Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 354 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

Is the Lean Startup Dead?

How entrepreneurship changes when cash is abundant.

College is Dying, Design Your Own Education.

Despite the shortcomings above, going to college has been a smart choice for every generation prior to millennials. But over the past 15 years, two trends have made this decision a lot more questionable: the price increased, the value decreased.

A Scorecard: Should a decision be fast, or slow?

We're constantly told to make decisions quickly, because that speeds up the production and learning loop. But some decisions really should be made slowly. How do you know which way to go, with a given decision? Here's a framework to answer that question.

Disruptive Interfaces & The Emerging Battle To Be The Default

A new battle is brewing to be the default of every choice we make. As modern interfaces like voice remove options, augmented reality overlays our physical world, and artificial intelligence gains our trust by transcending our own reasoning, defaults will rule the world.

Eight Ways to Make Your D&I Efforts Less Talk and More Walk

Aubrey Blanche shares Atlassian’s playbook for making meaningful advances on D&I, highlighting the challenges in this evolving field and walking through eight specific strategies for startups looking to join her at that higher bar.

8 Tips for Founders to take care of themselves

What I Learned Each Time My Startups Got Acquired

Books

Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert's Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You'd Rather Stay Home)

From the marketing guru and host of the popular podcast Hiding in the Bathroom, a breakthrough introverts' guide that broadens the conversation sparked by Quiet and moves away from the "Lean In" approach, offering wisdom and practical tips to help readers build strong relationships and achieve their own definition of professional success.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Choosing Your First Marketing Hire

In this article you’ll learn to hire a great first marketer for your startup. It’s based on all the good and bad first marketing hires I’ve witnessed at over a dozen enterprise software startups.

Pain-Point SEO: How to Produce SEO Content That Drives Conversions

We share 5 content frameworks that we've seen drive tons of conversions from SEO. Learn why we don't go after high volume keywords and what we do instead.

The Good-Better-Best Approach to Pricing

Why every company should consider a tiered model.

How to Make Your First Sales Hire

Here's the reality: Your first sales hire is the most important non-executive growth hire you will make. But most B2B startups have no clue what they're looking for in making this hire—much less how to find them. This guide breaks down why this hire is so important, when you should embark on this search, exactly who you're looking for, and what to do to find them. 

Money and Finance

Why a Leading Venture Capitalist Is Betting on a Decentralized Internet

A leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist says blockchain protocols can decentralize the internet and spark a new wave of creativity and innovation.

How Much Equity Should You Offer Your Startup's Team Members?

Deciding how much equity to offer your startup’s team members is confusing and easy to get wrong. Because each startup is different, and each person joins in a different situation, there are no one-size-fits-all rules. To make good decisions, you’ll need to understand the considerations.

The Entrepreneur Expectation Gap

3 Tips For Resetting Expectations & Finding The Right VC For Your Startup Stage.

VC Follow-on Strategy: Pragmatists vs Loyalists

What you need to know as an entrepreneur.

Venture Capital Funnel Shows Odds Of Becoming A Unicorn Are About 1%

Startups of the Week

Done

Done helps you create healthy routines by helping you set goals, tracking your progress, and then motivating you with streaks/chains. Unlike so many other habit apps, Done lets you set a goal and track it multiple times a day, not just one time per day. 

Harvest

Harvest identifies negotiable fees and facilitates refunds on your behalf with banks. Creating a consumer friendly banking ecosystem is beneficial for both banks and consumers, so our algorithm finds reasons for banks to provide you refunds. We identify transactions where you are owed money back, show you what the probability is for negotiating those, and negotiate on your behalf if you authorize us to.

Standard Cognition

AI-Powered Checkout. Enabling autonomous checkout for brick & mortar retailers with our AI-powered computer vision platform

Trim

A personal assistant that saves you money. Cancel subscriptions, fight overdraft fees, negotiate bills, patrol prices.

Tips, Tools and Services

UX Copywriting: 3 Copy Testing Methods That Beat A/B Testing + QUIZ

UX copywriting and user testing? There are alternatives to A/B testing. We are showing you 3 methods to up your testing game!

How to Measure Churn Rate From Product User Activity

A product analytics approach to measuring churn rate from event-level data.

The power of culture: how to hire and attract amazing people

Our Other Newsletters

Python Weekly

- A free weekly newsletter featuring the best hand curated news, articles, tools and libraries, new releases, jobs etc related to Python.

NoSQL Weekly

- A free weekly newsletter featuring the best hand curated news, articles, tools and libraries, new releases, jobs etc related to NoSQL.