🚀 3.2.1. $4M burned. Three years gone ::: Atomic Scaling

Last week I spoke with a Silicon Valley entrepreneur building a mobile game for the last 7 years.

His track record is impressive—early employee at some of the most successful gaming companies.

And yet… he’s trapped.

This newsletter is dedicated to him—

and to every founder out there chasing funding.

3 IDEAS:

I. The Icarus Syndrome is real.

I burned $4M and 3 years of my life. Another founder in our Masterclass burned $10M and then spent another year cleaning up with investors. Nobody warns you how brutal the crash feels.

II. Most startups die from the same 3 mistakes:

• Hiring too fast
• Brute-force scaling before validation
• Obsessing over product instead of traction

Here’s the truth: startups don’t die because they’re too small.

They die because they’re too slow to kill what doesn’t work.

III. Small teams win.

Forget 20-person dev teams and endless feature lists. Some of the world’s most profitable products today were built by 2–8 people.

👉 I call it the magical pair leading a squad, not an army.

Small, sharp teams can validate a full product loop in 6 weeks or less.

⚡ Fewer meetings

⚡ Faster feedback

⚡ Clearer decisions

Stay nimble. Kill fast. Scale later.

2 QUOTES:

I.

“Be like a bonsai master. Do less, not more. Less but better.”

— Daniel Ek, Co-Founder of Spotify

II.

“The iteration of hypothesis, changes, and measurement will make you better at a faster rate than anything else we have seen.”

— Gabe Newell, Co-Founder of Valve Sofware

1 ACTION:

Pick two battles max at a time.

Master them. Get known for them.

Say no to everything else.
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That takes discipline. That takes guts.

And I’ll help you get there.

Ludovic Bodin

3x Entrepreneur, 2x Unicorn Investor, 1x IPO. Founder of BOBIC Generational Wealth and Author of Atomic Scaling

P.S. I’m on a mission to make sure other founders don’t repeat my mistakes.

I’ve opened a few Free Startup Atomic Audit spots. Apply below.

You’ll also receive:

📕 A digital copy of Atomic Scaling

🤖 Access to our LLM trained on the book + bonus materials

🧭 A quiz to define your entrepreneur type
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👉 Click below and reply "Audit" to this email. Let’s go!

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:

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​"Atomic Scaling completely shifted me, my team's, and our portfolio of games perspective from full grind mode to full growth engines creation.
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Every team we incubate or invest in, we implement Ludovic's framework as much as we can." ​
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​— Nicolas Cortes, Founder at GG's.VC