Founder Weekly (Issue 597 - August 2 2023)

Founder Weekly - Issue 597

August 02, 2023

Founder Weekly

Welcome to issue 597 of Founder Weekly. We have a packed issue this week. Enjoy it!

General

Should you and your startup live in San Francisco? Y Combinator Partners, Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell, debate their different opinions on whether startups are more likely to succeed in the Golden City or elsewhere. Where do they find common ground? Watch to find out.

The article narrates the journey of Checkout X, a startup that achieved significant monthly recurring revenue (MRR) growth to $600k but ultimately faced a setback due to Shopify's actions, leading to its demise. It highlights the challenges and lessons learned in the process of building a successful business in the e-commerce space.

Why service marketplaces aren’t scaling and how they might get unstuck.

The video post shares seven valuable lessons learned from growing a bootstrapped Software as a Service (SaaS) company to $50,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). It provides practical advice and insights for entrepreneurs looking to scale their SaaS businesses without external funding.

Being “in control” is impossible, perhaps not even desirable. Being “in command” is ideal: honest, introspective, agile, aware, and proactive. 

And why it’s so hard.

Want to really understand how large language models work? Here’s a gentle primer.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Learn about the use of artificial intelligence in sales, how and why sales teams are adopting AI, and the outcomes they are seeing.

In March, LinkedIn launched an AI assisted growth loop. Fareed Mosavat and I recorded a convo where we broke it down step by step. We were shocked when we looked up the stats. From March to June it went from generating 0 to 1M uniques per month according to Ahrefs and is on one of the steepest growth curves we’ve ever seen for a content loop.

Implementing usage-based pricing when your product is an API is crucial to get right. Moesif's CEO Derric Gilling shares how to monetize APIs appropriately via value, invoicing times, and billing methodology.

Kim Caldbeck, operating advisor at Bessemer, distills her favorite business playbook when leading global marketing teams, including the five basic steps she’d repeat again after 5x-ing revenue at Coursera.

This step-by-step guide on ChatGPT for account executives includes prompts you can copy right now to crush quota and save time.

Money and Finance

In terms of median valuation and round size, the seed stage has shown far less volatility than any other stage of the startup fundraising lifecycle.

This acquisition is significant because it shows the continued momentum in the technology buyout space and could spur more strategic M&A activity in the future.

Tips, Tools and Services

After a four-decade career of toggling back and forth between big and small, Lightspark SVP of Engineering James Everingham shares his playbook for scaling down your leadership as you go from an org of hundreds or thousands to a handful of direct reports.

We all love a good startup pivot, right? I know the word is overused, but the concept is important.

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