Benefit, Fellowship, Education 🍦
👋 Welcome!
The next instalment of Dru Riley’s brilliant Trends report is out. This time it’s all about B (Benefit) Corps. The difference between a B Corp and a C Corp is that they are driven by both mission and profit. Shareholders hold the company accountable to produce some sort of public benefit, besides a financial profit. This is often referred to as the Triple bottom line that accounts for the planet, people and profit, the 3Ps. Well-known B Corporations include Patagonia, Kickstarter, Warby Parker and Ben & Jerry’s. Besides predictions, Dru lists some great opportunities for Makers in this growing segment as well as links for further reading. Read the report or purchase the Trends Pro for further insights.
Source: Ben & Jerry’s
😺 Products of the Day
June 30, 2020
🥇 Linear: Streamlined issue tracking for software teams.
🥈 Zero to Sold: How to start, run, and sell a bootstrapped business by Arvid Kahl.
🥉 PlagiaShield: Keep your content unique to protect your rankings.
🚀 Maker News
Substack Fellowships
Substack has launched its next Fellowship program for independent writers. The top recipient will receive a $100,000 grant. Four further fellows will receive advances of $25,000 each. The goal of the fellowship is to help speed up a writer’s journey to independence. Substack now counts more than 100,000 paying subscribers, with top writers making hundreds of thousands of dollars doing what they love. Learn more.
Education for Curious Kids
Farza has launched ZipSchool, which offers live, online classes for children. The classes cover topics usually not taught in schools, such as space, animation, robotics, and magic tricks. He’s written more about this ed-tech project in his latest Substack newsletter. Read the newsletter or visit the website. With education in mind, David Perell shared a tweet below on how this sector might look like going forward.
Maker AMA
Amandine Flachs has recorded an AMA (ask me anything) with serial entrepreneur and indie maker Fajar Siddiq. Some tips from the call include: Begin monetizing your product early on, focus on your first 5, not 100 customers and engage with and build your own community. Watch below or on YouTube.
MVP Review Learnings
Gordon Frayne shares another helpful post on Indie Hackers on his learnings reviewing over 50 MVPs. He gave feedback on a variety of criteria such as the problem being solved and product-market fit. Key takeaways for makers include: Focus on the value proposition, communicate the problem you are trying to solve and to make your CTA as clear as possible. Learn more.
H1 2020 Recap
Alex Hickey from Morning Brew provides a recap of what’s happened these past six months and what’s to come. She looks at the impact of the economic shutdown through the Coronavirus and how the “Black Lives Matter” protests following George Floyd’s murder is beginning to wake up Corporate America. Read more.
🖥️ NoCode & Automate
NoCode Workflows
Last week Zapier and Typeform hosted a webinar with Michael Martocci, founder of SwagUp. He speaks about how automated workflows helped grow a $10m company. You can now read the post on the talk by Typeform or watch the video below.
Mailchimp vs Octopus
Pete shares a great thread listing the pros and cons of both Mailchimp and Email Octopus. His conclusion is that Octopus has the upper hand, as it’s simpler to use and much cheaper. The only drawback, if you can call it that, is that you will need to create your signup page using a website builder such as Carrd. But then again, this will deliver a much better experience to visitors. Read the full review.
Bucketlist Database
Chris Viglietta is a member of Makerpad has just built his first NoCode product in seven days. Make Something Epic a mobile app with over 1,000 bucketlist experiences. The MVP product is built using Glide and the landing with Landen. he also installed Analytics to the Glide App. Learn more about his process.
💭 Afterthought
To finish the day, some words by KP on why makers over time become brilliant community builders. The reason stems from the close relationship makers maintain with their audience and the constant feedback they receive on their product or service. This is unique and truly makes them unstoppable! Take care and see you tomorrow!
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