Things you don't need to launch your product: a great name,…

1/ Recently, I learned about the concept of ‘struggle porn’. This refers to the fetish of sacrificing nearly everything (health, relationships, time) for your startup. I fear that this label is creating more harm than good.

2/ @nateliason wrote a fabulous article about this topic, which first introduced me to this concept. Everyone should read it:

3/ @alexisohanian also recently spoke about struggle porn, though referring to it as ‘hustle porn.’ (as the co-founder of @hustlefundvc, obviously I take issue with this pejorative definition of ‘hustle’, but that’s another topic)

4/ Struggling in itself isn’t necessarily bad. Let’s be real here--if you’re going to start a startup, you will struggle. Founders should expect to work harder generally than employees. You will be challenged in many ways and also be super rewarded in others. This is normal.

5/ However, if you are over-indexing on hard work without clear purpose and degrading your mental health/relationships in the process--then this is very bad and we obviously should not celebrate this behavior.

Andrew Chen
@andrewchen

👇Thread.

Published a new essay: The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics – 80 slide deck included!

This was a deck that I created on my (longish) interview process with @a16z. It was a long path, starting with meeting folks at the firm 10 years ago. But the purpose of the deck was to explain how I would use my superpower in an investing context

Here's what I explain in the deck. As investors (whether angel or VC) we're often confronted with an up-and-to-the-right graph. Is it going to go up? Or down?

One solution to forecast these growth curves is the Growth Accounting Framework, where you add up New+Reactivated and subtract churned users. In each time period that gives you the difference in monthly actives.

The problem with this is that it's a lagging metric, not a leading one. We need to go one level deeper and look at the underlying loops that drive these numbers, to understand the quality.

Harjeet
@Harjeet

1/ Today I prepared for talking about common mistakes startups make (founding -> growth stages) by writing it in tweet form. I ramble too much when public speaking and hoped it would make the core ideas clearer in my mind and more concise. Think it worked. Here are the tweets

2/ Earliest mistake is picking the wrong co-founders. You have to be value-aligned (don’t have conflicting personal goals) and respect each other. With both of these, any other differences are irrelevant - can be worked out. Without them everything else you do is irrelevant.

3/ If you launch, next mistake is chasing top-line vanity metrics (sign ups) instead of growing the number of users who *really* love you. @paultoo advice - better to have 10 users who depend on you than 100 who a lukewarm. This requires patience and killing your ego.

4/ If you raise a seed round, it’s tempting to ignore retention. With money, there are always ways to grow top-line (buy ads, launch a new location). Strong fundraisers can do this for multiple rounds (though investors are more savvy to this now). Eventually, the bottom falls out

5/ Once you’re growing without churn, you find you have a diverse set of customers and can’t make them all happy -it’s easy to fail trying. Commit to a long term strategy for going public and build for the users who get you there, even if you lose the others. You have to focus.

Shahed Khan
@_shahedk

8 things startups can do early on to optimize for focus & productivity:

1. Synchronous meetings only for p0 and p1 items

All meetings should be 25 minutes by default with the ability to extend by 15 minutes if necessary.

Each meeting should have a clear agenda that outlines its context, asks, action items, etc.

Meetings should be brief & impactful

2. Asynchronous for everything else

- Stand ups
- Project demos / updates
- Design / Eng handoffs
- Documentation walkthrough

A simple flowchart for meetings:

3. Strive for 90% focused work / 10% meeting & sync time

- No meetings on Tues & Thurs
- Encourage turning off Slack & distracting notifications
- Track your time to better understand your distractions
- Buy your team a copy of Deep Work & Getting Things Done

4. No recurring meetings

Recurring meetings are a productivity killer. Try to avoid them when possible.

Instead, assess whether a follow-up meeting is needed at the end of each meeting.

$Sharath \U0001f4e3$

Sharath 📣
@5harath

From day 1, I intended to build @shoutoutso_ in public, and part of it is to be transparent with numbers, talk openly about our highs and lows, and share lessons as we grow!

I have been doing individual posts on numbers every week so wanted to one big thread with all updates 👇🏽

Week

Transparency time:

It's been 24hrs @shoutoutso_ went to public launch \U0001f525

Some numbers:
\U0001f4b0 6 rockstars bought Pro, Pro Annual plans.
\U0001f4aa\U0001f3fd 168 signups.
\u2665\ufe0f 182 Shoutout walls created.
\U0001f465 160K Twitter impressions on launch thread.

Thank you for making it a huge day for us \U0001f64f\U0001f3fd pic.twitter.com/is9Z53trIh
— Sharath \U0001f4e3 (@5harath) February 12, 2021

Week

Transparency time: It's been 2 weeks since @shoutoutso_ launched to the public \U0001f525

Here are some highlights:
\U0001f451 18 rockstars paid customers
\U0001f4b0 $240 MRR
\U0001f4aa 426 signups and counting
\u2764\ufe0f 140 walls published
\U0001f3c6 #3 product @ProductHunt

Appreciate this community so much\U0001f64f\U0001f3fd pic.twitter.com/KmKCZdHqlJ
— Sharath \U0001f4e3 (@5harath) February 25, 2021

Week

Transparency time: Week 3 @shoutoutso_ \U0001f525

Here are some highlights:
\U0001f451 29 rockstar paid customers
\U0001f4b0 $460 MRR
\U0001f4aa 475 signups and counting
\u2764\ufe0f 163 walls published
\U0001f3c6 Launched on @ProductHunt(#3) @IndieHackers

Grateful for this amazing community for all the love and support \U0001f64f\U0001f3fd pic.twitter.com/MVGo0cfZJj
— Sharath \U0001f4e3 (@5harath) March 4, 2021

Week

Transparency time: It's been a month we launched @shoutoutso_ \U0001f525

Here are some highlights:
\U0001f451 36 rockstar paid customers
\U0001f4b0 $610 MRR
\U0001f4aa 516 signups and counting
\u2764\ufe0f 191 walls published
\U0001f3c6 @ProductHunt Maker Grant Award

Grateful for this amazing community for all the love \U0001f64f\U0001f3fd pic.twitter.com/1i7LxLU4Ap
— Sharath \U0001f4e3 (@5harath) March 11, 2021

Things you don't need to launch your product: a great name, a one-word domain, a beautiful logo, an ever better website, brilliant copy, perfect code, custom illustrations, shiny buttons, optimized CSS…

Things you do need: a product that solves a problem for someone. That's it.

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Things you don't need to launch your product: a great name, a one-word domain, a beautiful logo, an ever better website, brilliant copy, perfect code, custom illustrations, shiny buttons, optimized CSS…Things you do need: a product that solves a problem for someone. That's it.

More from Startups

You May Also Like

Things you don't need to launch your product: a great name, a one-word domain, a beautiful logo, an ever better website, brilliant copy, perfect code, custom illustrations, shiny buttons, optimized CSS…

Things you do need: a product that solves a problem for someone. That's it.