Founder Weekly (Issue 372 - January 30 2019)

Founder Weekly - Issue 372

January 30, 2019

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 372 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter. Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you’ve already reached a baseline degree of success (through privilege or effort) and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success.

Biohacker Dave Asprey built his multimillion-dollar brand Bulletproof around his quest to live to 180. But is their any scientific merit to his biohacking ways?

How can we sense and act upon a future that remains unclear? The good news is that much of the technology-driven disruption that each of us experiences today—and will likely experience going forward—is understandable and knowable. It’s an exciting time to venture beyond the digital frontier! Explore the whole Tech Trends 2019 collection, from the introduction to the multimedia content.

Books

What if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career was not to create and scale a new start-up, but rather, to be able to work for yourself, determine your own hours, and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? Suppose the better—and smarter—solution is simply to remain small? This book explains how to do just that.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Tell a story that speaks to customer pains and prospects become incredibly interested. Dive deep into ‘how to’ craft a sales story that closes plus create digital proposals and leverage a free CRM.

I think spending money to acquire your first customers is an unhealthy approach to product validation and, frankly, a waste of capital. In this post, I’ll make the case for acquiring users organically rather than through paid acquisition.

Superhuman was founded in 2015 (3ish years ago at the time of writing this).  From their landing page, they are building “The Fastest Email Experience Ever Made.”  To this day, you can still not sign up and instantly gain access to their product. Yet, they have received more press, word of mouth, and funding than 95%+ of other products.  Why?  Because they've done the exact opposite of what most do for product and feature launches.  Let me explain...

Money and Finance

We wrote a standard Series A term sheet to create more transparency in the market.

Startups of the Week

Earn life insurance simply by living well. Earn life insurance coverage with only your good habits -- instead of your wallet.

All Your Key Metrics in One Place. Sunrise KPI keeps you updated. It gathers a key metric from all the services you use and sends you all your numbers.

Tips, Tools and Services

The Very, Very Complete Guide to Productivity, Focus, and Your Own Longevity.

Security shouldn’t feel like a chore. This is a basic checklist that any SaaS CTO (and anyone else) can use to harden their security. Select your startup stage and use these rules to improve your security.

Acquiring and retaining new customers is tough enough - a leaky conversion funnel will only make things worse. Check out how to build and maintain a cycle from awareness to conversion in this article by Olivia Ross.

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