Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia discusses how underestimating the size of the creator market early on limited Gumroad's growth, as there were fewer creators than expected who each generated less revenue than anticipated; this highlights the importance of thoroughly analyzing market size upfront to understand constraints and opportunities. While Gumroad has since grown to a $100M valuation, Sahil notes the market is often the biggest determinant of company growth, so founders should spend time sizing their market to avoid surprises.
This document summarizes Scott Maxwell's perspectives on growth equity investing in 2015. It discusses how growth equity firms create value through focus, access to deals, deal selection, and company building activities. It notes the changing investment environment with high valuations, more capital, and larger fund sizes, which is concerning to Maxwell. He is also keeping an eye on disruptive changes in cloud, mobile, social, intelligence and their impact on portfolio companies.
Customers Abandoning Their Shopping Carts? Don't Get Mad. Get Remarketing!Webtrends
Fact: Abandoned shopping carts account for $18 billion in missed revenue opportunities a year.*
Fact: Every cart abandonment email sent delivers over $6 in revenue.**
Embrace a new perspective on consumers who abandon your shopping cart, and use your insight to target them with an email remarketing campaign. Learn how email remarketing can bring consumers back, and turn them into high-value customers.
Our slideshare tells you how to do it, plus explains:
Why email remarketing is an effective way to bring abandoners back to your site
What makes cart abandoners a valuable group to target
How Webtrends technology enhances your email remarketing
* Forrester Research
** SalesCycle, 2013
The document appears to be an annual report or brochure from IMAP, a global M&A advisory firm, summarizing their deals and performance from 2011-2014. It includes statistics showing IMAP ranked 4th globally in number of deals under $200 million. The brochure then highlights representative M&A transactions IMAP completed over that period sorted by industry sectors such as consumer products, education, energy, and others. Deals spanned multiple countries and involved sales, acquisitions, and growth funding.
Quick Fintech Marketing 101 for the financial technology startups & other sta...Emmanuel Omikunle
The document discusses some realities and challenges of marketing in the FinTech industry. It notes that FinTech marketing requires broad industry knowledge across financial services as regulations and technologies change rapidly. It also emphasizes the importance of content marketing, social media engagement, and understanding diverse cultures. Some challenges mentioned include heavy regulation, competition from incumbents, complexity of B2B sales, and difficulty measuring marketing effectiveness and ROI. Overall, the document provides an overview of current trends and considerations for FinTech startups in developing marketing strategies.
At first glance, Asia-Pacific retailers appear to be in good shape. Business is booming and waves of Asian millennials are entering the workforce, consuming at a rate previously unseen among older, more conservative- minded shoppers.
But take a closer look, and there is cause for concern. Profits are plummeting!
Foundation Capital held its annual investor event on March 23rd 2016 at Facebook HQ. The presentation discussed Foundation Capital's new $70M fund called F8, and highlighted its 4X increase in capital deployed from 2010 to 2015. When investing, Foundation looks for companies addressing a problem with a secret solution and compelling story, and that can prove their concept. The presentation provided tips for startups on fundraising, emphasizing growth, culture and customer focus. It also summarized keys to unlocking the decade of the Chief Marketing Officer, such as prioritizing ROI, data-driven decisions, mass personalization, closing deals, and creating abundant online content. Peerspace, an online used car marketplace, was profiled as a company addressing
This presentation covers my marketing experience in FinTech, including the challenges of FinTech, growth hacking, product marketing and messaging, acquisition and retention.
I have showcased the growth hacks using the following FinTech companies:
Intuit QuickBooks
GoCardless
Revolut
TransferWise
Azimo
Atom
N26
Etoro
MarketInvoice
Futureproofing digital business models in Retail - Jacob Dutton, 383 - Byte B...383
Jacob Dutton, Partner & Commercial Director at digital experience studio 383, talks about the ways that traditional retail models are being disrupted. He also explore some practical ways that today's retailers can help to future proof their revenue streams for tomorrow
Jacob spoke at 383's monthly Byte Breakfast event. Each event features a guest speaker from inside one of the world’s most interesting companies and a related talk on product development and customer experience from a team lead at 383.
This document summarizes Scott Maxwell's perspectives on growth equity investing in 2015. It discusses how growth equity firms create value through focus, access to deals, deal selection, and company building activities. It notes the changing investment environment with high valuations, more capital, and larger fund sizes, which is concerning to Maxwell. He is also keeping an eye on disruptive changes in cloud, mobile, social, intelligence and their impact on portfolio companies.
Customers Abandoning Their Shopping Carts? Don't Get Mad. Get Remarketing!Webtrends
Fact: Abandoned shopping carts account for $18 billion in missed revenue opportunities a year.*
Fact: Every cart abandonment email sent delivers over $6 in revenue.**
Embrace a new perspective on consumers who abandon your shopping cart, and use your insight to target them with an email remarketing campaign. Learn how email remarketing can bring consumers back, and turn them into high-value customers.
Our slideshare tells you how to do it, plus explains:
Why email remarketing is an effective way to bring abandoners back to your site
What makes cart abandoners a valuable group to target
How Webtrends technology enhances your email remarketing
* Forrester Research
** SalesCycle, 2013
The document appears to be an annual report or brochure from IMAP, a global M&A advisory firm, summarizing their deals and performance from 2011-2014. It includes statistics showing IMAP ranked 4th globally in number of deals under $200 million. The brochure then highlights representative M&A transactions IMAP completed over that period sorted by industry sectors such as consumer products, education, energy, and others. Deals spanned multiple countries and involved sales, acquisitions, and growth funding.
Quick Fintech Marketing 101 for the financial technology startups & other sta...Emmanuel Omikunle
The document discusses some realities and challenges of marketing in the FinTech industry. It notes that FinTech marketing requires broad industry knowledge across financial services as regulations and technologies change rapidly. It also emphasizes the importance of content marketing, social media engagement, and understanding diverse cultures. Some challenges mentioned include heavy regulation, competition from incumbents, complexity of B2B sales, and difficulty measuring marketing effectiveness and ROI. Overall, the document provides an overview of current trends and considerations for FinTech startups in developing marketing strategies.
At first glance, Asia-Pacific retailers appear to be in good shape. Business is booming and waves of Asian millennials are entering the workforce, consuming at a rate previously unseen among older, more conservative- minded shoppers.
But take a closer look, and there is cause for concern. Profits are plummeting!
Foundation Capital held its annual investor event on March 23rd 2016 at Facebook HQ. The presentation discussed Foundation Capital's new $70M fund called F8, and highlighted its 4X increase in capital deployed from 2010 to 2015. When investing, Foundation looks for companies addressing a problem with a secret solution and compelling story, and that can prove their concept. The presentation provided tips for startups on fundraising, emphasizing growth, culture and customer focus. It also summarized keys to unlocking the decade of the Chief Marketing Officer, such as prioritizing ROI, data-driven decisions, mass personalization, closing deals, and creating abundant online content. Peerspace, an online used car marketplace, was profiled as a company addressing
This presentation covers my marketing experience in FinTech, including the challenges of FinTech, growth hacking, product marketing and messaging, acquisition and retention.
I have showcased the growth hacks using the following FinTech companies:
Intuit QuickBooks
GoCardless
Revolut
TransferWise
Azimo
Atom
N26
Etoro
MarketInvoice
Futureproofing digital business models in Retail - Jacob Dutton, 383 - Byte B...383
Jacob Dutton, Partner & Commercial Director at digital experience studio 383, talks about the ways that traditional retail models are being disrupted. He also explore some practical ways that today's retailers can help to future proof their revenue streams for tomorrow
Jacob spoke at 383's monthly Byte Breakfast event. Each event features a guest speaker from inside one of the world’s most interesting companies and a related talk on product development and customer experience from a team lead at 383.
The marketing world’s intense focus on analytics, of late, hasn’t always led to better performance — because, while it’s easy to collect data, it’s difficult to turn it into deep insight. This Insight Center covered content that included a leading practitioner company’s reinvention of market research, a framework for measuring what your customers actually value and will pay for, and a toolkit approach to defining the customer’s “job to be done.”
https://runfrictionless.com/b2b-white-paper-service/
Velocity 12: Reshaping the world view of middle-class growthS_HIFT
A new report that identifies 12 'velocity' markets that will be key to middle-class consumer growth over the next decade. With the BRIC index of markets having outlived its usefulness, Ogilvy's new ranking provides a fresh perspective on the future of global growth, and challenges some of the outdated notions about "emerging markets".
Ogilvy's V12 ranking goes beyond traditional economist and banking indices and is based upon measures of middle-class growth in terms of income, rather than assets, using a 'Purchasing Power Parity' (PPP) methodology, a measurement widely accepted by the IMF, the UN and the World Bank to equalize the purchasing power of different currencies. Critically, it also assessed markets based upon the velocity of growth and change - an increasingly important factor that some companies have grossly underestimated so far in their global growth plans.
PaySay is a platform that aims to simplify payments and provide crypto-banking services globally. It offers services such as payment processing, buying and selling cryptocurrencies, banking cards, investments, and earning interest on crypto deposits. PaySay's vision is to enable financial inclusion and borderless banking through its one platform for online and mobile crypto banking, merchant point-of-sale services, crypto exchanges, deposits, lending, portfolio management, and insurance. PaySay also plans to integrate with voice assistants like Alexa to provide banking services across different devices.
