A curated newsletter of twitter threads related to Startups.

Of late there has been lot of talk on twitter around cost of hiring in startups. Consensus seems to be that : Salaries for top talent are through the roof → You need top talent to succeed → You need a war chest of a funding to hire .

What qualities do the best founders have? At seed, I believe being able to identify outstanding founders is more important than being able to identify outstanding market opportunities. Sharing 10 things I’ve learned to look for below👇


The reality of building a bootstrapped startup is that it takes way longer than you anticipate and you find out that the most important parts of the company are not defined in the metrics. A story...

Introducing The 50. Where I share the story and lessons of a top 50 largest company in the world. Time for #1. This company went from 0 to $200bn in 5.5 years... Let's dive in👇

An exciting Friday tweet thread on SAFEs, convertible notes, and equity (joy!) - the key differences and things that many ppl often get wrong. Read on >>

Are you a exec or leader and want to learn about SaaS? If you have deep domain expertise & want to learn more about SaaS eating the software world - here's a few ways to both earn & learn - lowest cost to highest commitment 1/

There’s a lot of bad advice out there on how to pitch your startup. Last year, I invested $1M+ and heard 200 companies pitch. Every great pitch I've heard nails 5 ingredients. In this thread, we'll go through each to help maximize your chances when fundraising Let's dig in👇

Amazon wasn't always Amazon. Jeff Bezos originally had trouble finding the right word to name the now trillion-dollar empire. A few registered domains, a dictionary, and an interesting comparison made Amazon the perfect name. Here's the quick backstory behind it 🧵

🚨 THREAD M&A 101: M&A is such a crucial part of startups, yet it is so taboo to talk bout the ins and outs of this process Sharing some lessons I’ve learned here selling multiple companies Let’s talk M&A!

1/ All lawyers, angels, VCs and other founders, who are telling founders to create a large option pool out of the gate - please stop this is just plain bad advice. At pre-seed the pool should be 8-10% if the founding team is complete.

YC's first ever batch, summer '05 where are they now? 👇

My first company @twitch sold for a billion dollars. My second one lost $75 million in 36 months. People love talking about success, but today I'm going to talk about failure. It's time to be honest about Atrium:

Thread on what to look for in co-founders and how to find them 👇

What to look for in a co-founder? 

#1 Someone who can help you solve core risks to the biz. Identify core DNA &amp; backfill accordingly.

#2 Someone who agrees w/ you on 1st principles of company building

A few things the self-help books won't teach you about success.

A thread:

1/ Some thoughts on closing &gt; $50 million during the pandemic at portfolio company @makespace - just announced today 👏👏
https://t.co/hThTk54mcS

I wrote deep dive on how TikTok suddenly became the most culturally significant product in the world. It rode the tailwinds of AirPods and memes to reach over 1 billion DAU’s and is now the best way to create and consume video on mobile.

Some takeaways:

https://t.co/nTXgQX29Hi

For ppl who are contemplating between starting or joining a company or being a VC:

Join co if: you want emotional and/or financial stability.

Start co if: you want to birth a massive impact &amp; control your destiny.

Be a VC: if you want to be more intellectual than hands on.

1/ Clubhouse is being powered by a company called Agora ( $API).  

Founded in 2012, Agora aims to be the API standard for "real-time voice and video" like Stripe is for "payments" or Twilio is for "SMS". 

$API is already valued @ $9B+ but has some interesting opportunities 🧵

Today I want to talk about the legal aspects of startups. How to set up? How to think about legal costs?

Fun! 

Read on &gt;&gt;

How did Facebook, Zapier, and Tinder drive growth early on?

Growth-Hacking.

PayPal growth-hacked its way to 5M users in 3 months.

Tinder used sororities and frats to 3x their user base.

Steal these 7 growth-hacking strategies that led to millions of users🧵

Stripe is insane. 

It's not just a company. It's a civilization in the making. 

Here are the 10 things that make the company so impressive. 

https://t.co/6N1NDWjphB

Over the past 10 years, I’ve had more than 500 chats with talented tech folks about their job change decisions: should I leave my well-paid FAMG job? should I join Stripe, Facebook or Airbnb? how to evaluate this offer? etc

A thread with 8 ideas I’ve often shared in these chats:

Marketing your startup &amp; getting early traction is not easy.

Over last 4 years, I've launched my startups &amp; 10+ products on multiple platforms while growing to $2mn revenues.

Here's my curated list of 25 startup launch platforms, compared across 5 parameters. 🧵

Build audience before product.

But how do you do it?

Here's how I've built an audience across channels and grown my startups from 0 to $2 million revenues.

Involves a mix of marketing &amp; writing. 🧵

(1/11)

I have bootstrapped my startup from 0 to $2 million+ revenue.

Bootstrapping is an art. It requires you to be smart, patient &amp; resilient.

Here are 8 lessons/principles I have learnt over last 4 years that show how bootstrapped founders must build their startup 🧵

I have been writing software &amp; building products for 10+ years.

For last 4 years, I have done it for my startups growing to $1 million+ revenue.

As a small team or startup, it is tough to consistently meet product goals &amp; keep shipping.

Here's a 8-step framework I follow 🧵

Why are some teams constantly firefighting?

4 common causes

1) Infra: unreliable, insecure, slow

2) Execs: asking for new / different / contradictory things

3) Interpersonal: petty drama between people &amp; teams

4) Habits: managers conditioned to think firefighting is the job

10 Growth Hacks When You’re Cash-Strapped

Startups are hard as hell when you’re low on cash. But the upside is well worth the pain.

