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BUT SECTOR REMAINS RESILIENT

$27.3 billion has been deployed across 1,714 fintech venture deals in H1 2023. Down 14% since H2 2022.

WHEN TO DIG A MOAT

Generative AI has caused a bit of a divide on the topic of moats. Now that we can build things quickly, and often without deep engineering expertise, are we seeing the erosion of defensible moats? Packy explores the types of moats that might exist beyond the technical product.

WHY CONSUMER SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE SO HARD AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

Retaining existing customers is important in the current market. Consumers are irrational. It’s incredibly dififcult to predict who will churn and it’s hard (and expensive) to win their attention in the first place these days. Casey Winters double-clicks on a few tactics and strategies to ensure you’re not leaving money on the table.

FOUNDER

The central theme? You guessed it, customer centricity. Listen to your customers, build a product that truly serves their needs, and acknowledge that your product likely needs to evolve as their needs change, particularly if you’re building for startups that grow up one day.

REFORGE ARTIFACTS

Reforge just launched Artifacts - a library of documents capturing lessons and insights from established founders and operators.

TO RECRUIT NEW TALENT

There seems to be an inverse correlation between the number of mandated days in the office and a company's ability to attract and retain talent. Less flexibility causes churn - who’d have thought?

SURVIVING A SLOWDOWN

We know this message has been drilled in a lot over the last year, but Sean offers some simple mental models to apply when faced with uncertainty and slow market conditions.

HOW MUCH EQUITY SHOULD I GIVE A KEY STARTUP ADVISOR?

Finding the right advisor is hard, incentivising them accordingly even more so. How do you build skin in the game at the right level and reward experienced advisors for their time? Here’s a “back of the napkin” kinda way.

HOW MARKETS VALUE SOFTWARE COMPANIES IN 2023

Valuations are creeping back up based on more than just profitability. Things are picking up again and the guess is that things will pick up steam at the end of Q3 and go bonkers starting in Q4. Are we back? Maybe.

VC FINDS ITS FOOTING AS HEADWINDS WEAKEN

Although venture capital investments continued to decline in Q2, the market is showing some signs of stabilizing.

META LAUNCHES THREADS, ALREADY HAS MILLIONS OF USERS

Meta has launched its Twitter competitor Threads, and has already signed up tens of millions of users in the process, making this a good opportunity to get ahead of the curve on a new social network.

WHY IT IS GOOD TO BE BAD AT ESTIMATION

Some good thoughts from one of the co-founders of Flurry on why it pays to be bad at estimating how long an outcome will take. This will likely (painfully) resonate with many founders on this newsletter list.

SALES REPS?

Never hurts to have a refresher on thinking through early sales team makeup and distribution. This will change considerably in the next 12 months as new AI-powered sales tools permeate the existing process.

LET’S START RETHINKING WORK FOR THE MODERN WORKFORCE

The horse is out of the barn with respect to working remotely. The idea of going into the office 5 days a week just does not make sense. Rethinking remote work and how you can leverage it to your advantage is your only hope. A few thoughts from the team over at Hubspot that are, well, spot on.

WHY YOUR STARTUP NEEDS A PODCAST

Every startup needs a podcast, and as Justin Jackson explains, it’s easier to start than you think.

OPENAI MAKES GPT-4 GENERALLY AVAILABLE

Get out from under GPT-3.5 and start using GPT-4 via the OpenAI API which is generally available starting today.

WHAT IS GROWTH?

A great piece on what growth means to David Norris. This one resonates a bit given the similarities in space-and-time juxtaposed with the craziness of a (yet again) disruptive technology. What is growth to you? It’s more than just a decrease in entropy.

FAST

Some examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together.

MY TOP 10 MISTAKES GETTING TO $100M ARR

Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine, discusses his top 10 mistakes getting to $100M ARR, including not raising enough money, prematurely trusting customer validation, and doing too much at once.

WHAT THE EUROPEAN AI ACT MEANS FOR YOU, AI DEVELOPER

The EU AI Act is the world's first legislation on artificial intelligence, similar to GDPR but for AI. It introduces definitions for 'foundation models' and 'general-purpose AI systems' and sets out dos and don'ts for AI practices. The Act also focuses on trustworthy AI development and includes obligations for high-risk AI systems. The legislation is currently going through final negotiations before enforcement.

WHY TRANSFORMATIVE AI IS REALLY, REALLY HARD TO ACHIEVE

While humans have a good track record of innovation, the trend growth rate of GDP per capita has never exceeded three percent per year. There has yet to be a technology that breaks the three percent threshold. Only strong evidence should cause us to expect anything different. AI is likely transformative in the same way that the internet was, but it has many hurdles in the way to the accelerating growth rates predicted by some.

BUILDING PRESTIGE

A playbook to manufacture personal prestige with a small amount of high-quality content.