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Affluent Millennials Research WhitepaperLinkedIn
The document summarizes a study on affluent millennials in Australia. Some key findings:
- Affluent millennials (those with over $100k assets) are optimistic about the future, conduct their own research but validate decisions with advisors, and are open to offerings from non-financial brands.
- They set ambitious goals like starting businesses and buying homes. They also seek educational opportunities abroad.
- They diversify income sources through inheritance, family businesses and wages. They take on debt for loans but also save 30% of income on average.
- Affluent millennials want control over financial decisions but also value guidance from advisors. They are loyal but open to new providers
Kissnshare is a crowd-selling platform that connects companies to social media users, allowing users to earn cash rewards for sharing product deals. Users select deals to share and receive a personalized link to track sales and earnings. The platform aims to change how companies reach customers through social networks by directly involving users. Key advantages include visibility, guaranteed sales and returns, and engaging both users and customers. The startup has shown early traction with over 2,500 acquired users and a popup store conversion rate of 2.8% after launching in France.
StayinFront Leadership Perspective Roundtable Interview with Takshay AggarwalStayinFront
Takshay Aggarwal, Senior Principal at Infosys and as a consultant in the retail, CPG, and life sciences sectors shares his vast and valuable experiences on the issues CG companies are facing. He also advises on how companies can launch a mobile retail execution with considering the needs and capabilities of their organization.
http://www.l-spark.com — The L-SPARK accelerator is the destination for enterprise SaaS and cloud startups to connect with Canada’s SaaS experts and propel their revenues to $100K MRR or 10x revenue growth.
Marketers have seen their jobs transformed over the past ten years. The transformation is happening again — but faster this time. According to The Economist Intelligence Unit's survey of 478 high-level marketing executives worldwide, sponsored by Marketo, more than 80% say they need to restructure marketing to better support the business. And 29% believe the need for change is urgent.
An Insider’s Guide to Acquisitions for the Mid-sized Company - Part 3 of 9Brad D. Cherniak
Part 3 of our series on acquisitions for the mid-sized private technology or tech-enabled service company:
'Finding a partner when the playing field is tilted' - Next to good luck or kismet, process discipline is key to effectively finding your business's soul mate.
. . .
Thinking of making an acquisition as a mid-sized private technology or tech-enabled service company?
- A 9-part series from Sapient Capital Partners.
Tactical Lessons from $40B+ in Technology Transaction ValueBattery Ventures
Jeff Chang is the Head of Software at Qatalyst Partners, a global independent investment bank providing M&A and financial advice for emerging and established technology leaders. Qatalyst Partners has over $40 billion in deal experience. Jeff Chang has been involved in 21 public software company IPOs totaling over $10 billion in market cap today and over 400 software acquisitions over $50 million in the last 5 years. The presentation provides advice on building relationships with potential acquirers, developing partnerships and integrations, and gaining insight into public markets to elevate relationships and avoid mistakes that could hurt negotiations for a future acquisition.
The Black Swan Event: Funding in the time of Coronavirus with Mark Sustersaastr
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
SVEN Future of Marketing Series - Ubertrends & Innovation 4-19-17 programFortuneCMO, LLC
The document provides an agenda for a panel discussion on trends in innovation and marketing. It lists the panelists and moderator who will discuss topics like digital trends, the future of marketing, design-led marketing, and emerging trends and technologies that can help organizations gain a competitive edge. The panelists include executives from companies like PwC, Adobe, and Frog Design.
Know how venture capitalists value your deal....understand how they are compensated...see what creates value and how investors assess your "risk factors."
A great slide show presentation that provides solid answers to many of these essential questions Check out mikeklein2010.wordpress.com
6 Ways to Grow Your Business Through BloggingZontee Hou
This document outlines 18 ways for businesses to grow through blogging. It discusses providing valuable resources for customers, building trust as an expert, retaining existing customers, using case studies, creating different types of content like thought leadership pieces, hosting digital events, improving customer support, building an online community, optimizing content for search engines, developing an editorial calendar, formatting blogs for readability, cross-promoting content, and recommended tools for blogging. The document provides research data and best practices for each recommendation.
This document provides an overview of technology and entrepreneurship ecosystems around the world from the perspective of Hal Jo, a technology entrepreneur and investor. It discusses Silicon Valley's continued dominance in venture capital funding and highlights key trends in areas like cloud, mobile, social, and big data. It also summarizes Jo's views on ecosystems in places like New Zealand, China, and how incubation hubs and accelerators are changing the startup landscape.
Omnichannel Commerce & The Customer Experience - Featuring Don PeppersMargot Heiligman
This document provides a summary of a presentation on omnichannel commerce and the customer experience. It discusses how technologies like mobile phones and the internet have disrupted existing business models and empowered customers. It emphasizes the importance of shifting from product-centric to customer-centric strategies and delivering frictionless customer experiences. It also addresses challenges like integrating systems, aligning organizational structures, and shifting company culture and mindsets to truly meet customer needs across all channels.
The document summarizes predictions from 14 sales experts on trends in 2015. Key predictions include:
1) Sales success will require closer collaboration between sales and marketing using techniques like marketing automation, lead nurturing and sales development.
2) Salespeople should engage prospects on social media to build relationships and show how they can help prospects.
3) Data from social, marketing and management systems will help salespeople focus on prospects and shorten sales cycles. World-class teams will provide more value to earn prospects' attention.
How Clients think: From SMB to EnterpriseRobin Leonard
An exploration into how Clients think from a digital agency perspective, across Small to Medium, Mid-Market/Corporate and Enterprise. What are their problems, and what can agencies offer them? This presentation was originally given at the Digital Agency Summit 2017 - http://digitalagencysummit.com/
This document discusses how to estimate the potential market size for a startup using Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM), and Share of Market (SOM). TAM refers to the entire market that could potentially be served, SAM is the subset of TAM that the specific product can realistically serve, and SOM is the actual portion of the SAM that the startup expects to capture. The document provides examples from Dollar Shave Club to illustrate these concepts and emphasizes that TAM, SAM, and SOM estimates are intended to prove a startup has a viable business model rather than needing to be perfectly accurate.
The document discusses product-market fit and how achieving it is essential for startup success and survival. It provides several definitions of product-market fit, including that it is when customers are buying a product as fast as a company can sell it. The document emphasizes that the number one reason startups fail is due to a lack of product-market fit and inability to get customers. It recommends startups measure retention rates to determine if they have achieved product-market fit and provides examples of retention rates for companies that have and have not achieved product-market fit. The document stresses the importance of starting with small, targeted markets and iterating based on customer feedback to improve the product.
Getting investment ready tech4 africa (zach)Saratoga
Zachariah George shares his insights on what investors are looking for so that you can learn how to create a business that is going to get noticed.
The purpose of the clinic is to better equip entrepreneurs and companies looking for funding with practical tools in creating a business plan that is investor ready.
This session will focus on financial readiness and is applicable to all levels of knowledge and experience.
U-Start is a boutique advisory firm that matches investors with entrepreneurs. Join the U-Start community or follow @Zack_CPT.
The marketing world’s intense focus on analytics, of late, hasn’t always led to better performance — because, while it’s easy to collect data, it’s difficult to turn it into deep insight. This Insight Center covered content that included a leading practitioner company’s reinvention of market research, a framework for measuring what your customers actually value and will pay for, and a toolkit approach to defining the customer’s “job to be done.”
https://runfrictionless.com/b2b-white-paper-service/
Velocity 12: Reshaping the world view of middle-class growthS_HIFT
A new report that identifies 12 'velocity' markets that will be key to middle-class consumer growth over the next decade. With the BRIC index of markets having outlived its usefulness, Ogilvy's new ranking provides a fresh perspective on the future of global growth, and challenges some of the outdated notions about "emerging markets".
Ogilvy's V12 ranking goes beyond traditional economist and banking indices and is based upon measures of middle-class growth in terms of income, rather than assets, using a 'Purchasing Power Parity' (PPP) methodology, a measurement widely accepted by the IMF, the UN and the World Bank to equalize the purchasing power of different currencies. Critically, it also assessed markets based upon the velocity of growth and change - an increasingly important factor that some companies have grossly underestimated so far in their global growth plans.
PaySay is a platform that aims to simplify payments and provide crypto-banking services globally. It offers services such as payment processing, buying and selling cryptocurrencies, banking cards, investments, and earning interest on crypto deposits. PaySay's vision is to enable financial inclusion and borderless banking through its one platform for online and mobile crypto banking, merchant point-of-sale services, crypto exchanges, deposits, lending, portfolio management, and insurance. PaySay also plans to integrate with voice assistants like Alexa to provide banking services across different devices.
LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Affluent Millennials Research WhitepaperLinkedIn
The document summarizes a study on affluent millennials in Australia. Some key findings:
- Affluent millennials (those with over $100k assets) are optimistic about the future, conduct their own research but validate decisions with advisors, and are open to offerings from non-financial brands.
- They set ambitious goals like starting businesses and buying homes. They also seek educational opportunities abroad.
- They diversify income sources through inheritance, family businesses and wages. They take on debt for loans but also save 30% of income on average.