Here’s how we scaled into 30,000 stores and 30 countries from a household income of $30k 👇

It's raining money ☔️  in the no-code market &amp; for a good reason

No-code &amp; low-code startups are arming the rebels creating software visually or without writing much code 

Estimates say this market will be $86 billion by 2027  

Here's a list of the hottest startups (thread🧵)

My path from zero to 100M (and the trajectory to 1B) 💰

Gather around I have a story to tell... I am the most transparent wealth builder in history and do not see you as competition but as a partners. We win together. 

Here’s how I did it 👇

Nobody talks about failure in Silicon Valley, yet 90% of startups fail.

Why?

3 yrs ago, @neerajberry and I shut down @Sprig, which raised $60M from @GreylockVC + @socialcapital &amp; grew to $20m revenue.

Then, it all fell apart.

For an honest story about failure,

**Read on**

I’m biased but @udemy is a true underdog story + thought I’d share details we’ve never shared before.

ICYMI, we announced a $50M raise at $2B valuation.

Udemy almost died at least 5x. We got rejected by everyone in the Valley. Startups are never a straight line.

*Read on*

1/17: When a #startup that I’m advising wants to raise money in the near future, I always ask them the question: “Are there any asterisks?”  By this I mean, are there any counter-factual results that will have to be explained in diligence.  This matters A LOT.  A 🧵👇 https://t.co/xdOABE6A7P

1/21: It’s not uncommon for a #VC to chat with an early stage #startup and within weeks get introduced to 3-4 other #startups tackling the same opportunity at the same time.  When this happens it’s rarely coincidental and definitely worth paying attention to. A thread 👇: https://t.co/3x7kjNcZZh

The Startup Product Manager — Building In A Hyper-Growth B2C Environment

A thread... (1/20)

At Udemy, we were 3 first-time entrepreneurs trying to raise seed capital. We made every mistake in the book.

We got 200+ no’s and wasted 12 months fundraising.

We eventually pulled through, just barely. 😅

This thread shares our mistakes as lessons for founders.

**Read On**

Every pitch deck needs a “team” slide. 

At the early stage of a startup when the product concept is fuzzy and revenue is non-existent, VCs are essentially backing the team above all else. 

But almost all team slides are sub-optimal. 

Here are two ways they could be better:

/1

What I learned from raising my first seed round.

This isn’t a how-to guide, that may come later. This is just a story and observations from my own experience.

See, I didn’t know what I was doing at all...

How to raise a seed round. Just one process, adjust accordingly. Missing lots of nuance. 👇

Entrepreneurs are often so fixated on “getting to yes” with a VC – and will go to great lengths to answer any question posed to do so – that they forget to ask the VC any questions. 

Here are 12 questions that founders should ask potential investors more frequently:

1/19 🧵

Quick thread today on the biggest hurdle after your seed raise

Read on &gt;&gt;

The past few years I've sat in a number of board rooms and watched some founders thrive and others struggle

Sharing some tips, particularly for first-time founders, on how to best run board meetings 

Oh - and it's a THREAD 😉🧵

I run a group of 700+ VCs and angel investors.

How to pitch them:

THREAD: How to improve your startup's conversion rate through A/B testing.

We've consolidated learnings from running 1000s of A/B tests for companies like Segment, Microsoft, and Tovala.

Here’s how to double conversion on your startup’s homepage.

(From rewriting over 1,000 websites.)

A thread 👇

1/ The first 18 months of starting a company is often life or death. I must've made 5 different companies that each failed within 9 mo. 😭 Each time the company failed I figured out what I could do better. Eventually startup #6 got to $40K/mo by month 18. Here’s what I learned...

I've reviewed over 150+ no-code / low-code tools.

Here are 27 tools that will help you build your MVP, Startup faster! 🚀

These tools are the ultimate hack to web development! 🤩

1/ HIGH AGENCY 

Once you SEE it - you can never UNSEE it. 

Arguedbly the most important personality trait you can foster. 

I've thought about this concept every week for the last two years since I heard @EricRWeinstein discuss it on @tferriss' podcast.  

THREAD...

0/ I've published a bunch of essays in 2018 on topics from growth metrics that investors look at, scooters, the perils of paid marketing, "Uber for X" and more! Here's the tweetstorm with all of 2018's top essays! https://t.co/RgntkhRdoD

THREAD: 10 significant lies you're told about the world.

On startups, writing, and your career:

This is a never ending thread of the very best online content and resources for early stage startups.

Relevant for both self-funded/bootstrapped and venture backed pre-seed/seed stage companies.

I've spoken to 2,000+ people about remote work in the last 12 months 

A few predictions of what is likely to emerge before 2030

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌍

I've helped 750+ startup founders. 

I always try to ask:

"How did you come up with your idea?"

Here are their answers:

10 reasons why I think now is the greatest time to launch a startup

You should probably consider starting something

Just listen to this:

1/ The first 18 months of a startup:

After starting my 2nd company in 2019, I decided I would write down useful lessons I learned or re-learned along the way. Some were hard-earned &amp; others required steady focus. A thread that I hope may help other founders starting out 👇

Went down a rabbit hole looking for cross-industry innovations (AKA one industry borrowing from another). 

Found some good ones 🧵

1/ James Dyson created the Dyson vacuum design after seeing how sawmills use cyclone force to eject sawdust. https://t.co/vlGFCRiARW