Wes Hather’s Post

🚨 Founders who send weekly updates about their startup build a specific rigour of making progress each week. 🎖 Why it matters? No one thinks about the startup as much as the founder. Investors, supporters and mentors want to help but they have other priorities. Update emails are like beacons keeping your community in the know and also making it easier for them to help. You also benefit from reflecting on the work of the past week. 🌀 Go Deeper Daniel Gross, co-founder of Pioneer, shared the format and wrote about the benefits of quick investor/supporter updates. Following are excerpts from his post if you want to get started. I cannot recommend this enough. I talk to founders on both sides. The difference cannot be starker when it comes to making progress. Excerpts of the Daniel’s post ⤵ ***** ✉ Think of the email as a free billboard ad you can plaster in front of people that have money. It’s a reminder of your progress. Unlike Faceook or Instagram, the cost of this ad is $0. ✅ The best topics for investor updates are:   1. Fundraising.   2. Revenue goals and other KPIs (more below).   3. Help closing candidates.   4. Help finding candidates of a unique type (not just yet another software engineer).   5. Internal HR and comms issues.   6. Benchmarking data. (Are we growing as fast as other SaaS companies in your portfolio?) ❌ The worst topics for investor updates are:    1. Deep strategy questions that require context.    2. A transcript of your daily standups.    3. Software engineering questions. 💥 As a founder, you’re an ostrich, head buried in the sand of minutiae. This is your strength. The ability to hold 10,000 details in your head at once and think about your business more than anyone else in the world. That strength can also kill you, leaving you stuck optimizing a local maximia that will never create a path to a truly tectonic outcome. ******

How do you build a network in a different city than where you live now? I see this come up quite a bit with folks looking to get hired by #venturecapital firms in SF/Bay Area but who live elsewhere. My two (ok, three) cents 👇 💡 Find a way to make ~3 trips to the Bay Area a year through your current gig. 💡 How? Tie as many of those trips as you can to relevant industry conferences that are at the intersection of tech/startups/VC + your industry sector (so that your boss is more likely to say "Yes" and your company will be likely to pay, or at least give you the time to attend on your own dime). 💡 Set up 1-on-1 meetings a couple weeks ahead of your arrival, and make it clear that you're in town for just a short time. Some of the folks may not remember that you're not from their neighborhood so it's always good to point this out (as it may mean the difference between you getting a meeting or not). If you've built your network in a city before you actually moved there, how did you do it?

There are some very specific insights that come from having taken the founder's journey. Here we explore the challenges of scaling B2B SAAS startups with the founder of Thoropass and Rachel ten Brink

🤯 Do you know what “founder madness” is? When I received the opportunity to join Ivy Tech as co-founder I embraced it with all that I had. This was a great shot at pushing myself, meeting and employing amazing people, making mistakes and learning from them and building something that I stand behind 120% and represents who I am. What I wasn’t ready for is that everything seemed to happen all at once and in the early days I was the single driving force behind almost every aspect of the business. 💚 That has changed A LOT now and I am beyond thankful for our team. Some hacks that helped me (or that I wished I’d knew) to deal with the competing priorities and constant madness: 💡 It truly is a mad time. Embrace it. If you want to watch TV every night, don’t start your own business.  💡 Your customers are everything. Keep your customers smiling and satisfied, ask for honest feedback. They are the voices you need to listen to. 💡 Surround yourself with a couple of people you trust, that will tell you the truth and that are knowledgeable. 💡 Allow yourself one “Sabbath” per week where you just focus on things that bring joy and replenish energy. Counterintuitively a rest day can enhance your productivity and allow space for creative thinking and problem solving. 💡 Get a good accountant and pay the tax man.  💡 One day at a time. You can't solve all your problems at once or become a success over night. There are a million more things to say and I’d love to hear them from you, fellow founders, entrepreneurs and creators. Please comment! PS: In the photo is me in 2021 decking out our then new office with Ivy plants. Opening that office is one of my fondest and proudest memories in my Ivy journey. #founders #startupgrowth #mumpreneur #techhiring #techrecruitment #techrecruiting #femaleentrepreneurs #femalefounders

It's been a whirlwind 🌪 of a week since I got back from New York for #Techweek. ✅ 12 calls with Founders I met to hear more about their businesses and what support they need. ✅ 3 follow up calls with VC's discussing options to intro Founders looking to raise. ✅ 3 calls with technology partners to understand what support they can provide the Founders and businesses I work with. ✅ A very large number of emails and LinkedIn messages received and replied to, following up on either meeting at events during the week or people reaching out as we didn't get a chance to speak at the time. ✅ Supporting existing clients with a number of key hires to support their ongoing growth. One thing is for sure though 💭...... 𝙁𝙖𝙘𝙚-𝙩𝙤-𝙛𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙥𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙙𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙗𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨. Regardless of all the tech available, from email campaigns to phone diallers to AI generated video outreach; nothing beats real face-to-face connection. Let's keep the connections real and if you want to jump on a call or meet face-to-face to explore what we can do for each other then don't hesitate to get in touch. #facetoface #relationships #startups #networking

