BC STARTUPS
Saved by @Massimokris

.@zapier built a $140M ARR business on $1.4M in VC that has become the logic layer of the no-code industry.

But it has the potential to be something even bigger: the Netflix of productivity.

Our report and a thread 👉

 We believe @seqouia and @steadfast got a good deal buying into Zapier at $5B.

We value Zapier at $7B based on:

- 30-50% YoY growth over the next five years
- Zapier’s monopoly status in the solopreneur/SMB market
- 30-40% YoY growth of no-code TAM
No-code is huge and growing, but as @edavidpeterson has written, no-code is about more than tools: it’s about a philosophy that emphasizes interoperability and customizing your software to your needs.

https://t.co/UJY6BRtXwl
.@zapier enabled interoperability by building a solution to one of the intractable problems in SaaS: APIs that don’t talk to each other.

The product took off and hit $100M ARR in just 9 years, comparable to companies that have raised 100x as much money.

https://t.co/0Thk42eRpJ
Zapier was riding an explosion in APIs that started the same year they were founded—2011.

Suddenly, every SaaS business wanted to offer its users extensibility, but not spend time figuring out what integrations to build or building them.

That’s where Zapier came in handy.
With Zapier, companies could write a few simple integrations and immediately be paired up with hundreds, then thousands of other apps.

For them, integrating with Zapier delivered value to their users, but it also provided a new distribution channel.
There’s a parallel here between how companies thought about Zapier and how studios thought about @netflix.

Studios thought Netflix was just another distribution channel.

All the while, it was becoming a hugely influential platform of its own.
Like Netflix, Zapier built a growth engine based on content—specifically, programmatically generated, SEO-optimized landing pages for each new integration on the platform.

Today, Zapier gets 6M+ site visits per month, more than @Deadspin, @TeenVogue or @Gothamist.
To the chagrin of some of Zapier’s partners, Zapier advertises their competitors on those same pages.

Rather than simply a utility to connect two products, Zapier has become an ecosystem unto itself—a marketplace for applications driving discoverability and setting standards.
One of Zapier's big challenges is the rise of native integrations, with companies bringing their integrations in-house via tools like @trayio and @useparagon to improve the user experience.

(See: studios like @Disney building apps like @disneyplus)
For SaaS companies, sending customers away to Zapier to wire up their own integrations is bad UX.

There’s a world where companies, optimizing for activation, build the handful of native integrations that are most valuable in-house and outsource the rest.
In some verticals, companies are taking on Zapier by building automation solutions that do a better job with the JTBD in a specific market, like @AlloyAutomation or @parabolahq in ecommerce, @LevityAI in machine learning, and other “Zapier for X” companies.
Then there’s @airtable, which announced last year that it was building out its own integration platform in a shot across the bow.

It turns out the whole “AWZ stack” is an unstable triad, with all three players converging on each other, directly or indirectly.
But Zapier has a secret weapon—a huge audience for whom they are the #1 destination not just for finding integrations but for insights into productivity and lists of the best tools.
If Zapier flipped Airtable’s strategy around, and built a Zapier-native data store to eat Airtable, they would have a huge preloaded customer base and the ability to enable far more powerful and robust workflows from right within Zapier.
This would be Zapier’s “Netflix” move.

Netflix changed the content game by modularizing TV and movies and getting closer to viewers, and doing so gave them the data they needed to become an original content powerhouse.
Zapier has commoditized its partners. The data they get from them on how their products are used is without parallel. They've started building their own version of original content in Zapier native actions.
Now, Zapier has the opportunity to not just pipe its customers’ data around, but own it, and become a productivity super aggregator.
We go into far more depth in our full report where we break down Zapier’s growth engine, their bear/base/bull cases and the whole competitive landscape for no-code and automation.

Check it out here 👉 https://t.co/0uYru7oEOS

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Justin Jackson
Justin Jackson
@mijustin
You can't pull the market towards your solution.


Markets move towards desired solutions naturally.

(Like folks lining up for ice cream on a hot summer's day).

Our ability to influence the market is much lower than you think.

It's better to build your product to conform to the direction the market is moving.

Before folks start mentioning Steve Jobs and the iPhone ("Steve built a product we didn't even know we needed!")

Nope.

Steve recognized the market's existing momentum and saw an opportunity.

"Everyone has a cell phone." (momentum)
"But nobody likes it." (opportunity)


Markets move towards solutions on their own; founders can't pull markets over to their solution.

If you're struggling to gain traction, you likely have a problem in your:

- market
- product
- channels

(or all three)
STARTUPS
Elizabeth Yin
Elizabeth Yin
@dunkhippo33
Saturday thoughts on funding: Where it helps. Where it doesn't. And how it affects team, success, and PM fit.

This is just my $0.02 after looking reviewing 30k+ early stage startups personally and having led 350+ investments across 2 VC firms & as an angel.

Let's begin! >>

1) Money is great to have in building a startup (for the least dilution and pain possible) That's true and always will be true. 😆

But just like how money can't buy you happiness, it also can't buy you PM fit.

2) PM fit is the holy grail for software startups. (we're not talking biotech - if you have a cure to cancer, I guarantee you everyone wants it).

But for software startups, it's unclear if ppl want your product at your price pt.

