Founder Weekly (Issue 425 - March 4 2020)

Founder Weekly - Issue 425

March 04, 2020

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 425 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

In this post, David Sacks identifies the top reasons why fast-growing startups go off the rails (or “BlitzFail”). The issues have three things in common: first, they are existential; they are capable of derailing a startup. Second, they are surprising; they tend to go undetected for awhile, then manifest suddenly. Third, they are common enough to occur across many startups.

The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one.  A hard startup requires a lot more money, time, coordination, or technological development than most startups. A good hard startup is one that will be valuable if it works (not all hard problems are worth solving!).

It’s only taken this startup 60 years — and it’s tackling salt next.

It's this aspiration that drives so many of us to start businesses. We want a better life. But, compared to the old adage of "go to college and you'll get a better job," the path to building a profitable business is less clear-cut. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you'll need a new paradigm. Business is like surfing.

Small losses of privacy have rewritten the rules of messaging and changed how humans feel about each other.

What should an essay be? Many people would say persuasive. That's what a lot of us were taught essays should be. But I think we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should be useful.

What is the future of DTC...? Well, to understand the future, we need to go back to the genesis of this recent DTC surge, then analyze the present, and finally look to the likely future.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Thinking of using gated content in your marketing? Before you do, check out this breakdown of Intercom’s strategy for creating and gating content that generated 5X growth in traffic and 100,000+ leads.

The ultimate content marketing for SaaS resource to ignite growth today. Learn rare insights from over 5 top SaaS marketers.

These are the best SaaS marketing strategies for 2020. Learn how to hack your SaaS business growth with the most effective tactics.

In sales, the common misconception is that by saying the right thing you’ll win the deal. But what we started to realize after introducing Question-Based Selling (QBS) to our sales organization is that it’s impossible to know what to say without understanding the person and/or organization we were selling to.

Money and Finance

This guide collects nearly everything we’ve learned about Series A’s. It is designed to help founders tactically and strategically plan for fundraises. We explain every step leading up to a successful raise, as well as the steps taken throughout the process; we also explain the logic behind every step. Along the way, we outline the expectations, incentives, and rough thought process of the investors involved, so founders feel less mystified.

Welcome to an industry filled with 21-year-olds, open bars, and very little business experience.

One thing's for sure: most seed rounds aren't very big, but they are getting bigger.

Startups of the Week

Community is a first-of-its-kind conversation platform — enabling direct, meaningful and instant communication at a massive scale, all through text messaging.

Discover what the internet knows about you and control your digital footprint. You decide where your data should or shouldn't be, and we'll make it happen.

Doctor recommended. Parent approved. Kid loved. Getting healthy kids' shoes that fit your little ones is now easy with Ten Little.

Trevor.io replaces data requests inside your company, empowering your whole team to get answers from your database data in just a few clicks.

Run the World enables live online events that people love worldwide by leveraging the latest video, mobile, and live technologies.

Tips, Tools and Services

A framework for honing the product’s design, shaping the user experience, and vastly improving the quality of your output.

Leading a one on one meeting? Use these questions, agendas and tactical tips to make your 1:1 time more effective.

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