Founder Weekly (Issue 448 - August 19 2020)

Founder Weekly - Issue 448

August 19, 2020

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 448 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

Sports apparel brand Gymshark has just hit a $1.3bn valuation after securing investment from General Atlantic. Started by Ben Francis in 2012, the company plans to expand further internationally. Here’s how they grew so fast and here’s what entrepreneurs can learn from their approach.

You need more than a good product to scale – you need good rituals. The right ones will help you reach your target – the wrong ones will destroy you.

This post outlines 1) key challenges and opportunities in mental healthcare in the U.S., 2) the current market map of startups tackling mental health globally, and 3) investable trends.

Because AI startups require subtly different strategies than Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startups.

What to do if you don’t have enough customers to ask about usage yet.

Marketing, Sales and PR

MasterClass's success is unconventional—they've had the unique advantage of celebrity power to help them grow. But what we really have is backlinks, exceptional content, and intent-based marketing.

In this case study, you'll learn why and how we created a statistics page, how we built links to it, and our results and takeaways from the experiment.

To stay ahead of the curve, MailChimp piece-by-piece built out the other point solutions in the modern marketer’s toolkit: social media advertising, landing pages, and CRM. In 2019, Mailchimp united these point solutions into an all-in-one product offering that they aptly named the “all-in-one Marketing Platform.” And they went to the market with a clear new story: ”We’re more than just email, we’ve got everything your marketing team needs.” Here’s how they launched it.

Attention marketing is a category of marketing that aims to engage and acquire new customers through non-invasive means, often via social media. Here's how.

LinkedIn marketing made simple. Learn how to make the most out of it fast and simple with our LinkedIn Ads guide and get started today.

Money and Finance

The prospect of asking for multi-million dollar investment in a cold email to someone you never met is undoubtedly daunting. Do cold emails even work? Believe it or not, but that's how we met one of the most valuable investments in Storm Ventures' portfolio! Even if you do manage to get a warm introduction to a potential investor, principles and techniques outlined in this video will still be very valuable to you. Crafting effective cold emails is not easy, but absolutely doable! 

A short primer that describes (in order of importance) the legal docs used in an equity financing and relates them back to the term sheet. 

When tech investors talk about valuation as "multiples" on revenue, what does that really mean? We demystify the role of entry multiples and share the two factors that matter most in tech growth investing.

Highlighting how key factors such as gender, diversity or even geography can affect a team's ability to fundraise.

And the checks that were handed over, too.

Startups of the Week

Root is creating the intelligent robots that will help growers build the farms of the future.

Pitches work 10x faster than resumes & applications. Jobs are out there. Companies can’t wait to see what you’ve got. Burn your resume & pitch ’em.

What if we could actually do something about climate change? Immediately. Effectively. Collectively. That’s our vision: Make powerful, measurable climate action available to everyone – and then scale it up!

Warmly sends you a weekly list of warm leads by finding your users & prospects when they move to a new company.

The SMBX is a marketplace for issuing and buying Small Business Bonds™. Earn principal and interest monthly and help businesses grow.

Tips, Tools and Services

Startup founders: Here's why you should improve writing skills and practical advice for how to become a better writer.

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