Productivity hacks, selecting a VC partner, and pre-mortems on relationships: all topics you can find in this week's Curated. We've also included articles with some mind-boggling observations and lessons learned, e.g. on selling tacos and customer retention, or what you can learn from customers while bartending.
And, there's a long-read on raising a unicorn... 🦄
Enjoy reading,
Culture
Entrepreneurship is not a job
A mantra on why bragging about how much money you've raised, or what your valuation is, is a form of job thinking.
Modern Entrepreneurship
The 3 most important things I know about consumers I learned from bartending
"Unless you are selling electricity or heat or the absolute most basic of food and clothing to someone in dire straits, you are never, ever selling a product. And the need is never what it seems."
Want to read another good customer analogy? Check this post on tacos and customer retention.
Should you accept equity as compensation? A beginner’s guide
On the do's and don'ts of taking equity as compensation.
The definitive guide to building investable consumer and digital lifestyle brands
It’s never been a more exciting time to build a consumer brand. So, how do you make sure you get the key four aspects - team, product, market, and capitalization - right?
Growth
Product to platform — Inside Amazon’s dominance
"Bezos builds businesses like no one else — and arguably better than anyone. " - And each of Bezos' businesses follows the same strategy.
How to raise a unicorn
The biggest companies of our age share seven fundamentals leading to massive growth. This long-read takes you through these seven principles, so you can raise your own unicorn.
Promoted
Why the hardest thing to do is nothing
The now legendary Alptitude is an antidote to boring conferences – an invite-only gathering in the mountains of Dream Valley this June. A week where you'll get the space and time to learn, share and have fun with likeminded entrepreneurs from around the world. This is the future of business events – emergent, playful and transformational. Applications close this weekend!
Trends
WeWork’s first-ever bond offering is a master class in financial masturbation ✊🍆
"It called the fully adjusted number “community adjusted Ebitda,” by which it subtracted not only interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, but also basic expenses like marketing, general and administrative, and development and design costs. Those earnings, WeWork said, were $233 million."
Team
What could go wrong? Conducting pre-mortems on your work relationships
We do pre- and post-mortems on products, but why not on (work) relationships?
Finance
A founder's guide to evaluating the right VC partner
A founder sharing his perspective on the process of selecting a VC partner, for example considering an adequate amount of capital as one of the important factors.
This older post on why startups need due diligence too offers some additional tips for doing your homework when selecting a VC partner.
There are only three startup stages
Pre-seed, post-seed, early A? This investor shares why you should know what phase you find yourself in because it will support your fundraising efforts.
Negotiating with VCs: navigating the Founder’s Dilemma
A quick guide to understanding the 'Founder's Dilemma' better, so you can more openly and effectively steer your way through raising investment.
Thank you
Thank you for finishing issue #170 & credits
Thank you for reading Startup Curated, and special thanks go out to Raymond from DigiGurus, Vartika from the BFF app, and Alessandro from Difitek for curating!
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