- Affluent millennials want control over financial decisions but also value guidance from advisors. They are loyal but open to new providers
Kissnshare is a crowd-selling platform that connects companies to social media users, allowing users to earn cash rewards for sharing product deals. Users select deals to share and receive a personalized link to track sales and earnings. The platform aims to change how companies reach customers through social networks by directly involving users. Key advantages include visibility, guaranteed sales and returns, and engaging both users and customers. The startup has shown early traction with over 2,500 acquired users and a popup store conversion rate of 2.8% after launching in France.
StayinFront Leadership Perspective Roundtable Interview with Takshay AggarwalStayinFront
Takshay Aggarwal, Senior Principal at Infosys and as a consultant in the retail, CPG, and life sciences sectors shares his vast and valuable experiences on the issues CG companies are facing. He also advises on how companies can launch a mobile retail execution with considering the needs and capabilities of their organization.
http://www.l-spark.com — The L-SPARK accelerator is the destination for enterprise SaaS and cloud startups to connect with Canada’s SaaS experts and propel their revenues to $100K MRR or 10x revenue growth.
Marketers have seen their jobs transformed over the past ten years. The transformation is happening again — but faster this time. According to The Economist Intelligence Unit's survey of 478 high-level marketing executives worldwide, sponsored by Marketo, more than 80% say they need to restructure marketing to better support the business. And 29% believe the need for change is urgent.
An Insider’s Guide to Acquisitions for the Mid-sized Company - Part 3 of 9Brad D. Cherniak
Part 3 of our series on acquisitions for the mid-sized private technology or tech-enabled service company:
'Finding a partner when the playing field is tilted' - Next to good luck or kismet, process discipline is key to effectively finding your business's soul mate.
. . .
Thinking of making an acquisition as a mid-sized private technology or tech-enabled service company?
- A 9-part series from Sapient Capital Partners.
Tactical Lessons from $40B+ in Technology Transaction ValueBattery Ventures
Jeff Chang is the Head of Software at Qatalyst Partners, a global independent investment bank providing M&A and financial advice for emerging and established technology leaders. Qatalyst Partners has over $40 billion in deal experience. Jeff Chang has been involved in 21 public software company IPOs totaling over $10 billion in market cap today and over 400 software acquisitions over $50 million in the last 5 years. The presentation provides advice on building relationships with potential acquirers, developing partnerships and integrations, and gaining insight into public markets to elevate relationships and avoid mistakes that could hurt negotiations for a future acquisition.
The Black Swan Event: Funding in the time of Coronavirus with Mark Sustersaastr
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
SVEN Future of Marketing Series - Ubertrends & Innovation 4-19-17 programFortuneCMO, LLC
The document provides an agenda for a panel discussion on trends in innovation and marketing. It lists the panelists and moderator who will discuss topics like digital trends, the future of marketing, design-led marketing, and emerging trends and technologies that can help organizations gain a competitive edge. The panelists include executives from companies like PwC, Adobe, and Frog Design.
Know how venture capitalists value your deal....understand how they are compensated...see what creates value and how investors assess your "risk factors."
A great slide show presentation that provides solid answers to many of these essential questions Check out mikeklein2010.wordpress.com
6 Ways to Grow Your Business Through BloggingZontee Hou
This document outlines 18 ways for businesses to grow through blogging. It discusses providing valuable resources for customers, building trust as an expert, retaining existing customers, using case studies, creating different types of content like thought leadership pieces, hosting digital events, improving customer support, building an online community, optimizing content for search engines, developing an editorial calendar, formatting blogs for readability, cross-promoting content, and recommended tools for blogging. The document provides research data and best practices for each recommendation.
This document provides an overview of technology and entrepreneurship ecosystems around the world from the perspective of Hal Jo, a technology entrepreneur and investor. It discusses Silicon Valley's continued dominance in venture capital funding and highlights key trends in areas like cloud, mobile, social, and big data. It also summarizes Jo's views on ecosystems in places like New Zealand, China, and how incubation hubs and accelerators are changing the startup landscape.
Omnichannel Commerce & The Customer Experience - Featuring Don PeppersMargot Heiligman
This document provides a summary of a presentation on omnichannel commerce and the customer experience. It discusses how technologies like mobile phones and the internet have disrupted existing business models and empowered customers. It emphasizes the importance of shifting from product-centric to customer-centric strategies and delivering frictionless customer experiences. It also addresses challenges like integrating systems, aligning organizational structures, and shifting company culture and mindsets to truly meet customer needs across all channels.
The document summarizes predictions from 14 sales experts on trends in 2015. Key predictions include:
1) Sales success will require closer collaboration between sales and marketing using techniques like marketing automation, lead nurturing and sales development.
2) Salespeople should engage prospects on social media to build relationships and show how they can help prospects.
3) Data from social, marketing and management systems will help salespeople focus on prospects and shorten sales cycles. World-class teams will provide more value to earn prospects' attention.
How Clients think: From SMB to EnterpriseRobin Leonard
An exploration into how Clients think from a digital agency perspective, across Small to Medium, Mid-Market/Corporate and Enterprise. What are their problems, and what can agencies offer them? This presentation was originally given at the Digital Agency Summit 2017 - http://digitalagencysummit.com/
This document discusses how to estimate the potential market size for a startup using Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM), and Share of Market (SOM). TAM refers to the entire market that could potentially be served, SAM is the subset of TAM that the specific product can realistically serve, and SOM is the actual portion of the SAM that the startup expects to capture. The document provides examples from Dollar Shave Club to illustrate these concepts and emphasizes that TAM, SAM, and SOM estimates are intended to prove a startup has a viable business model rather than needing to be perfectly accurate.
The document discusses product-market fit and how achieving it is essential for startup success and survival. It provides several definitions of product-market fit, including that it is when customers are buying a product as fast as a company can sell it. The document emphasizes that the number one reason startups fail is due to a lack of product-market fit and inability to get customers. It recommends startups measure retention rates to determine if they have achieved product-market fit and provides examples of retention rates for companies that have and have not achieved product-market fit. The document stresses the importance of starting with small, targeted markets and iterating based on customer feedback to improve the product.
Getting investment ready tech4 africa (zach)Saratoga
Zachariah George shares his insights on what investors are looking for so that you can learn how to create a business that is going to get noticed.
The purpose of the clinic is to better equip entrepreneurs and companies looking for funding with practical tools in creating a business plan that is investor ready.
This session will focus on financial readiness and is applicable to all levels of knowledge and experience.
U-Start is a boutique advisory firm that matches investors with entrepreneurs. Join the U-Start community or follow @Zack_CPT.
001 Essay Example Debate Of Argumentative EssaysAnna Barrett
The document discusses the steps to get writing help from HelpWriting.net:
1. Create an account with a password and email.
2. Complete a 10-minute order form providing instructions, sources, and deadline. Attach previous work samples.
3. Review bids from writers and choose one based on qualifications, history, and feedback. Place a deposit to start.
4. Review the paper and authorize full payment if pleased, or request revisions for free using the service.
Talk by Ariel Poler at the Universidad de San Andres in Buenos Aires, Argentina. About entrepreneurship and fundraising. During the Geeks on a Plane trip to Brazil, Chile & Argentina.
Seminar 3 finding and researching investment ideaspvalantagul
The document provides guidance on finding and researching investment ideas. It discusses looking for ideas from everyday life, various sectors and industries, as well as large and small companies. It also recommends sources for investment ideas such as blogs, 13-F filings, Value Line, Value Investors Club, and Guru Focus. Further research on any potential investment ideas is strongly encouraged to properly evaluate companies.
PreMoney SF 2017: Redefining Intelligent Growth, Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate500 Startups
The document discusses different types of startup growth profiles, including unprofitable hypergrowth, profitable hypergrowth, linear growth, and profitable decline. It notes that while many failing startups are consuming large amounts of capital, startups create value when they scale intelligently and destroy value when they consume capital too rapidly relative to their growth. The document advocates for a "truth-seeking" phase where startups focus on unlocking product value before rapidly accumulating customers, and determining the correct growth profile involves balancing ambition with acceptance of realistic growth potential.
Each year we embark on a trip to VidCon, where we get a pulse of what's happening in the zeitgeist and connect with talented creators, and impressive brands alike. Here are five tangible takeaways from TikTok to LinkedIn and what it means for you.
The document discusses steps for requesting writing assistance from HelpWriting.net, including creating an account, completing an order form with instructions and deadline, and reviewing writer bids before authorizing payment upon satisfaction with the completed work. The process aims to match requests with qualified writers and provide original, high-quality content through revisions if needed.
Don’t Mine for Gold When You Can Sell Shovels - The Power of B2B BusinessesMatt Ward
Matt Ward realized that rather than mining for gold himself by directly selling products on Amazon, there was greater long-term success and profit to be found in selling tools and services to other entrepreneurs doing the same. While Ward found initial short-term success with his own Amazon business, he later sold it and pivoted to creating software and a podcast providing resources for other Amazon sellers. Ward learned that the largest opportunities are in facilitating and supporting businesses, not necessarily directly participating or competing on price in crowded markets.
“Leaders of Growth” is an epic compilation of interviews from top leaders in the startup industry. It is a book about business founders who grew their startups from $1 million to $25 million and beyond.
