Founder Weekly (Issue 426 - March 11 2020)

Founder Weekly - Issue 426

March 11, 2020

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 426 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

Here is a note that Sequoia sent to their founders and CEOs today to provide guidance on how to ensure the health of their business while dealing with potential business consequences of the spreading effects of the coronavirus.

In 2015, the boss of a card payments company in Seattle introduced a $70,000 minimum salary for all of his 120 staff - and personally took a pay cut of $1m. Five years later he's still on the minimum salary, and says the gamble has paid off.

An essay on theme parks, platforms, and the importance of hugs.

Marketing, Sales and PR

How Does Your Marketing Operation Rank? 

At Backblaze, our sales team is paid 100% of their salary. Sounds weird, right? Well, we don’t think so. Everyone else in our shop earns a salary based on the market for their skills—and we think our teammates on the sales team should too. Here’s why.

Feature marketing is a tactic to get the word out about a new product feature to re-engage or attract customers. Here's what you need to know to succeed!

Money and Finance

How venture capital became the most dangerous thing to happen to now-troubled DTCs like Outdoor Voices, Harry’s, and Casper.

Most founders I meet have a missing step in their plan for raising capital. The result is frustration and isolation.

Startups of the Week

A subscription box for investors containing products from emerging, high-growth consumer brands raising capital.

Dexai Robotics builds flexible automation for restaurants. We build Alfred, a robot which makes your recipes using your ingredients in your kitchen.

Savvy is a new way to get health benefits for your startup or small business. Get started in minutes, not weeks.

An Online School Builder. A hosting platform for live online education. Conferencing, payment-processing, and student management brought together in one place.

Tips, Tools and Services

Shopify’s Director of Production Engineering explains how reading broadly helps him get to the bottom of things.

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How hard work and a bit of luck got me into the field and up the ladder.

As a first-time founder, assuming you’ve recently hired a few key executives, how do you manage those executives effectively? It turns out that managing an executive can be quite different than managing an individual contributor. This post outlines the process and simple tool that can be used to successfully onboard and manage a new executive and an executive team.

Our Other Newsletters

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