Founder Weekly (Issue 360 - October 24 2018)

Founder Weekly - Issue 360

October 24, 2018

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 360 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

There are roughly1 eight channels that enable innovations in the modern world. Each imposes a set of constraints on the projects they support. Why should we think about innovation channels? The channels’ constraints shape the sorts of innovations which can successfully impact the world. If a project doesn’t meet the constraints imposed by each channel, it will die. Projects often need to jump between channels to become full-blown innovations. Like salmon swimming upstream these leaps are full of danger and resistance.

Joshua Schachter’s groundbreaking social-bookmarking site Del.icio.us, founded in 2003, popularized the idea of “tags” — organizing bookmarks by appending just a word or two. At its height, Del.icio.us was the toast of budding social sites known as Web 2.0, had millions of users, and served as a direct inspiration for sites like Reddit and Pinterest. Schachter talked to Intelligencer about his decision sell Del.icio.us to Yahoo in 2005 — and how it felt to watch as the company was mismanaged and sold off to a series of buyers before being permanently shut down in 2017.

When companies race towards scaling their product to thousands or even millions of users, it reaches a turning point. It transforms from single product teams to people platforms that support teams.

The eight-minute guide to making something people love.

How Habits and Uncertainty Revealed My Entrepreneurial Calling.

And why one feature is better than two or three.

Books

LinkedIn cofounder, legendary investor, and host of the award-winning Masters of Scale podcast reveals the secret to starting and scaling massively valuable companies. What entrepreneur or founder doesn’t aspire to build the next Amazon, Facebook, or Airbnb?  Yet those who actually manage to do so are exceedingly rare.  So what separates the startups that get disrupted and disappear from the ones who grow to become global giants? The secret is blitzscaling: a set of techniques for scaling up at a dizzying pace that blows competitors out of the water. The objective of Blitzscaling is not to go from zero to one, but from one to one billion –as quickly as possible.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Increase acquisition, activation, conversion, retention, referral, revenue, and more. See our ROI on these business growth strategies — and try them today.

The A to Z Guide on Getting Started and Calculating ROI.

Advice for Founders in Early Markets.

Money and Finance

It’s very rare for a European fund to have sold companies to four of the Tech Giants — Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Twitter — but Octopus Ventures can make that claim. Luke Hakes and Jo Oliver were closely involved with the sales processes and here give a taste of the experience of selling your business to one of the world’s most famous companies.

We used to be hesitant about raising money, but this time we were all in. Here is the full story with all the juicy bits included.

Startups of the Week

Bumblebee Spaces is creating a new way to live by unlocking the third dimension. Using smart robots and an AI stack, we increase usable space and reduce your footprint by storing, managing, and retrieving objects on-demand in your ceiling. Bumblebee Spaces safely and intelligently simplifies your life, making space for what matters. 

Coda is a new doc that grows with your ideas. Our early makers have built docs that launch products, plan weddings, and name companies. What will you Coda?

Simplify the development process and build amazing and beautiful web apps. With Dohnny you can create amazing and maintainable web apps in an agile environment based on components and the best technology. Atomic control over your project.

Tips, Tools and Services

Five strategies for pushing through.

OR “How to build a complex application without losing your ever-loving mind.”

These are the top 10 UX writing bloopers ruining user experiences everywhere.

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