Experiment & Execute 🚀
☕ Good Morning!
“The brave start to experiment & execute.” An inspiring quote from a post by David Frankel from Founder Collective in which he proclaims that the “old commercial playbooks no longer work - new ones need to be written.” He believes, the current economic environment should be invigorating the whole entrepreneurial community and they should act on their impulses and beliefs. For many, there is often the temptation to find a big solution to an overarching problem. Instead, Makers and Founders should “start with a small, nagging problem” as “small problems lead to use cases.” Don’t forget how niche Uber was in its early days and as Chris Dixon pointed out in 2010 “The next big things will start out looking like a toy.” Therefore, we must ask ourselves “what can I build with the tools currently at my disposal?” This is a strength all NoCode Makers possess and as David observes “great startups are missed by most people because they can often look trivial in their early days.” Read the full post here.
🚀 Make
Upframe revives a great post by Marc Köhlbrugge from 2017 on how to ask for advice. Begin by asking potential customers for feedback on the product or service you are building, as their opinion far the more valuable than that of your peers. You then need to be clear in your communication about why and about what you need feedback on and be sure to state, what is still being built and doesn’t need their review. Finally, make sure the tools you use to get your feedback fit the purpose so that there is no friction in the way people can respond. Learn more.
In August 2019 Rosie Sherry started to manage the Indie Hackers Twitter account with an emphasis on building community. In a detailed post from yesterday she clearly explains her strategy and the type of tweets she employs. Key metrics for her are followers and monthly page impressions, which have both grown substantially since last year. Comments and likes are less relevant and clicks, conversions and traffic are something she doesn’t focus on. The key measure for Rosie is, how can she help the Indie Hackers community by supporting co-operation, networking, the sharing of ideas and the amplifying of voices. To achieve this she either tweets questions to get the community talking, tweets user content from the site or highlights work directly from users. The latter sometimes helps create leads and sales, but again Rosie’s overriding goal is to help the community learn from one another. Read more.
Private Substacks
Substack has just announced that you can now publish private newsletters, using their new invite-only mode. Learn more.
Startup Stupidity
Arvid Kahl explains why no-reply emails are contra-productive, especially for early-stage startups. Businesses, especially bootstrapped ones, need early and continuous user feedback and any friction to this could hinder signups and growth. Learn more.
Growth Marketing Micro Tactics
Jens Lennartsson is launching his newsletter next week. The focus will be on Jack Butcher's concept of "Permissionless Apprenticeship" and how to use it to grow your audience. Sign up here.
🖥️ NoCode & Automate
If you’re interested in scraping data from other websites into Webflow or want to see how simple it is to use Parabola to populate Webflow with data, Ben Tossell from Makerpad recommends the following post by Simplescraper. This is a detailed tutorial with videos and step-by-step instructions on how to implement this process using Simplescraper, Parabola and Webflow. Great for any NoCoder. Learn more.
Automate Payments
NoCodeDevs has shared a post on three ways you can use Zapier to automate your payments by connecting your Stripe account with other apps. Learn more.
Top Signup Form Builders
When anyone launches a new app or site, they need a signup form. Eugenia Evtushenko has prepared a list on Medium on the most popular NoCode form builders. Learn more.
💰 Funding
It’s that time of the week again, and Dru Riley has produced another brilliant piece of work for Trends.vc, this time on Angel Investing, a critical funding route for early-stage founders. Angels are “early believers”, investing in billion-dollar ideas and expecting most to fail. Most Angels now expect founders to have a live product, a barrier which is being broken down by NoCode. As always, Dru lists a number of key players, market predictions, opportunities for both Angels and founders as well as useful links for further reading. Read the report or get the in-depth Pro edition by signing up for a $12 monthly subscription.
💭 Afterthought
This tweet by Josh Spector has been circulating since yesterday and it reiterates the importance of consistency. As the statistic shows, the key learning is that quantity will lead to quality. You can read more about this in a post by Tom Kenny. Take care of each other and see you tomorrow!
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