nobody likes being the person who walks into the cocktail party alone. Nobody likes the risk of being ignored, or hearing no. I get it — I still feel it.

But think about what you’re actually trying to do. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re trying to build something the world hasn’t seen yet. You don’t get to do that from the corner of the room. The discomfort isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong; it’s the cost of doing it at all.

So go to the thing. Send the note. Ask the question. Give first. I personally use LinkedIn so carefully to fuel this method. Only connect to people you know. I didn’t say “people you meet” – I said “people you know.” Define that how you want, but it’s the way that your LinkedIn network will become powerful.

I’ve been asked to speak at many conferences and invariably at the end of my talk a large number of attendees will come up to me with questions and hand me business cards, or afterwards they’ll just send me a connection request on LinkedIn. I never accept. Think about your network and how three years from now a good friend or colleague comes to you and says “I noticed on LinkedIn that you’re connected to Mary Smith at XYZ Co. I would appreciate it if you make an introduction.” How do you respond, since you hardly remember Mary (if at all) least of all how you know her? You’re letting down a true connection of yours. Think of how you’d feel if you were making the request.

And one reframe that took me too long to learn: relationships compound. The intro you make today, for nothing in particular, is the reason someone takes your call in five years. You’re not networking for this deal. You’re networking for the person you’ll be three companies from now.

That’s what this is.

I’m a native New Yorker — since 1983 — and a father of three. I’ve spent my life building companies, backing a few, and teaching founders at Cornell; I’ll get into all of that another time. What matters today: at my age, after a lifetime as an athlete, I’m finally doing the one thing I always said I wouldn’t — training for my first marathon. NYC, this November.

Why now? Because I’ve spent decades collecting things worth paying attention to — restaurants, ideas, workouts, books, mistakes, the occasional gadget — and quietly sending them to friends one at a time. Open Tabs is me doing it out loud. The name is the honest one: these are the tabs I actually have open. The stuff I’m chasing down, testing, eating my way through, arguing about, and occasionally getting wrong in public.

What you’re actually subscribing to. Not a brand. A person thinking out loud, across the things I genuinely live in: food and restaurants (forty years of eating through this city), training and fitness, building and investing from the operator’s seat, technology, and fatherhood — because all of it connects, and the connections are the interesting part. My one rule: specific over abstract, always. I’ll name the restaurant, the workout, the deal, the mistake.

A few things I can already promise you’ll get:

• The running playlists. I did the obnoxious founder thing and built a system that maps every track to the effort curve of a run — songs charted by BPM against the minutes, engineered to carry you through the part where you’d otherwise slow down. Not a vibe playlist. A pacing tool. A free starter one is coming in the next couple of weeks. I’m not the fastest guy out there — I’m just relentless about the details, and these work.

• Office Hours. Real questions founders and students have asked me, answered the honest way — the one I’d give across a table, not the LinkedIn version.

• Road to the NYC Marathon. I’ll bring you along the whole way to November, the tech, the good days and the ones where my legs win.

The deal, plainly: right now everything is free, once or twice a week. Subscribe and you’ll never miss it. Down the road there’ll be a paid tier for the full playlist library and the deeper stuff — but you don’t have to think about that today. Today, just get on the list.

I’m not here to be the loudest voice on the internet. I’m here to be a useful one. If that sounds like your kind of thing, hit subscribe and come run with me.

— Randy

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