How To Write A Great College Admissions EssayPam Fenno
Here are the key points I gathered from the document:
- The investigation studied whether gender affects reaction times in individuals aged 13 to 17 years old.
- The average visual reaction time for humans is 0.25 seconds and average touch reception is 0.15 seconds, totaling 0.40 seconds on average.
- The average reaction speed for boys in the study was 342 milliseconds and for girls it was 392 milliseconds, which are fairly accurate to average human reaction times given the younger age group studied.
- Reaction time is important as it determines how quickly the central nervous system and coordination between sensory and motor systems respond to visual stimuli. Factors like age, gender, health, distractions can impact average human reaction time
The three secrets to startup success are:
1. Achieving product-market fit by ensuring customers are actively buying your product. This prevents startups from dying due to lack of market.
2. Convincing investors you have potential for huge growth by estimating a large total addressable market, sizable serviceable market, and realistic obtainable market in the short term.
3. Picking an initial small target market that has strong pain, then progressively expanding to larger markets over time, as Facebook and Amazon did starting with colleges and books respectively.
The document discusses the importance of achieving product-market fit for startups. It describes how the author's startup went through multiple pivots before finding product-market fit and success. Some key points:
- Startups often fail because they do not achieve product-market fit, meaning customers are not buying their product.
- The author's startup went through years of building products customers did not want before finding an email-based virtual assistant service that customers were willing to pay for.
- Achieving product-market fit allows startups to raise more funding and grow more rapidly through spending on customer acquisition.
- Markets should be estimated in terms of total addressable market (TAM), serviceable
The document discusses adopting a portfolio approach to marketing investments that balances risk and reward. It recommends treating marketing opportunities as investment opportunities by experimenting with a mix of safe, medium-risk, and high-risk initiatives to learn from failures and fund projects that show growth. This balanced portfolio approach helps minimize risk and maximize success through iterative testing of new ideas in a "wind tunnel" before committing large budgets.
Bernadette Hyland speaks at Startup Queensland Visiting Entrepreneurs Program...Bernadette Hyland-Wood
Continuing with the Queensland Government’s and Brisbane Marketing’s fantastic program of bringing international entrepreneurs to Queensland to tell their stories and to mentor local founders, ilab will be hosting US entrepreneur Bernadette Hyland on Thursday Aug 6, 2015.
Bernadette has a fascinating CV – Software Engineer, Startup Founder, Open Data guru, Web innovator and W3C influencer, IoT, public health data analytics, Crowdsourcing, STEM education and is a major supporter women startup founders.
Bernadette hyland visiting entrepreneur to bne au accelerators 20150806commercialisation
Bernadette Hyland founded several software companies in Australia and the United States over two decades, experiencing both successes and failures along the way. She shares lessons learned from pivoting businesses, being acquired, seeking funding, and cultural differences between launching startups in Australia versus the United States. Key advice includes preparing to pitch investors 1,000 times, explaining problems and revenue strategies clearly, and networking to build support for new ventures.
Stanford marketing in semiconductors for publication_saSander Arts
Marketing and semiconductors. Many people consider it 'B2B'...also, many people think it is technology that 'sells' the product. At Atmel, we have amazing technology. It does, however, require more to be part of a movement and be truly focused on people while selling and marketing. This case study, presented at Stanford University shows the vision, the strategy, the execution and the ROI of people to people marketing in semiconductors.
SmashFly Transform Keynote: Transforming Recruitment Marketing Starts With YouSmashFly Technologies
Mike Hennessy, Founder & CEO of SmashFly, gave this opening keynote at the first-ever Recruitment Marketing Conference, SmashFly Transform. He outlines the future of work, the talent acquisition landscape and the roadmap to making recruitment marketing a discipline.
SmashFly Transform Keynote: Transforming Recruitment Marketing Starts With You
test
1. Gumroad,
with Sahil Lavingia
From Silicon Vally hype to mass layoffs, and the tactics that helped Gumroad grow to their $100M
valuation
Tactician
Case
Interview:
001
http://www.Tactician.Tech
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contrarian views, and additional insight by clicking where you
see this:
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3. PRESERVERENCE
What role preserverence played
in Gumroad's journey to its
$100M valuation
BUILDING IN PUBLIC
How BIP has helped Gumroad to
attract the right talent, eliminate
meetings, and raise $5m in 12
hours
Topics Explored
MARKET SIZING
How size of market constrained
Gumroad's early growth, and how
founders can avoid building in
small markets
4. Sahil was born in the US, grew up in Singapore, then moved back to the US to study
Computor Science at the University of Southern California. He dropped out to
become Pinterest's second hire and built their iOS app, then left to start Gumroad in
2011 at the age of 19. He manages an investment fun with LPs that include Marc
Andreeseen, Naval Ravikant, Elad Gil, and Tim Ferris, and has invested in Clubhouse,
HelloSign, Notion, and Figma.
Meet Sahil
5. Meet Gumroad
Gumroad helps content creators (ex. musicians, writers, filmmakers, photographers,
etc.) sell digital products (ex. online courses, memberships, etc.) directly to their
audiences. They monetize by charging a fee on each transaction and a $10 monthly fee
to "Pro" account holders
o Founded in 2011: Silicon Vally, USA
o $16.1M raised
o >40 employees
o $100M valuation as of August, 2021
7. Origin Story (1/6)
o In high school, Sahil fell in love with building and selling
digital products on the internet.
o From a young age, he admired Bill Gates and aspired to
build his own billion-dollar company.
8. Origin Story (2/6)
o He moved to the US for college, but dropped out at the
age of 18 when he recieved an offer from Pinterest to
build their iOS app and became their second employee.
9. Origin Story (3/6)
o Less than one year into his role at Pinterest, Sahil had
designed an icon and wanted to sell it to his followeers on
Twitter, but realized the process of selling was more
difficult than it should be.
o He built the first version of Gumroad over a weekend to
solve that problem, and launched on Hacknews, landing at
the #1 spot for the day.
o With the hypothesis that over time more individuals and
companies will want tools to sell directly to the audiences
they build on social media and other platforms, he believed
he was on to something.
10. Origin Story (4/6)
o He quit Pinterest shortly after (before vesting his
equity), and raised a Seed round from Silicon Valley
stalworths such as SV Angel, Max Levchin, Chris Sacca,
and Josh Kopelman.
o Before launching the product, the venture fund Kleiner
Perkins offered Sahil a pre-emptive $7m Series A
investment.
11. Origin Story (5/6)
o Gumroad made good headway in its first three years,
however, the company did not grow fast enough to
raise a Series B
o After hundreds of unfruitful meetings with investors,
Sahil eventually laid off his entire team of 20 and
continued as a solo entreprenure, eventually moving to
Utah to decompress and find direction
13. Shahil plans to use the funding to xxxxxxxxx
The future
At $12 annualized revenue, Gumroad raised a
$5m crowdfunded round within 12 hours
2021: $5M equity crowdfunding
The first layoff took the company from 20
people down to 5. The second took the
compnay from 5 to Shail as the only employee.
He moved from Silicon Valley to Utah in 2017,
looked for ways to process his experience, and
continued working on Gumroad
2015: Layoffs begin
Gumroad grew by close to 60% in 2016, 15% in
2017. In 2018 Sahil begain shipping features
and hiring for the first time since the final
layoffs and grew 25%, then 40% in 2019 and
87% in 2020
Continued growing the business
Their 60-80% YoY growth wasn't the 3x growth
Series B investors look for. Kleiner did a $2m
bridge is 4x liquidation pereference
2014-2015: Struggled to raise
Series B
At 19 years old, raised a $1.1M seed round.
Soon after raised a pre-emptive $7M Series A
from Kleiner Perkins
2011: Raised Seed and Series A
Timeline
15. Top down is a less reliable way to estimate the size of a market alone, but using it with bottoms
up analysis to triangulate, or sanity check your numbers can help you get a more accurate size
of the market, and convince others.
Investors at the earliest stages when there is less information, are more aminable to top down
analysis. Aim to make the methodology used as clear as possible (ex. its common for investors
to hear: "the market is $xB. If we get 10% of that, it could be $y!"... what are the assumptions
that justify the ability to get 10%?)
Considerations:
2 Important considerations when determining the market size for something fundamentally new
Ways To Think ABout Market Size, by Benedict Evans
1 Step by step guide to determining the size of your market, in the context of pitching VC's
Market Sizing: Framing the Opportunity, by Maximilian Bruhn
Recommended Reading:
3 Why market size matters, when you should do analysis, and how to go about it
Market Sizing Guide, by Pear VC
Sahil:
"...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300 000 in a year, which,
as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to replicate this: If we had
1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300 million a year. And then we realized,
slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how often
you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need this?
How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing? So, I think it’s
really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early adopters are often
your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of them are out there until you
start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
According to Sahil, the size of the creator market was the biggest limiter of Gumroad's early growth: there
were fewer creators, and the LTV of each was smaller than expected. Ideniftying this earlier could have helped
them to target a better segment, or pivot to a new market
There are two ways startus can determine the size of their market to avoid suprises:
02
Bottoms up method
Find the number of customers. Multiply that by the average revenue per
customer per year
MARKET SIZING
01
Top down method
Broad industry market size (usually provided by a research company)
multiplied by a target % of ownership. Less accurate as broad reseach rarely
excludes segments that arn't targeted
o According to Sahil, the size of the creator market was
Gumroad's biggest limiter in its early growth: there were
fewer creators, which meant fewer customers, and the
LTV of each was smaller than expected
o Identiftying this earlier could have helped them to target a
better segment, or pivot to a new market
MARKET SIZING (1/6)
16. Top down is a less reliable way to estimate the size of a market alone, but using it with bottoms
up analysis to triangulate, or sanity check your numbers can help you get a more accurate size
of the market, and convince others.
