Founder Weekly (Issue 490 - June 16 2021)

Founder Weekly - Issue 490

June 16, 2021

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 490 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

Ben Stokes is the indie hacker behind Tiny Projects, where he shares the ups and downs of starting small indie businesses. He's created an ice cream business and a cookie dough business amongst other things and his most recent project, Mailoji, made $10k in a weekend. Learn about what it's like to be a founder running a physical business, how to sell your project, the joy in starting small things and how to go viral on hacker news.

The early insights behind 9 breakthrough companies — and what tactics drove their traction.

How I “failed” at a YC startup, worked at early Stripe, and then raised $20M.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Snowflake was entering a crowded marketplace and had to stand out. And we know how they did it: proper positioning, SEO-based content, and ABM strategies.

Forbes senior editor Alex Konrad has been covering venture capital and startups for nearly a decade. While many founders have learned how to work well with media, the learning curve is steep, and Konrad sees persistent miscommunication, misunderstanding, and misinformation between the two. To demystify the world of media, Konrad joined Greylock marketing partner Elisa Schreiber and Greylock communications director Kaitlin Durkosh for a wide-ranging discussion.

Learn everything about Net Promoter Score (NPS). Discover how to conduct NPS surveys, collect customer feedback, and see actual survey questions and response templates.

The seven places we learn about new stuff.

Keyword research is an art and a science, in this article we show you how low search volume keywords can be used to gain high value clients.

Money and Finance

On May 27th, Kyle Chayka launched a campaign to fund the daily entertainment newsletter Dirt using NFTs. In short, all the NFTs and editions have sold out, raising 12.23 ETH, or a bit over $30,000. (131 NFTs in total.) This is a breakdown of what happened, what he learned from the process, and what steps might be taken going forward.

Managing this cap table is a critical activity to set up from a startup’s early stages, yet it often gets overlooked by founders.

Startups of the Week

Compose AI is a free Chrome extension that cuts your writing time by 40% with AI-powered autocompletion.

The TreasurySpring Fixed-Term Fund platform delivers new digital pipelines for wholesale money markets, connecting cash rich firms to institutional borrowers.

Tips, Tools and Services

Sharp folks from across the First Round community share the small habits that great managers do, including delivering feedback with care, opening up about failure, and sending praise up the chain.  

Systems Thinking gives you an advantage in almost every area of life - even the game of Risk. 

How To Make Your Pages Look Like a Design Team Was Behind It.

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