The Startup Weekly: #33
The Startup Weekly is a journal committed to help startups grow. Here, you will find articles that will help you do just that and always stay ahead.
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Sneaky Questions Early-Stage VCs Ask Founders
Another useful article on fund-raising. A VC lets out an industry secret — seemingly innocuous questions that help them separate the pretenders from the real deal. I especially liked the fact that he has given suggestions on how one should answer questions like “Where do you see your company in 5 years?” and “What are your valuation expectations?” The only thing that puzzles me, though, is — why would he make his own job more difficult by telling everyone this? Maybe he has more such sneaky tricks up his sleeve…
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Want a Better Pitch? Watch This.
If you have trouble pitching your ideas — whether on an elevator or a stage — read this. A great primer on making a pitch that resonates with your audience. As the writer says, first name the enemy (problem), then highlight why it needs to be solved now, show how the world will be a wonderful place with this solution, and then finally how you’ll actually solve the problem. And yes, show a demo if possible, to prove you’re not bluffing. And in case you think the writer’s bluffing, check out the video of Tesla’s battery launch, where Elon Musk masterfully guides the audience towards the inevitable conclusion that his new product is awesome (we already know he’s awesome.
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“Monetize Backwards” to Build a SaaS Business That Lasts
An interesting article with a contrarian viewpoint on growing a SaaS business. Wistia, an online video-hosting solution, started as a paid product, going completely against the holy gospel of starting with free and adding paid features later. They finally offered a free plan six (SIX!) years after their launch. In this article, the CEO Chris Savage presents some interesting learnings from this approach. The one that resonated most with me — it takes a lot of courage to continue on this slow, growth-constrained path early on, when your competitors are racing ahead fueled by VC money. But you need to have the confidence that your learnings from experiments today will be your competitive advantage tomorrow.
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Mobile is eating the world
This is a very interesting presentation, bursting with memorable data, on how mobile is the new frontier. Meh. Don’t we know this already?. Yes, we do. But did you know, for instance, that:
1. By 2020, 80% of adults on Earth will have a smartphone.
2. On the iPhone 6 launch weekend, Apple sold 25x more CPU transistors than were in all the PCs on Earth in 1995.
3. Half of all time spent online in the US is on smartphone apps. And I’m not even halfway through the presentation! Read it at leisure, for a delightful perspective on where the world is going.
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Growth Is Optional: 10 Reasons Why Companies Fail At Growth
Brian Balfour writes very insightful, thought-provoking essays. This is no different. Everyone is looking for ways to grow. But most people aren’t able to grow sustainably, because of 10 common mistakes. It’s a very introspective read — how often do we search in vain for a silver bullet — one traction channel that will get us millions of users? And at the opposite extreme, we focus so much on building features that consumers will never use. We run experiments after reading a great growth-hacking article, but do we have the energy to track the results? So take some time out this evening and introspect — how many of these 10 mistakes do you make, and how can you change?
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Confessions of a Growth Hacker
Growth hacking’ is a term in vogue. Everyone wants to do it, but not everyone is able to increase their user retention by 2297%, as some articles would have us believe. Mattan Griffel talks about the different problems you’ll run into when you start growth hacking — like most things, it isn’t that simple. A/B testing your button colors is all good, but it isn’t easy to A/B test things that matter, like alternative onboarding flows (I’m struggling with this on my product), a fundamental new feature. This article busts some myths.
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29 early stage fundraising pitfalls
A very pertinent article, at this time when raising money seems to be the easiest thing in the world. Tell anyone you’re running a startup, and they immediately assume you’re raking in big bucks. But as any startup will tell you, it’s never easy to get an investor to open his wallet to you. And when it’s not easy, you’d better not make these rookie mistakes when you get an investor meeting. My favorite — the last one: ‘accidentally’ exposing names of other funds you’re talking to.
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LinkedIn’s Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs
This is the best article we’re sharing this week. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, shares LinkedIn’s Series B investor presentation. It’s a great resource to keep coming back to because, not only does Hoffman share the slides, he also offers detailed comments on why each slide or data point is important, and how we can tailor it for our own context. Check it out.
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What really killed Homejoy?
We don’t normally include articles on recent events (‘Breaking News’), but we’ve made an exception here. Homejoy, a pioneering cleaning services marketplace, has just announced it’s shutting down. And its closure is a timely reminder to young businesses spending away to acquire customers — if you sell products at too huge a discount and make a significant loss on every transaction, you will go out of business. Simple. The article also highlights some of the problems of marketplaces — as you try to scale rapidly, service quality will get compromised. How can you tackle this?
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