3) If you don't find PM fit, in this day and age, you will be able to get some sales. Maybe even say $1m in sales (or more!) per year, and you can still make a living.

But having sales does not mean that you have a repeatable customer acquisition process that can be sustainable

4) As an aside, that is why we invest at pre-seed & don't care about startup traction, because I don't believe traction at the earliest stages suggest PM fit. Traction only shows that a founder can execute (& that's impt too) but there are other ways to assess execution earlier.
STARTUPS
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Tyler Swartz
Tyler Swartz
@SWARTZcenter
1/ Pro Tip: Best way to find a job at a startup…

Hint: it doesn’t start with a job board…

a thread

2/ Go to @crunchbase and set up a filter for the following:

1. Amount raised: $5M - $10M
2. Announced on: today - 3 days ago
3. Headquarters location: your preference
4. Investor Name: @Accel, @Greycroftvc, @Sequoia, @a16z etc...

It should look something like this.


3/ When a company raises money… they are going to use the capital to build out their team.

It isn’t rocket science!

4/ When successful venture firms with track records like, @Accel, @Greycroftvc, @Sequoia, @a16z sink money into a startup. Their chance of success increases astronomically.

5/ Filtering for recent fundraising allows you to get a pulse for when a company is going to add positions to their job board (if they haven’t already)
STARTUPS , STARTUP
DHH
DHH
@dhh
20 years ago, I created the Danish gaming site Daily Rush with @mwittrock – inside a startup accelerator called Prey4, complete with fantastical projections of world domination 😂 – but now it's the end, after the proprietor of many years died in 2018.

Daily Rush was the culmination of years of using the web to do gaming journalism. I started Konsollen all the way back in 1995, then ran https://t.co/zsT3ykQcVk for years in anticipation of Id's shooter, then worked at a web portal, then Daily Rush.

This was how I got into web development, project management, organizing, writing, publishing, and how I met lifelong friends. What a wonderful time. But most good things come to an end. We should all be so lucky to see something we help set in the sea brave the waves for 20 yrs!

It's awesome to see the Internet Archive snapshots from all the way back to the early months of the site. Web design anno 2000 😍


The memory lane trip on the Internet Archive goes all the way back to the precursor to Daily Rush, that https://t.co/zsT3ykQcVk site. Here's a snapshot from 1999! Complete with all the news written by yours truly 😄
STARTUPS
cs. visualized. bot.
cs. visualized. bot.
@csvisualizedbot
Below are the top 10 RT'd tweets from the latest 1000 tweets made by @Hustle_Smarterr.

THREAD:

https://t.co/8EmLYHHbLo


https://t.co/aMyO7K3IbM


https://t.co/xv7QK5mdvD


https://t.co/Ww2s97Kw5x
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Ranvijay Singh🇮🇳...
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#Thread Two divine forms of Khatu Shyam ji...


On the day of Amavasya, devotees get the darshan of Shyam Baba in Shyam varan (black color). In ordinary days, the form of Baba is saffron. The reason for this is a custom. The real head of Shyam Baba which had appeared from Shyam Kund is of Shyam varan.


Every day Shyam Baba's grand Shringar is done by Pujaris. The main part of Shyam Baba's shringar is Tilak. This Shringar is done by the members of Nij Mandir sevaks. The sevaks of the Nij Mandir do sandalwood tilak to Baba everyday in the auspicious time.


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1) The Temple of the Divine Claudius was a vast temple complex on Rome's Caelian Hill, overlooking the valley that would later be occupied by the Colosseum. Though almost nothing now remains of the structure, its scale and grandeur once rivalled anything in the city.. #LostRome


2) The 'Claudium' was intended as a sacred complex to revere Claudius and the imperial cult. Construction began soon after the death and deification of the emperor in 54 AD, initiated by his widow Agrippina who was likely responsible for his supposed death by poisoning. #LostRome


3) The sprawling temple complex sat on a gigantic podium that spread across the Caelian Hill, measuring 180 x 200 metres; with towering retaining walls of travertine that raised the structure 20 metres above the valley below. #LostRome


4) The elevated sacred area was likely entered by steps facing the temple on the west side. The temple itself had a projecting hexastyle porch and was surrounded by gardens and a grand portico, probably the 'porticus Claudia' mentioned in Martial's 'On the Spectacles'. #LostRome


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Pat Walls
@thepatwalls
And here they are...

THE WINNERS OF THE 24 HOUR STARTUP CHALLENGE

Remember, this money is just fun. If you launched a product (or even attempted a launch) - you did something worth MUCH more than $1,000.

#24hrstartup

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Lattes For Change - Skip a latte and save a life.

https://t.co/M75RAirZzs

@frantzfries built a platform where you can see how skipping your morning latte could do for the world.

A great product for a great cause.

Congrats Chris on winning $250!


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Instaland - Create amazing landing pages for your followers.

https://t.co/5KkveJTAsy

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Really impressive for 24 hours. Congrats!


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SayHenlo - Chat without distractions

https://t.co/og0B7gmkW6

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CoderStory - Learn to code from developers across the globe!

https://t.co/86Ay6nF4AY

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I wish this existed when I learned to code! Congrats on $250!!
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Could they stop me once I was inside?

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During most of the first morning, I completed onboarding, made introductions, and completed menial tasks.

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