Investors at the earliest stages when there is less information, are more aminable to top down
analysis. Aim to make the methodology used as clear as possible (ex. its common for investors
to hear: "the market is $xB. If we get 10% of that, it could be $y!"... what are the assumptions
that justify the ability to get 10%?)
Considerations:
2 Important considerations when determining the market size for something fundamentally new
Ways To Think ABout Market Size, by Benedict Evans
1 Step by step guide to determining the size of your market, in the context of pitching VC's
Market Sizing: Framing the Opportunity, by Maximilian Bruhn
Recommended Reading:
3 Why market size matters, when you should do analysis, and how to go about it
Market Sizing Guide, by Pear VC
Sahil:
"...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300 000 in a year, which,
as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to replicate this: If we had
1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300 million a year. And then we realized,
slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how often
you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need this?
How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing? So, I think it’s
really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early adopters are often
your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of them are out there until you
start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
According to Sahil, the size of the creator market was the biggest limiter of Gumroad's early growth: there
were fewer creators, and the LTV of each was smaller than expected. Ideniftying this earlier could have helped
them to target a better segment, or pivot to a new market
There are two ways startus can determine the size of their market to avoid suprises:
02
Bottoms up method
Find the number of customers. Multiply that by the average revenue per
customer per year
MARKET SIZING
01
Top down method
Broad industry market size (usually provided by a research company)
multiplied by a target % of ownership. Less accurate as broad reseach rarely
excludes segments that arn't targeted
Going after an attractive market is considered by many to be the most important thing you can
do (even more important than the quality of your team, or your product).
As Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz, Co-Founder) puts it:
"… in a terrible market, you can have the best product in the world and an absolutely killer team,
and it doesn’t matter—you’re going to fail...
You’ll break your pick for years trying to find customers who don’t exist for your marvelous
product, and your wonderful team will eventually get demoralized and quit, and your startup will
die.
… assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great
market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure."
MARKET SIZING (2/6)
17. Top down is a less reliable way to estimate the size of a market alone, but using it with bottoms
up analysis to triangulate, or sanity check your numbers can help you get a more accurate size
of the market, and convince others.
Investors at the earliest stages when there is less information, are more aminable to top down
analysis. Aim to make the methodology used as clear as possible (ex. its common for investors
to hear: "the market is $xB. If we get 10% of that, it could be $y!"... what are the assumptions
that justify the ability to get 10%?)
Considerations:
2 Important considerations when determining the market size for something fundamentally new
Ways To Think ABout Market Size, by Benedict Evans
1 Step by step guide to determining the size of your market, in the context of pitching VC's
Market Sizing: Framing the Opportunity, by Maximilian Bruhn
Recommended Reading:
3 Why market size matters, when you should do analysis, and how to go about it
Market Sizing Guide, by Pear VC
Sahil:
"...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300 000 in a year, which,
as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to replicate this: If we had
1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300 million a year. And then we realized,
slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how often
you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need this?
How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing? So, I think it’s
really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early adopters are often
your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of them are out there until you
start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
According to Sahil, the size of the creator market was the biggest limiter of Gumroad's early growth: there
were fewer creators, and the LTV of each was smaller than expected. Ideniftying this earlier could have helped
them to target a better segment, or pivot to a new market
There are two ways startus can determine the size of their market to avoid suprises:
02
Bottoms up method
Find the number of customers. Multiply that by the average revenue per
customer per year
MARKET SIZING
01
Top down method
Broad industry market size (usually provided by a research company)
multiplied by a target % of ownership. Less accurate as broad reseach rarely
excludes segments that arn't targeted
A market's attractiness is dictated by its size and growth rate, competition and customer
dynamics.
Low switching cost, low barriers to entry, cheap customers are all bad for business
However, innovation (in product, channel, etc.) can create new markets, increase
switching cost and render competition moot.
The greater your intention, available capital, and team's competency for innovation, the
less important to focus on competitive forces in evaluating a market.
MARKET SIZING (3/6)
18. Top down is a less reliable way to estimate the size of a market alone, but using it with bottoms
up analysis to triangulate, or sanity check your numbers can help you get a more accurate size
of the market, and convince others.
Investors at the earliest stages when there is less information, are more aminable to top down
analysis. Aim to make the methodology used as clear as possible (ex. its common for investors
to hear: "the market is $xB. If we get 10% of that, it could be $y!"... what are the assumptions
that justify the ability to get 10%?)
Considerations:
2 Important considerations when determining the market size for something fundamentally new
Ways To Think ABout Market Size, by Benedict Evans
1 Step by step guide to determining the size of your market, in the context of pitching VC's
Market Sizing: Framing the Opportunity, by Maximilian Bruhn
Recommended Reading:
3 Why market size matters, when you should do analysis, and how to go about it
Market Sizing Guide, by Pear VC
Sahil:
"...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300 000 in a year, which,
as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to replicate this: If we had
1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300 million a year. And then we realized,
slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how often
you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need this?
How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing? So, I think it’s
really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early adopters are often
your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of them are out there until you
start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
According to Sahil, the size of the creator market was the biggest limiter of Gumroad's early growth: there
were fewer creators, and the LTV of each was smaller than expected. Ideniftying this earlier could have helped
them to target a better segment, or pivot to a new market
There are two ways startus can determine the size of their market to avoid suprises:
02
Bottoms up method
Find the number of customers. Multiply that by the average revenue per
customer per year
MARKET SIZING
01
Top down method
Broad industry market size (usually provided by a research company)
multiplied by a target % of ownership. Less accurate as broad reseach rarely
excludes segments that arn't targeted
o There are two ways startups can determine the size of
their market to avoid suprises:
MARKET SIZING (4/6)
19. Top down is a less reliable way to estimate the size of a market alone, but using it with bottoms
up analysis to triangulate, or sanity check your numbers can help you get a more accurate size
of the market, and convince others.
Investors at the earliest stages when there is less information, are more aminable to top down
analysis. Aim to make the methodology used as clear as possible (ex. its common for investors
to hear: "the market is $xB. If we get 10% of that, it could be $y!"... what are the assumptions
that justify the ability to get 10%?)
Considerations:
2 Important considerations when determining the market size for something fundamentally new
Ways To Think ABout Market Size, by Benedict Evans
1 Step by step guide to determining the size of your market, in the context of pitching VC's
Market Sizing: Framing the Opportunity, by Maximilian Bruhn
Recommended Reading:
3 Why market size matters, when you should do analysis, and how to go about it
Market Sizing Guide, by Pear VC
Sahil:
"...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300 000 in a year, which,
as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to replicate this: If we had
1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300 million a year. And then we realized,
slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how often
you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need this?
How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing? So, I think it’s
really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early adopters are often
your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of them are out there until you
start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
According to Sahil, the size of the creator market was the biggest limiter of Gumroad's early growth: there
were fewer creators, and the LTV of each was smaller than expected. Ideniftying this earlier could have helped
them to target a better segment, or pivot to a new market
There are two ways startus can determine the size of their market to avoid suprises:
02
Bottoms up method
Find the number of customers. Multiply that by the average revenue per
customer per year
MARKET SIZING
01
Top down method
Broad industry market size (usually provided by a research company)
multiplied by a target % of ownership. Less accurate as broad reseach rarely
excludes segments that arn't targeted
MARKET SIZING (5/6)
01
Top down method:
The number of customers that exist (usually found in broad industry
research) multiplied by what you expect to earn off each customer. For
example, imagine your company sells learning resources to schools. Your
research shows 10,000 relevant schools in your country, and your average
sale per school is $10k, which means your market size is $100M.
Although top down is simple, it is often unreliable and overly optimistic.
Not EVERY school needs your product, and perhaps not all would take your
$10k package.
20. Top down is a less reliable way to estimate the size of a market alone, but using it with bottoms
up analysis to triangulate, or sanity check your numbers can help you get a more accurate size
of the market, and convince others.
Investors at the earliest stages when there is less information, are more aminable to top down
analysis. Aim to make the methodology used as clear as possible (ex. its common for investors
to hear: "the market is $xB. If we get 10% of that, it could be $y!"... what are the assumptions
that justify the ability to get 10%?)
Considerations:
2 Important considerations when determining the market size for something fundamentally new
Ways To Think ABout Market Size, by Benedict Evans
1 Step by step guide to determining the size of your market, in the context of pitching VC's
Market Sizing: Framing the Opportunity, by Maximilian Bruhn
Recommended Reading:
3 Why market size matters, when you should do analysis, and how to go about it
Market Sizing Guide, by Pear VC
Sahil:
"...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300 000 in a year, which,
as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to replicate this: If we had
1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300 million a year. And then we realized,
slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how often
you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need this?
