For most founders, the deck is a cornerstone of their seed fundraising process. Unfortunately, most decks are terrible. They’re often difficult to understand, too detailed, or missing key details. …

Today, we’re talking about building a self-serve product as your first version. And I strongly recommend against it. 1. First and foremost — as a founder, building a self-serve app will not mean you can avoid sales tasks. Put that out of your mind. …

Establishing a startup sales strategy can be an exciting, yet difficult endeavor with unexpected twists and turns. Regardless of whether you’re a founder or a representative, you’re likely to confront numerous hurdles while attempting to develop your business. As a result, we’ve compiled a list of the top five most…

Today, we’re talking about the basics of startup marketing. 1. In my opinion, your first outreach should be direct. That’s for B2B, B2C, and marketplaces. The reason is that you need lots and lots of feedback at this very early stage. Analytics won’t cover it. You need to be talking…

With startup capital much harder to find this year (2023), more and more entrepreneurs are having to build their businesses without the help of investment. This is not a new concept, as many great companies like Microsoft, took this approach and still became global businesses. …

For the first time in my ~20 years in tech, everyone I have spoken to in the last 10 days, has first mentioned the same thing: SVB. Here’s the main questions about the SVB bank collapse, that I have seen this week. Should we move money back to SVB? I see lots of public support for this…

Today, we’re talking about launching your beta to small groups. 1. I advise against releasing your beta to the entire waitlist. You will get the same feedback from almost everyone and will likely throw away a lot of potential customers due to the problems they encounter. 2. Instead, break down the beta launch into small groups of 5–10 people, even less for enterprise software. Launch to a small group, collect feedback, iterate, and then launch to the next small group.

There’s often a lot of confusion from founders around why one particular startup was able to raise a seed round easily, whereas another struggled. Here’s what investors at the seed stage are usually looking for: Team What: First and foremost, seed investors want to see a strong team. Successful serial entrepreneurs…

Today we are talking about the absolute basics of sales and marketing. 1. Marketing is all about how people initially find your product. There are at least 10 different, well-used ways to reach customers, but most startups should begin with direct outreach, asking for advice. …