Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 584 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

General

0 - 1M ARR in 7 months

We recently achieved a significant milestone, reaching $1M ARR in just 7 months. At the same time, we've maintained a steady 50% MoM growth for 9 consecutive months (Sep 2022 - present). I will share our story of how we did it.

Kubecost’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How the Co-Founders Validated Their Idea with 100 Customer Conversations

In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, Webb Brown sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he and his co-founder validated the idea for Kubecost.

Navigating the High Cost of AI Compute

The generative AI boom is compute-bound and, as a result, a predominant factor driving the industry is simply the cost of training and inference.

The Founder’s Guide To Startup Advisors

OpenView'ss Casey Renner talks about the value of a startup advisor to a founder, how to find the right one, and leverage their networks.

Marketing, Sales and PR

5 Interesting Learnings from Squarespace at $1 Billion in ARR

The article highlights the key learnings from Squarespace's journey to $1 billion ARR, including the importance of brand building, product-led growth, and customer retention. 

Prompt Engineering: A Guide for Marketers and Content Creators

Prompt engineering has become a must-have skill for marketers and content creators, here’s what it is and how you can use it.

What Is Cross Selling: Definition, Examples, and Ultimate Guide

In this article, we’ll talk about effective cross-selling strategies and how to train your sales team to crush the cross-sell. Let’s begin with the basics.

Money and Finance

The 16 Commandments of Raising Equity in a Challenging Market

To successfully raise in today's climate, founders will need a different mindset, approach, preparation, and process. Here are some tips.

Fund Size Is Still Strategy – The Growing Disconnect Between Founders and VCs

The article discusses the growing disconnect between founders and VCs with regards to fund sizes, as larger funds are leading to greater pressure for larger exits. The author argues that fund size should be considered part of a VC firm's investment strategy and that founders should be more aware of the implications of taking investment from a large fund

Opportunity funds fall from favor as VCs go back to basics

Like other excesses of the recent VC boom, specialty funds to back best-in-class startups are on the decline.

How we evaluate D2C companies

Recently, the viability of VC investments in direct-to-consumer (D2C) companies has been called into question. We unpack the D2C business model and share our evaluation criteria for investments. 

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