Founder Weekly (Issue 445 - July 22 2020)

Founder Weekly - Issue 445

July 22, 2020

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 445 of Founder Weekly. We have a packed issue this week. Enjoy it!

General

Last January, I published an article about how we managed to reach $1,000,000 ARR in less than 2 years without any funding. Everything was going really fine and then COVID happened. In this article, I will detail exactly what are the things we implemented in order to keep an exponential growth and go from $1m to $2m ARR in 5 months in a time of global crisis and without spending any money on paid channels.

If the proximate purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity, the ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality.

In this article, Valerio Barbera shares the mental and practical processes that led him to create a SaaS product from scratch, and how he gained his first paying customers. Whether you are thinking about creating a new product or you have already launched, this article can help you compare your own strategies and methods with the ones that worked for him, and possibly adapt them for yourself.

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Kurt Rathmann told his big-name investors he had developed groundbreaking AI to do the books for small businesses. In reality, humans did most of the work.

At the end of June, I launched a business-focused extension to my open-source project. The multi-tenant SaaS boilerplate for Laravel. The sales completely exceeded my expectations. $4,980 within the first 24 hours and $11,673 within the first 5 days. Here’s the story leading to this.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Avoid wasting time and money pursuing the wrong approaches to marketing and product development and instead accelerate finding product/market fit in a verifiable, structured way. Justin Warren discusses how you can figure out who your best customers will be and how to attract them to your product.

This article shows you how to start a cold email B2B lead generation from A to Z. All cold email tips are 100% based on the author's personal experience.

Calendly is a great example of a product that has used product led growth and virality to great advantage. Learn how they do it in this article.

The new iOS 14 privacy feature spells trouble for advertising agencies and promises to end an era of personalized ads.

Find out how to do a webinar that gets attendees buzzing. Get tips to recruit speakers, build anticipation, and make magic happen at your virtual event.

When concepts get tough, content gets visual. Marketing diagrams are a fast way to explain complicated topics and tricky ideas. Nothing makes a muddy post clear like a good visual.

Complete Guide to Get Backlinks in 2020

Money and Finance

The great battle of the venture capital industry.

A directory of the most active and engaged investors in the VC industry today as recommended by founders.

MENA offers an emerging and exciting opportunity for both investors and entrepreneurs who come with a collaborative mindset, to create value and wealth, primarily driven by a high per-capita GDP, a large consumer base and high internet/smartphone penetration. There are a few inherent cultural and operational challenges unique to the region but these should subside as the ecosystem evolves further.

This survey is a special interim report to highlight changes in the Silicon Valley venture capital environment in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on May financing activity and supplements our March 2020 and April 2020 Flash Reports. 

American venture capital and private equity is dominating Africa, but it’s mostly funding other white foreign founders as black entrepreneurs struggle to raise financing.

Startups of the Week

An algorithmic credit risk protocol, built for decentralized lending. Teller connects to your bank account to offer risk-assessed loans, without the need for collateral.

Put groceries on autopilot. We redesigned grocery shopping from the ground up to help you automate weekly groceries.

Make money selling interactions to your audience. Create a website and sell fun interactions to your fans. Video calls, shoutouts, merch - you name it.

The next generation of delivery. On-demand grocery and household essentials delivered, powered by your community and self-driving robots.

Meemo is a secure, AI-powered social finance app where your digital wallet meets your everyday life with automatic rewards. Simply link your cards to receive automatic personal delights based on your recent activity. Don’t change a thing, just keep doin’ you.

Tips, Tools and Services

Most people can't write well because they don't know how to control the logical sequence in which they present their ideas. And that is the single most important act necessary to clear writing. In this essay we're going to dig into how you can effectively share written ideas in a way that values time and effort for others.

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