Finding Customers, Rolling Funds đ¸
đ Welcome!
Good morning from London! Letâs jump right in. First Round is now offering founders introductions to their network of startup builders and Fortune 1000 operators for customer discovery and early feedback. They rightly point out that âthe most compelling and contrarian insightsâ come from conversations with potential users and customers. Lenny Rachitsky calls this: âThe democratization and unbundling of the startup creation processâ. Read the full thread to learn more.
đ Maker News
Founder Learnings
Kieran from nocodelife shares his insights from his AMA with Rohan, a founder whoâs built multiple million-dollar businesses in only a few years. These include cancelling your social life for one year, closing down any project that hasnât made money after 60 days and spending 90% of your time on marketing. My very favourite though is âThe Tripple Playâ (see below). Read the full thread.
Complimentary Paid Newsletters
Useful insight from this Indie Hackers Growth Bite on paid newsletters. Josh Spector, the writer of the weekly newsletter For The Interested, originally offered his readers a paid tier that delivered an expanded version of his newsletter. This didnât catch with his readers though. Instead, he found success by offering a complimentary paid newsletter. For this strategy to succeed âmake sure both newsletters have well-defined roles and that they complement each other nicely.â Read the full thread.
Rolling Funds
Dickie Bush shares his learnings about AngelList's Rolling Funds. Basically a rolling fund is âSaaS-like venture fund subscription,â that can be marketed in public, raise capital at any time and offer flexible fees. Not only will this help democratise access to launching a micro-VC fund, but it will also give startups more access to capital. A recent example of such a fund is the makerpad.fund which was launched by Ben Tossell. Read the full thread to learn more.
Finding Customers
Robin Vander Heyden, the founder of ManyRequests, shares a useful free ebook on how to find customers using the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. In addition to explaining the benefits of the navigator, the book shares tips on how to optimise your profile and value proposition, how to research prospects, outreach as well as other helpful tools and resources. View the ebook.
đ Afterthought
To finish the week a short but valuable tweet by Glenn Fischer. What might sound crazy today, might be all the rage tomorrow! Take care and see you next week.
If you enjoy my newsletter, please spread the word to other interested people and help grow SpringUp Stories. You can also find me on Twitter if youâd like to follow my thoughts in real-time! I'll be back tomorrow with another newsletter. If you're getting value out of this newsletter please consider buying me a coffee. â