How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing? So, I think it’s
really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early adopters are often
your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of them are out there until you
start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
According to Sahil, the size of the creator market was the biggest limiter of Gumroad's early growth: there
were fewer creators, and the LTV of each was smaller than expected. Ideniftying this earlier could have helped
them to target a better segment, or pivot to a new market
There are two ways startus can determine the size of their market to avoid suprises:
02
Bottoms up method
Find the number of customers. Multiply that by the average revenue per
customer per year
MARKET SIZING
01
Top down method
Broad industry market size (usually provided by a research company)
multiplied by a target % of ownership. Less accurate as broad reseach rarely
excludes segments that arn't targeted
MARKET SIZING (6/6)
02
Bottoms up method
Identify the specific segments you will target, source a list of potential
customers, multiply by the expected revenue per customer.
The distiction here is that you've made a specific list of customers. Not
only can bottoms up be more accurate than top down, it can also help
identify and list customers to target
Generally, earlier stage investors are amenable to top down. By Series A
aim to be able to do bottoms up
21. "...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300,000 in a
year, which as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to
replicate this: If we had 1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300
million a year. And then we realized, slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how
often you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need
this? How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing?
So, I think it’s really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early
adopters are often your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of
them are out there until you start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
22. "...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300,000 in a
year, which as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to
replicate this: If we had 1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300
million a year. And then we realized, slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how
often you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need
this? How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing?
So, I think it’s really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early
adopters are often your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of
them are out there until you start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
24. 2 Important considerations when determining the market size for something fundamentally new
Ways To Think ABout Market Size, by Benedict Evans
1 Step by step guide to determining the size of your market, in the context of pitching VC's
Market Sizing: Framing the Opportunity, by Maximilian Bruhn
Recommended Reading:
3 Why market size matters, when you should do analysis, and how to go about it
Market Sizing Guide, by Pear VC
The Only Thing That Matters, by Marc Andreeseen
Why the market is more important then team and product for startups
4
26. “If you join Gumroad, my goal is that you learn almost nothing new on the day you join. The
revenue and everything you should have known, you could know right now by Googling it, which I
think is really important. I don’t want anyone to join the company and realize this is not the right
fit…
I make it really clear that I don’t like telling people what to do. I do that in the hiring process,
before the hiring process, on a jobs page, afterwards… So, hiring is definitely the largest part of it
– making sure you’re hiring the right kind of folks who can operate in this way – and that’s
mostly a function of being really clear with people and letting them self-select out.
Ultimately, the hardest thing – and I think the reason a lot of people may want to work this way
but eventually won’t – is that it requires a really high bar of hiring. I interview hundreds of people
for some roles...”
Sahil:
2 Reddal provides a case study on one company's approch to getting out of the TOS and gives advice on how to
think about pivoting
Tech startups can minimize their time in the trough of sorrow with a zoom-in pivot
1 Andrew Chen provides both emotional and tactical advice on how to manage, and exit the TOS
After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”
Recommended Reading:
3 Brain Balfour shares the most important characteristic of his company that got his startup out of the TOS
How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
There are four essential "fits" a startup needs to reach
in order to scale:
Product/Market Fit → Does your product satisfy demand?
Product/Channel Fit → Products are built to fit marketing/growth channels. Can you
product leverage a particular channel to scale?
Channel/Model Fit → how you charge (freemium, transactional, free trial, one year
upfront, etc.) and how much you earn from customers dictates what channels can provide
profitable growth. Does your business model fit said channel?
Model/Market Fit → There need to be enough customers at your average revenue per
customer to create a big business
SURVIVING THE TROUGH OF SORROW (1/6)
In competing for talent, Gumroad’s competitive advantages are flexibility and efficiency. Gumroad's team doesn't hold
meetings, eliminating time wasted on coordination
o Tweeting and writing about his experience and experiments building this unique culture attracts applicants (50-30
interviews per engineer hire)
o Those applicants have self selected into Guhmroad’s unique work environment and plan: candidates are aligned to
the work culture, state of the business’ financials, mission and vision before they start work, creating a highly
engaged and motivated team
1. Creating an efficient work culture
27. “If you join Gumroad, my goal is that you learn almost nothing new on the day you join. The
revenue and everything you should have known, you could know right now by Googling it, which I
think is really important. I don’t want anyone to join the company and realize this is not the right
fit…
I make it really clear that I don’t like telling people what to do. I do that in the hiring process,
before the hiring process, on a jobs page, afterwards… So, hiring is definitely the largest part of it
– making sure you’re hiring the right kind of folks who can operate in this way – and that’s
mostly a function of being really clear with people and letting them self-select out.
Ultimately, the hardest thing – and I think the reason a lot of people may want to work this way
but eventually won’t – is that it requires a really high bar of hiring. I interview hundreds of people
for some roles...”
Sahil:
2 Reddal provides a case study on one company's approch to getting out of the TOS and gives advice on how to
think about pivoting
Tech startups can minimize their time in the trough of sorrow with a zoom-in pivot
1 Andrew Chen provides both emotional and tactical advice on how to manage, and exit the TOS
After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”
Recommended Reading:
3 Brain Balfour shares the most important characteristic of his company that got his startup out of the TOS
How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
- The challenge Sahil faced was
model/market fit: that there didn't
seemed to be enough customers for the
business model to create a large, fast
growing company
- That situation of post-launch slow
growth is often referred to as the Trough
of Sorrow. Sahil spent (arguably) 8 years
there and in "Wiggles of False Hope"
-What got him out was perseverance - ie.
not allowing the company to die so that
he could:
SURVIVING THE TROUGH OF SORROW (2/6)
In competing for talent, Gumroad’s competitive advantages are flexibility and efficiency. Gumroad's team doesn't hold
meetings, eliminating time wasted on coordination
o Tweeting and writing about his experience and experiments building this unique culture attracts applicants (50-30
interviews per engineer hire)
o Those applicants have self selected into Guhmroad’s unique work environment and plan: candidates are aligned to
the work culture, state of the business’ financials, mission and vision before they start work, creating a highly
engaged and motivated team
1. Creating an efficient work culture
Coined by Paul Graham, Co-Founder of Y Combinator
28. “If you join Gumroad, my goal is that you learn almost nothing new on the day you join. The
revenue and everything you should have known, you could know right now by Googling it, which I
think is really important. I don’t want anyone to join the company and realize this is not the right
fit…
I make it really clear that I don’t like telling people what to do. I do that in the hiring process,
before the hiring process, on a jobs page, afterwards… So, hiring is definitely the largest part of it
– making sure you’re hiring the right kind of folks who can operate in this way – and that’s
mostly a function of being really clear with people and letting them self-select out.
Ultimately, the hardest thing – and I think the reason a lot of people may want to work this way
but eventually won’t – is that it requires a really high bar of hiring. I interview hundreds of people
for some roles...”
Sahil:
2 Reddal provides a case study on one company's approch to getting out of the TOS and gives advice on how to
think about pivoting
Tech startups can minimize their time in the trough of sorrow with a zoom-in pivot
1 Andrew Chen provides both emotional and tactical advice on how to manage, and exit the TOS
After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”
Recommended Reading:
3 Brain Balfour shares the most important characteristic of his company that got his startup out of the TOS
How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
o Learn and iterate: time, and diligent
studing of customers has lead the team
to re-segment and target higher value
customers with product offering he
believes has lower competition, and
launch a membership product which fules
most of the current revenue growth.
SURVIVING THE TROUGH OF SORROW (3/6)
In competing for talent, Gumroad’s competitive advantages are flexibility and efficiency. Gumroad's team doesn't hold
meetings, eliminating time wasted on coordination
o Tweeting and writing about his experience and experiments building this unique culture attracts applicants (50-30
interviews per engineer hire)
o Those applicants have self selected into Guhmroad’s unique work environment and plan: candidates are aligned to
the work culture, state of the business’ financials, mission and vision before they start work, creating a highly
engaged and motivated team
1. Creating an efficient work culture
29. “If you join Gumroad, my goal is that you learn almost nothing new on the day you join. The
revenue and everything you should have known, you could know right now by Googling it, which I
think is really important. I don’t want anyone to join the company and realize this is not the right
fit…
I make it really clear that I don’t like telling people what to do. I do that in the hiring process,
before the hiring process, on a jobs page, afterwards… So, hiring is definitely the largest part of it
– making sure you’re hiring the right kind of folks who can operate in this way – and that’s
mostly a function of being really clear with people and letting them self-select out.
Ultimately, the hardest thing – and I think the reason a lot of people may want to work this way
but eventually won’t – is that it requires a really high bar of hiring. I interview hundreds of people
for some roles...”
Sahil:
2 Reddal provides a case study on one company's approch to getting out of the TOS and gives advice on how to
think about pivoting
Tech startups can minimize their time in the trough of sorrow with a zoom-in pivot
1 Andrew Chen provides both emotional and tactical advice on how to manage, and exit the TOS
After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”
Recommended Reading:
3 Brain Balfour shares the most important characteristic of his company that got his startup out of the TOS
How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
2. Take advantage of unpredictable
favorable events: He rode the small
but steady growth of the creator market
over a perioed of 10 years and managed
to bing in perfect position to capitalize
on the spike in 2020 that resulted from
COVID-19.
