"The Unfiltered Playbook: What Founders Actually Need to Know to Survive"

Hard-won lessons on perception, deception, and unconventional strategy that most entrepreneurs learn too late—or never.

Table of Contents

Introduction: This Book Is Not Going to Tell You What to Think 4

Chapter 2: Mastering Perception: Seeing in Greyscale, Not Black and White 6

Chapter 3: The Systems Approach: Input, Process, Output 7

Chapter 4: The Power of Experimentation: How I Proved My Phone Is Listening 8

Chapter 6: The World Runs on Deception 10

Chapter 7: Context Is King: Why "Move Fast and Break Things" Will Kill You 11

Chapter 8: Spotting the Charlatan: The Lamborghini in the Driveway 18

Chapter 9: Engagement Farming: Why That LinkedIn Story Is (Probably) Fake 22

Chapter 12: Power Controls the Narrative: History, Whistleblowers, and Why You Can't Trust AI 25

Chapter 13: "Need" vs. "Want": Why Y Combinator is Wrong 26

Chapter 14: The Boulder and the River: How to Manufacture Need 32

Chapter 16: The Most Important Filter: Intent > Persona 37

Chapter 17: The Channel Degradation Law: Why the Golf Course Is Now Useless 43

Chapter 18: The Real #1 Skill 48

Chapter 19: Guerrilla Marketing 49

Chapter 20: Inbound is King: How to "Ride the Wave" 52

Chapter 21: The "Looky-Loo" Problem: Identifying Real Buyers 53

Chapter 22: The Marketplace Trap: When Your Partner Becomes Your Competitor 54

Chapter 23: The "Smart People" Problem: Why Guts Trump Grades 55

Chapter 24: The Funding Trap: Adults Begging for Robux 56

Chapter 25: Old Fish vs. Young Fish: How Predators Rebrand to Hunt the Youth 56

Chapter 26: Know Thyself: The Fisherman and the Kingpin 57

Chapter 27: Radical Self-Reliance 58

Chapter 28: The Final Word on AI: The Wolf at the Door 59

About the Author

Omar Khawaja is the founder of ZeroInput.ai, a marketplace platform connecting early stage B2B SaaS startups to customers and investors, enabling equal opportunity for everyone.

He has served as Product Manager for Microsoft Bing Clarity (an AI behavioral analytics feature) and managed B2B marketplaces at TELUS, Geotab, and GoFleet. He has also worked with leading tech companies, including Microsoft and Meta.Omar studied engineering at the University of Waterloo.

He is the father of three kind-hearted girls. This book is written to pass on the lessons, observations, experiences, and insights he's gathered—so they can learn from it and build on it.