THE GUIDE TO FOUNDER-LED SALES

A guide for founders to crush each step of the sales process, from lead gen to close.

5 INTERESTING LEARNINGS FROM SEMRUSH

A compilation of things to learn from SEMRush, the newest public SaaS with $290M in APR.

THE RETURN TO OFFICE MANDATE IS DESTROYING JOB SATISFACTION

The title says it all and the numbers don’t lie. Workers are begrudgingly complying as companies move to push workers back into the office, while looking out for other opportunities and side-hustles.

INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS

The article discusses the concept of intellectual laziness in organizations. It argues that intellectual laziness is the tendency of organizations to "juke the stats" and lie to themselves instead of diagnosing and solving root problems.

WHAT GETS TO THE FRONT PAGE OF HACKER NEWS?

An exploration into what kind of content lands on the coveted front page of Hacker News.

META THREADS TO LAUNCH JULY 6TH

Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, is expected to launch on July 6th.

THE GOAT OF SAAS METRICS

CJ Gustafson makes the case that revenue per employee is the most important metric to evaluate a company by as it cuts through all the noise.

INFLECTION AI RAISES $1.3B

In less than two months after the launch of their first chatbot Pi, Inflection AI and CEO Mustafa Suleyman have raised $1.3 billion in new funding. AI is only accelerating.

SPEED X AI

NFX drops some science around what it means to dive into this next technology go-around: get on board and hurry up, this train is leaving the station. We’re on the cusp of something we only see every 14 years but most founders won’t take advantage: (from the article) “They’ll move too damn slow.”

THE FOUNDER’S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING CO-FOUNDER CONFLICT

People often go into building companies with friends as co-founders but don’t really test their relationship until tensions start to fray. This article provides a great framework for both the before and after bad times in any founder relationship.

This article explains the importance of setting up a strong monetization system as it can increase the chances of retaining customers in the long-term.

HOW TO 10X YOUR WELCOME EMAIL

It never hurts to bone up on the simple stuff. Your welcome email is no different, especially if it’s for your newsletter.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CREATOR ECONOMY?

Evan Armstrong dives into the causes of the creator economy winter, which include a decrease in venture investment, shuttered startups, and layoffs among the creator economy giants.

HOW ROBLOX GROWS

An extremely deep dive into where Roblox came from, where it stands today, and where it’s going.

BUILDING BOBA AI

An interesting case study on how to build an LLM-powered generative application.

DESIGN FOR THE WEB WITHOUT FIGMA

The article argues that Figma, a popular design tool, is an intermediary tool that can actually lead to problems down the road. Instead, it recommends designing directly in HTML and CSS, which is more efficient and produces better results.

DAMAGING RESULTS OF THE MANDATED RTO

Employers who mandated a full return to the office after the pandemic were met with resistance from employees who had grown accustomed to working from home. This led to high turnover rates, decreased productivity, and increased costs.

THE EMOTIONAL COST OF SCALING A STARTUP

This article provides an overview of the emotional cost of scaling a startup, discussing how team dynamics and the founder's role must change in the process, and provides advice for other founders on how to manage the process.

RISKY BUSINESS: VENTURE SCALE VS. VENTURE RISK

Venture Capitalist Bryce Roberts examines the relationship between the scale of a venture and the associated risks, with a focus on how much capital is required to sustain it.

AI AND THE BURDEN OF KNOWLEDGE

This article examines how Artificial Intelligence technologies can be used to help alleviate the increasing amount of knowledge that people and businesses are expected to acquire in order to stay competitive in their respective fields.

AIRBNB CEO'S FIRESIDE CHAT AT FIGMA CONFIG (10 MINUTE READ + VIDEO)

Brian Chesky offers valuable insights into how Airbnb has embraced a design-led approach, highlighting key aspects such as empowering designers, product marketing, design systems, and product release cycles. This discussion provides valuable information for understanding how Airbnb has fostered a culture of design excellence within the company.

HOW TO BUILD A HIGH-PERFORMING SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TEAM

This article provides advice on how to create an exceptional software engineering team that is highly productive and motivated. It includes tips on how to hire well, create a welcoming environment, promote collaboration, and empower team members to succeed.

12 THINGS THAT DESTROY A ONE PERSON BUSINESS

This article provides an overview of twelve common challenges that single-person businesses face and how to avoid them in order to create a successful business.

7-STEP EXERCISE TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT KPIS

Minimize bad decision making by tracking the right KPIs for your business.

20 BOOKS EVERY STARTUP FOUNDER SHOULD READ

Michael Houck lists out his top 20 books he feels founders should read to help maximize their success.

EXPERIENCE DOESN’T DEFINE SENIORITY

The article teaches that while having impressive coding skills is part of the equation, it's the ability to collaborate with the team and set goals that truly makes one a senior engineer.