SURVIVING THE TROUGH OF SORROW (4/6)
In competing for talent, Gumroad’s competitive advantages are flexibility and efficiency. Gumroad's team doesn't hold
meetings, eliminating time wasted on coordination
o Tweeting and writing about his experience and experiments building this unique culture attracts applicants (50-30
interviews per engineer hire)
o Those applicants have self selected into Guhmroad’s unique work environment and plan: candidates are aligned to
the work culture, state of the business’ financials, mission and vision before they start work, creating a highly
engaged and motivated team
1. Creating an efficient work culture
30. “If you join Gumroad, my goal is that you learn almost nothing new on the day you join. The
revenue and everything you should have known, you could know right now by Googling it, which I
think is really important. I don’t want anyone to join the company and realize this is not the right
fit…
I make it really clear that I don’t like telling people what to do. I do that in the hiring process,
before the hiring process, on a jobs page, afterwards… So, hiring is definitely the largest part of it
– making sure you’re hiring the right kind of folks who can operate in this way – and that’s
mostly a function of being really clear with people and letting them self-select out.
Ultimately, the hardest thing – and I think the reason a lot of people may want to work this way
but eventually won’t – is that it requires a really high bar of hiring. I interview hundreds of people
for some roles...”
Sahil:
2 Reddal provides a case study on one company's approch to getting out of the TOS and gives advice on how to
think about pivoting
Tech startups can minimize their time in the trough of sorrow with a zoom-in pivot
1 Andrew Chen provides both emotional and tactical advice on how to manage, and exit the TOS
After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”
Recommended Reading:
3 Brain Balfour shares the most important characteristic of his company that got his startup out of the TOS
How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
Here are his recommendations for what to do if
you find yourself there:
SURVIVING THE TROUGH OF SORROW (5/6)
In competing for talent, Gumroad’s competitive advantages are flexibility and efficiency. Gumroad's team doesn't hold
meetings, eliminating time wasted on coordination
o Tweeting and writing about his experience and experiments building this unique culture attracts applicants (50-30
interviews per engineer hire)
o Those applicants have self selected into Guhmroad’s unique work environment and plan: candidates are aligned to
the work culture, state of the business’ financials, mission and vision before they start work, creating a highly
engaged and motivated team
1. Creating an efficient work culture
31. “If you join Gumroad, my goal is that you learn almost nothing new on the day you join. The
revenue and everything you should have known, you could know right now by Googling it, which I
think is really important. I don’t want anyone to join the company and realize this is not the right
fit…
I make it really clear that I don’t like telling people what to do. I do that in the hiring process,
before the hiring process, on a jobs page, afterwards… So, hiring is definitely the largest part of it
– making sure you’re hiring the right kind of folks who can operate in this way – and that’s
mostly a function of being really clear with people and letting them self-select out.
Ultimately, the hardest thing – and I think the reason a lot of people may want to work this way
but eventually won’t – is that it requires a really high bar of hiring. I interview hundreds of people
for some roles...”
Sahil:
2 Reddal provides a case study on one company's approch to getting out of the TOS and gives advice on how to
think about pivoting
Tech startups can minimize their time in the trough of sorrow with a zoom-in pivot
1 Andrew Chen provides both emotional and tactical advice on how to manage, and exit the TOS
After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”
Recommended Reading:
3 Brain Balfour shares the most important characteristic of his company that got his startup out of the TOS
How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
o Get clear on what needs to be: (a) proven, (b)
accomplished, (c) by when - to get to the next stage (i.e.
profitability or next funding round), and be sure to give
yourself as much runway as possible.
o Consider setting a "red alert" – deadline, by which to start
exploring pivots if you are still not getting appropriate
traction.
o Test and prove your hypothesis of the value delivered by
your product through customer targeting, customer
acquisition and retention until you find the path out... or
pivot.
SURVIVING THE TROUGH OF SORROW (6/6)
In competing for talent, Gumroad’s competitive advantages are flexibility and efficiency. Gumroad's team doesn't hold
meetings, eliminating time wasted on coordination
o Tweeting and writing about his experience and experiments building this unique culture attracts applicants (50-30
interviews per engineer hire)
o Those applicants have self selected into Guhmroad’s unique work environment and plan: candidates are aligned to
the work culture, state of the business’ financials, mission and vision before they start work, creating a highly
engaged and motivated team
1. Creating an efficient work culture
32. "One thing I definitely think we should have done was to say: We’re
always going to have more than 18 months of runway, which means that
if we get to two years we need to stop hiring people. It’ like red alert. We
had a lot of optimism in the market – and maybe in 2020 that was
proven out – and we felt it was going to take a lot of time for these
verticals to develop; that we just had to exist long enough...
Because of the lack of red alert, we didn’t have the capacity to really do
anything. We had a couple of experiments; we had a bunch of things we
tried in the last nine-month sprint. We shipped a bunch of features, but
we just didn’t have the capacity, the team or the energy at that time to
build a totally new product from scratch."
33. 2 Reddal provides a case study on one company's approch to getting out of the TOS and gives advice on how to
think about pivoting
Tech startups can minimize their time in the trough of sorrow with a zoom-in pivot
1 Andrew Chen provides both emotional and tactical advice on how to manage, and exit the TOS
After the Techcrunch bump: Life in the “Trough of Sorrow”
Recommended Reading:
3 Brain Balfour shares the most important characteristic of his company that got his startup out of the TOS
How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow
4 Brain Balfour shares the most important characteristic of his company that got his startup out of the TOS
How We Got Through The Trough Of Sorrow
35. Startups "build in public" (BIP) by sharing aspects of their journey (obstacles, tips,
metrics, learnings, resources, process, etc.) publicly.
BUILD IN PUBLIC (1/8)
36. BUILD IN PUBLIC (2/8)
An emerging trend that has exploded in popularity since 2018, there are three
audiences:
o Customers: people interested in your product
o Observers: people interested in your process (fellow entrepreneurs, media,
potential hires, potential investors)
o Yourself: keep yourself accountable
37. Examples:
BUILD IN PUBLIC (3/8)
Product Hunt gathers feedback on design from Twitter followers
Buffer makes revenue, staff salaries, etc. public
Third example, Third example, Third example, Third example
Fourth example, Fourth example, Fourth example, Forthe example
38. BUILD IN PUBLIC (4/8)
Why BIP?
o To build an audience
o Market to/monetize an
audience
o Increase engagement, buy-in,
trust
o To keep yourself accountable
o To validate ideas/get feedback
o To share knowledge/ help
others
o To build a network/support
group
What to share:
o Teach what you've learned
o Share stats
o Celebrate milestones
o Share failures
o Outline plans
o Ask questions / seek feedback
Where to share:
o Social media
o Blog
o BIP platforms/communities
How to do it?
o Syncronously: build in isolation
and tell the world about it when
you are ready
o Asyncronously: speak to your
audience while building
39. Top down is a less reliable way to estimate the size of a market alone, but using it with bottoms
up analysis to triangulate, or sanity check your numbers can help you get a more accurate size
of the market, and convince others.
Investors at the earliest stages when there is less information, are more aminable to top down
analysis. Aim to make the methodology used as clear as possible (ex. its common for investors
to hear: "the market is $xB. If we get 10% of that, it could be $y!"... what are the assumptions
that justify the ability to get 10%?)
Considerations:
2 Important considerations when determining the market size for something fundamentally new
Ways To Think ABout Market Size, by Benedict Evans
1 Step by step guide to determining the size of your market, in the context of pitching VC's
Market Sizing: Framing the Opportunity, by Maximilian Bruhn
Recommended Reading:
3 Why market size matters, when you should do analysis, and how to go about it
Market Sizing Guide, by Pear VC
Sahil:
"...we had a few success cases where marquee folks – authors – made $300 000 in a year, which,
as an author, is pretty crazy. We really felt we were going to be able to replicate this: If we had
1000 authors – that didn’t seem like too many – that’s $300 million a year. And then we realized,
slowly, there were not that many of those authors...
It doesn’t matter how awesome your product is, or how awesome your team is, or how often
you ship features; the market you’re in is going to determine most of your growth...
And often, you don’t really think about: How big is the market? How many people need this?
How much money do they have, or are they willing to spend, on this sort of thing? So, I think it’s
really important to spend time thinking a bit more about the market... Early adopters are often
your best customers, and it is impossible to predict how many of them are out there until you
start analyzing....
If we believe there are 50… or 5,000, lets make a list of all of them.”
According to Sahil, the size of the creator market was the biggest limiter of Gumroad's early growth: there
were fewer creators, and the LTV of each was smaller than expected. Ideniftying this earlier could have helped
them to target a better segment, or pivot to a new market
There are two ways startus can determine the size of their market to avoid suprises:
02
Bottoms up method
Find the number of customers. Multiply that by the average revenue per
customer per year
MARKET SIZING
01
Top down method
Broad industry market size (usually provided by a research company)
multiplied by a target % of ownership. Less accurate as broad reseach rarely
excludes segments that arn't targeted
Sahil has leveraged BIP to raise funding, and improve the
performance of his team:
BUILD IN PUBLIC (5/8)
40. "The benefit of building in public is that you have an audience, so when you launch your product,
you’ve already seeded the idea in everyone’s head and everyone’s ready for it, which is important. The
downside is that it’s embarrassing – it’s public embarrassment. The trick is realizing that no-one cares
about your failure; everyone’s just impressed that you tried – and that’s another important lesson.
