Founder Weekly (Issue 349 - August 8 2018)

Founder Weekly - Issue 349Â Â

August 08, 2018

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 349 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

What does it really take to start a startup (or work at one)? The conversation covers everything from how to know what kind of company to join early (or when to strike out on one’s own); the major platform shifts we should anticipate going forward; and founding (as well as exit) stories, like Microsoft’s acquisition of Github. What was the moral of that story for him, and for the industry?… this short a16z Bytes episode shares a glimpse into (some of) those “earned secrets”.

Navigating the Quest for Successful Innovation.

A report that analyzed the geography of venture capital first financings across U.S. metropolitan areas during the last eight years.

Books

The larger-than-life journey of an 18-year-old college freshman who set out from his dorm room to track down Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and dozens more of the world's most successful people to uncover how they broke through and launched their careers. 

Marketing, Sales and PR

Growth is oxygen to companies; especially those backed by investors. What can YOU learn from this giant's rise to dominate its market?

Words don’t appear out of thin air. They are borne of ideas and values, and painstakingly combined, chosen, then refined. Over, and over, and over again. The right words, in the right order, in the right place, at the right time, sets off billions of neurons in the reader’s brain. The brain says, “A-ha!” Aware of the power of words, Slack founder Stewart Butterfield writes that their mission is important, but “our job is also to understand what people think they want and then translate the value of Slack into their terms.” Here are five techniques that every CEO, marketer, and copywriter need to consider for their websites.

We go inside the strange, disturbingly popular world of 'engagement groups.' 

The SEO playbook for seed-stage startups is different than for established companies. Young startups often lack domain authority, volume of content, and a strong social media following, all of which makes it hard to compete with large players. But they have other traits that they can leverage to get off the ground, so it’s important for startups to focus on their unfair advantages and embrace Paul Graham’s “Do Things That Don’t Scale” philosophy.

Social proof is one of the most powerful levers your business has. Here's what you need to know about the different types of social proof and how to leverage social proof in your marketing and website design.

Money and Finance

Startups of the Week

See your body like never before. Meet the world’s first home body scanner.

Seattle Food Tech (SFT) is a food manufacturing technology and production company defined solely to catapult meat alternative production toward price parity with animal-based meat. SFT implements novel food manufacturing equipment and processes in large-scale production to produce low-cost plant-based meat at high volumes. 

Apartment building grades based on facts, not opinions.

Emptor makes it easy for you to analyze, buy, and track the complex services that power your business, because we know that not everything that matters to your bottom line comes with an item number.

Tips, Tools and Services

Lessons learned from two weeks without my phone.

Here’s how to set up a spreadsheet to track your contacts and reach out to the perfect prospects on Twitter.

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