Hello hello! The sun is shining and we're ready to kick off this weekend with an awesome Curated issue before we go out to catch the sun. We've got some sweet content lined up for you here, so hold on a second before you start the BBQ. In this issue you will read about how to get pre-pitching to VCs right and how to understand the mind of a VC. We have also great articles on sales, Holacracy, lessons on building community by Foursquare and more. On the Must Read of the week: a startup all-time classic on how to build great products.
Enjoy this week’s issue and the rest of this summer weekend!
On behalf of the Startup Foundation Team, Bob, Eleftheria, Leon, Sujan, Timan
Must read
How to build great products
Building great products is hard, but the difficulty is greatly exacerbated if you have no good model for analyzing products and features. Without a model, you’re left with a never-ending stream of feature ideas and half-informed shots in the dark. Does it sound familiar? Assuming you’ve picked an explosive market, how do you go about building a great product?
Sponsored
Stop collecting information and start managing it.
CEO and Founder, Hussein Ahmed built this startup on the belief that no one knows your business, lifestyle or organization's needs better than yourself, and yet very few platforms offer the ability to build your own system.
Transpose is a do-it-yourself solution that lets you build and customize your information management. From lead tracking, to meeting notes, to customer forms, to managing your wine collection, Transpose offers a simple solution to organize everything in your life.
"People shouldn’t have to struggle to make technology work for them. We’ve built an incredible platform that doesn't require expensive technology or knowledge of database design. We can’t wait to see what you would do with it." - Hussein Ahmed, CEO
Growth
Marketing and branding for startups – AMA with Shira Abel [text & video]
Shira Abel is CEO of Hunter & Bard, all around marketing agency headquartered in San Francisco. She’s mentor at 500 startups & contributor at The Next Web. Among other you will learn about: - Behavioral Marketing - Creating content for your startup - Putting psychology into content marketing - Building an email list - Growth hacking tools - How design a impacts the psychology of your customer
An inside look at Foursquare’s strategy for building a 40,000-member superuser community
According to The Community Roundtable’s 2015 State of Community Report, companies with multi-tier community advocacy programs are the most successful. In many organizations, people don’t know where community fits. But a superuser program can pervade the organizational culture in any department. Once a program is started, superusers can contribute in endless ways to the product, marketing, localization, content, or support goals of your organization. Here is how the Fourquare team did it.
Why taking some risks in the sales process can improve results
In-depth article on sales by Mark Suster. When you start building your sales process and team, expect to encounter nay-sayers and saboteurs. Suster provides clear tips on how to deal with push-back and convince people of your product by understanding their problems better. "Don't expect to win all deals. Which is great as it's a filter to finding customers that fit your product and company"
Trends
Why Slack is the ultimate tool to build your own online community
Slack works as a community whether you’re building a course, blog or any other online product. Why you should care? Here are some numbers from businesses that use community to engage customers: - 49% report online communities help them save money on support operations - 60% say their community helped to create a more engaging website - 74% say communities drive organic search traffic - 50% say they’ll use a community to up-sell customers Here is how you can use Slack to build a community of loyal customers and ambassadors around your business.
Team
Fire your boss: Hollacracy's founder on the flatter future of work
Holacracy's been exploding over the past year. Here is how a Philly-based entrepreneur accidentally launched a radical new management paradigm that's infiltrating Silicon Valley.
Finance
Read this before meeting VCs for pre-pitch “advice”
Startups often ask VCs for pre-pitch meetings: a nice way of getting your foot in the door for a soft pitch. And that’s ok; these meetings enable both sides to get acquainted before the real ask. However, when startups come unprepared to these meetings, they can make a bad first impression that is difficult to overcome down the line.Before scheduling pre-pitch “advice” meetings with VCs, make sure you follow these three rules of thumb.
- Watch
The cycle of domination & disruption: Today's opportunities
Great and in-depth video for startups who want to understand how a VC analyzes trends and changes in the world.