You’ll be rewarded for trying...
Thinking about Gumroad as a set of opinions that I have has been really helpful in terms of marketing
the business... saying, ‘We have this set of opinions around how to build a company or how to work’ –
is compelling to people. The crowd-funding, for example, happened in large part because people are
interested in Gumroad as a business and as an experiment that they want to support...
I also think that being public about the Gumroad’s story made it a company that people want to win.
It’s like watching a movie like Rocky: you want to root for the underdog... I’m sure there are at least a
few creators who leaned into that and used Gumroad purely for that reason."
Sahil:
2 One of the key players behind the movement on its origins and benefit
The Transparency Movement: Why It's Important, Buffer Blog
1 Sahil on how
No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees, Sahil Lavingia
Recommended Reading:
3 Actionable guide to building in public
The Building in Public How-To Guide, Gaby Goldberg
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
o In March, 2021, the SEC increased the limit startups can
raise through crowdfunding from $1M to $5M
o Sahil saw this as an opportunity to not only raise capital,
but also "blur the lines between investor and customer" by
creating super fans or spokespeople for the company by
raising funding from his audience
Raising $5M in 12 hours
BUILD IN PUBLIC (6/8)
41. "The benefit of building in public is that you have an audience, so when you launch your product,
you’ve already seeded the idea in everyone’s head and everyone’s ready for it, which is important. The
downside is that it’s embarrassing – it’s public embarrassment. The trick is realizing that no-one cares
about your failure; everyone’s just impressed that you tried – and that’s another important lesson.
You’ll be rewarded for trying...
Thinking about Gumroad as a set of opinions that I have has been really helpful in terms of marketing
the business... saying, ‘We have this set of opinions around how to build a company or how to work’ –
is compelling to people. The crowd-funding, for example, happened in large part because people are
interested in Gumroad as a business and as an experiment that they want to support...
I also think that being public about the Gumroad’s story made it a company that people want to win.
It’s like watching a movie like Rocky: you want to root for the underdog... I’m sure there are at least a
few creators who leaned into that and used Gumroad purely for that reason."
Sahil:
2 One of the key players behind the movement on its origins and benefit
The Transparency Movement: Why It's Important, Buffer Blog
1 Sahil on how
No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees, Sahil Lavingia
Recommended Reading:
3 Actionable guide to building in public
The Building in Public How-To Guide, Gaby Goldberg
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
o 12 hours after going live on Republic.co, he raised $5M from
7,303 investors (in $100 to $1,000 cheque sizes)
o Nearly 2,300 were customers of Gumroad and a large portion
of the rest were followers of his BIP journey
o As crowdfunding becomes more prevelant, an additonal
benefit to BIP is leveraging your audience to finance your
business
Raising $5M in 12 hours
BUILD IN PUBLIC (7/8)
42. "The benefit of building in public is that you have an audience, so when you launch your
product, you’ve already seeded the idea in everyone’s head and everyone’s ready for it,
which is important. The downside is that it’s embarrassing – it’s public embarrassment.
The trick is realizing that no-one cares about your failure; everyone’s just impressed that
you tried – and that’s another important lesson. You’ll be rewarded for trying...
Thinking about Gumroad as a set of opinions that I have has been really helpful in terms
of marketing the business... saying, ‘We have this set of opinions around how to build a
company or how to work’ – is compelling to people. The crowd-funding, for example,
happened in large part because people are interested in Gumroad as a business and as
an experiment that they want to support...
I also think that being public about the Gumroad’s story made it a company that people
want to win. It’s like watching a movie like Rocky: you want to root for the underdog... I’m
sure there are at least a few creators who leaned into that and used Gumroad purely for
that reason."
43. "The benefit of building in public is that you have an audience, so when you launch your product,
you’ve already seeded the idea in everyone’s head and everyone’s ready for it, which is important. The
downside is that it’s embarrassing – it’s public embarrassment. The trick is realizing that no-one cares
about your failure; everyone’s just impressed that you tried – and that’s another important lesson.
You’ll be rewarded for trying...
Thinking about Gumroad as a set of opinions that I have has been really helpful in terms of marketing
the business... saying, ‘We have this set of opinions around how to build a company or how to work’ –
is compelling to people. The crowd-funding, for example, happened in large part because people are
interested in Gumroad as a business and as an experiment that they want to support...
I also think that being public about the Gumroad’s story made it a company that people want to win.
It’s like watching a movie like Rocky: you want to root for the underdog... I’m sure there are at least a
few creators who leaned into that and used Gumroad purely for that reason."
Sahil:
2 One of the key players behind the movement on its origins and benefit
The Transparency Movement: Why It's Important, Buffer Blog
1 Sahil on how
No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees, Sahil Lavingia
Recommended Reading:
3 Actionable guide to building in public
The Building in Public How-To Guide, Gaby Goldberg
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
The working culture at Gumroad is unique: there are no meetings, fixed working hours, or
deadlines. Designed for both efficiency and work/life balance, Sahil writes and tweets
about his hypotheses, experiments, and experiences building Gumroad's culture, which
in turn attracts a volume of candidates that have self select into the way they work,
enabling a unique working culture that would be difficult to build otherwise (eg. 30-50
interviews per engineer hire with a cost per interview of $0)
Attracting talent at no cost, and
eliminating meetings
BUILD IN PUBLIC (8/8)
44. “If you join Gumroad, my goal is that you learn almost nothing new on the day you join.
The revenue and everything you should have known, you could know right now by
Googling it, which I think is really important. I don’t want anyone to join the company
and realize this is not the right fit…
I make it really clear that I don’t like telling people what to do. I do that in the hiring
process, before the hiring process, on a jobs page, afterwards… So, hiring is definitely the
largest part of it – making sure you’re hiring the right kind of folks who can operate in
this way – and that’s mostly a function of being really clear with people and letting them
self-select out.
Ultimately, the hardest thing – and I think the reason a lot of people may want to work
this way but eventually won’t – is that it requires a really high bar of hiring. I interview
hundreds of people for some roles...”
45. Considerations:
There are three widely discussed arguments against building in
public:
o Increased competition: businesses with low barriers to entry, and
those in competitive markets should weigh the upside of BIP with the
downside of the asymitry of information they'll provide their competition
o Increased scrutiny: negative signaling (ex. several months of high
churn, revenue dips, etc) can damage customer, investor and your
team's perception of the viability of the businss
o Time better spend elsewhere: It takes time to create contnet. Your
time maybe spent better elewhere
46. 2 History of some of the main players behind the BIP movement
The Transparency Movement: What It Is, Why It’s Important And How to Get Involved
1 Playbook on how to build in public by Gaby Goldberg
The Building in Public How-To Guide
Recommended Reading:
3 Cheat sheet that includes metrics that can be shared, places to post and people to follow
Build In Public Cheatsheet (v1.0)
47. “If you join Gumroad, my goal is that you learn almost nothing new on the day you join. The
revenue and everything you should have known, you could know right now by Googling it, which I
think is really important. I don’t want anyone to join the company and realize this is not the right
fit…
I make it really clear that I don’t like telling people what to do. I do that in the hiring process,
before the hiring process, on a jobs page, afterwards… So, hiring is definitely the largest part of it
– making sure you’re hiring the right kind of folks who can operate in this way – and that’s
mostly a function of being really clear with people and letting them self-select out.
Ultimately, the hardest thing – and I think the reason a lot of people may want to work this way
but eventually won’t – is that it requires a really high bar of hiring. I interview hundreds of people
for some roles...”
Sahil:
2 One of the key players behind the movement on its origins and benefit
The Transparency Movement: Why It's Important, Buffer Blog
1 Sahil on how
No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees, Sahil Lavingia
Recommended Reading:
3 Actionable guide to building in public
The Building in Public How-To Guide, Gaby Goldberg
There are two widely discussed considerations for not building in public:
o Increased competiton: businesses with little barrier to entry, those in competetive markets
should weigh the upside of BIP with the asymitry of information they'll create for their
competition
o Increased scrutiny: negetive signaling (several months of high churn, revenue dips, etc) can
damage customer, investor and your team's perception of the viability of the businss
Considerations:
Startups "build in public" by:
o Proposing ideas (ex. product design) and getting feedback
o Shareing experiences/insights (ex. how you overcame roadblocks, what its like to work in the company)
for the purpose of:
o Galvanizing customers
o Increasing traffic/marketing
o Getting feedback
o Attracting talent
Sahil has also used this tactic to successfully raise funding, and improve the performance of his team
o The SEC recently increased the limit startups can raise through crowdfunding from $1M-$5M
o Sahil saw this as an opportunity to not only raise capital, but also "blur the lines between investor and customer"
creating super fans or spokes people for the company by raising from his audience
o 12 hours after going live on Republic.co, he raised $5M from 7,303 investors ($100-$1,000 cheque size)
o Nearly 2,300 were creators on Gumroad and many more were followers of his BIP journey
o As crowdfunding becomes more prevelant, an additonal benefit to BIP is leveraging your audience to finance the
business
1. Raising $5M in 12 hours
SUMMARY OF THE CASE STUDY
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