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More founders are rejecting the VC route in favor of bootstrapping or raising smaller amounts of capital from angels. Layoffs across tech have injected a huge amount of Silicon Valley trained operators, who are building their own profitable companies. The impact? More healthy companies that don't chase the venture rabbit down the hole and have an outsized impact on the makeup of our society.
Increasing loneliness, rising healthcare and education costs, and climbing C02 emissions paint a sobering story. There’s a lot to fix, but startups will play a leading role in the solution. Startups that tangibly make life better for all of us will attract young talent, and the companies that can attract the best talent will define the next generation of tech.
Four predictions about how tech will evolve and impact the world around us. Two directly involve AI, and the others declare how Femtech and Edtech, which seemed to have been on a low boil for a decade, will finally take off.
Raising capital for your startup involves kissing a lot of frogs. Be comfortable with rejection, reach out to more people than you think you need to, keep cold outbounds short, and ensure you’re mindful of how you present yourself.
Despite customer numbers remaining relatively flat, Fastly has maintained a stable NRR of 114%, meaning the value of its existing customers is growing YoY. Instead of accelerating product innovation, it seems the company has opted to inch itself to profitability.
In managing equity for your company, getting it right is crucial. This thread presents eight essential factors to consider in determining the appropriate amount of equity to offer to early employees.
Bind maps customer data to Discord so you can build a product-driven community.
Your marketing AI co-pilot.
Automated DM outreaches for Facebook and Instagram.
As your company scales, the role you play as a founder evolves. Being stubborn with that evolution can create bottlenecks. Here are some behaviors a founder identified they were doing that ultimately hindered growth at their $10m ARR SaaS company.
Who needs a technical co-founder with all the no-code tools and incoming AI co-pilots, right? However, based on the thousands of companies YC has funded over the years, companies lacking a technical co-founder underperform.
As a leader, it can be really hard to solicit genuine feedback from your employees. Success comes from how you package the request. You need to be comfortable with discomfort and come to the table with the right question set. Most importantly, take action on the feedback.
When quoting for a gig, or perhaps pricing your product for the first time, we tend to undervalue the service we’re providing. We’re sometimes insecure about our value and we don’t want to lose the opportunity. Think holistically about how you position your price to ensure you’re offering the best offer, not the cheapest.
A good recap of the 45+ minute talks between Reid Hoffman and Vinod Khosla where they dive into a variety of topics, from AI to “techno-optimist” manifestos. Both titans have great perspectives on things to come and how the tech industry should be regulated (hint: not at all).
The short of it is that comp and work-life balance is better, but tech workers are the unhappiest they have been since 2020. The shift is moving to workers thinking of their jobs more as transactional in nature.