Most of our customers are startups. The delightful part about it is that you get to work with and serve such hopeful, humble fellow-builders who understand the journey, have an abundance mindset, and look for non-zero-sum relationships. Yesterday, a new customer (marketer + designer pair) recorded themselves going through our self-serve onboarding process, then shared it with us—completely unsolicited. They thought out loud every step of the way as they navigated the docs and product, to a mix of success and failure. Watching it with the team—it was absolute gold. Amazing confirmation of what we're doing right, and cringe-worthy realizations of what we need to work on. Of course, we're always trying to tease out these lessons on our own through data and interviews, but for users to take it upon themselves to be so thoughtful and constructive is remarkable. And it clearly comes from a place of understanding for the process of building. Thanks, guys. You make the world a better place. I'll try to pay it forward.

15 months into our journey, I’m excited to share that tofu closed an oversubscribed pre-seed to scale up our talent sharing marketplace. Night Capital (Kevin Carter), Ritual Capital (Chris H.), Garage Capital (Mike McCauley, Michael Litt and Devon Galloway), Wayfinder Ventures (Yuri Sagalov), and Deva Santiago (recruiting leader @ Dropbox, Weebly, Nurx, Rippling and Tailscale) helped us make this round possible. Jonathan Perez and I decided to start tofu to address the inefficiencies created from interviewing candidates at scale. By our estimate, companies spend 25 million hours a year interviewing candidates, often the same candidate. Those candidates spend almost 175 million hours a year interviewing across various roles. As you can imagine, this results in a lot of duplicative effort. tofu’s mission is to unlock this idle talent information, convert sunk interview time and costs into value, and empower companies and candidates to connect in minutes. We like to think of it as the Airbnb of recruiting. In the last 12 months since we launched our first MVP, more than 170+ companies are sharing talent on our platform. We’ve helped dozens of candidates find jobs, saved companies weeks filling roles, and spoken with 250+ talent leaders to create an experience radically different from anything else on the market. tofu wouldn’t have reached this milestone if not for some very special people who have expedited our journey from zero to one. We’re here because of folks like Suneel Mudaliar, Joel Torres, and Bryan Powell from Insight Partners. Matt Hoffman and Loren Boyce from M13. Neil Parikh (founder of Casper), Jared Hecht (Founder of GroupMe and Fundera by NerdWallet), Haftan Eckholdt (Flagship CTO), David Kaminsky (VP Engineering @ Zocdoc), and Max Schwartz-Labell. 🚀 We’re hiring our first Founding Engineer to join us on our mission to connect every company in the world. If you get excited by creating something from nothing, like building marketplaces, and want to be part of a company changing the way companies and talent come together, we want to hear from you. Please feel free to DM me on LinkedIn or apply through the link in the comments.

Every successful startup you admire today, began with a single idea and a passionate team willing to face the difficulties head-on while carefully considering their strategy and making informed decisions. Jon Clarke and Jack Irwin-Smith launched WorkFolk last week, and, boy oh boy, did I love their outside-of-the-box thinking for the launch. Let's be honest, whether you're a job seeker or a company in search of talent, the current process is far from ideal. This is precisely why these guys embarked on a mission to transform it. They are making referrals the No. 1 way for people to find jobs. Because referrals have a proven track record of delivering exceptional results for both companies and candidates, but currently only account for a small percentage of all hires. They have developed the technology and are building the network to supercharge the referral process and greatly increase that percentage to the point where referrals become the No .1 way for people to find jobs. When a referral through WorkFolk leads to a hire, the company gains top talent, the candidate secures an exciting new job, and the referrer earns a well-deserved £1,000 reward! Let's give it up for these amazing Founders and help them Launch in style! I simply love what they are building and I think it's going to be a hit. What do you think? Video Credit: WorkFolk If you want to learn how to grow revenue and shorten the payback time for investors Subscribe to the Bedrokk newsletter here bit.ly/3IGO9TF and receive practical, actionable, and relevant GTM insights every Wednesday. #startups #founders #gotomarketstrategy #venturecapital ___________________________________ Did you like this post? Connect or Follow Evaldas Girskus Want to see all my posts? Ring that 🔔 and Follow #thestartupguy Need GTM Help? Book a call here bit.ly/3FHp9tP

Bursting the Hot Air Balloon in Startups 🎈⚡ Founders, let's get real for a moment. Building a business isn't about pumping it full of hot air and hoping it floats. Here’s a reality check on what doesn’t magically fix everything: 🚀 "Sales Team Will Fix It": Thinking a crack sales team will automatically fix your client drought? Think again. #SalesMagic 🔄 "Operations Makeover": A fancy Head of Ops won't streamline your chaos unless the foundation is solid. #OpsOverhaul 🧑🏫 "HR to the Rescue": Believing that an experienced HR team alone will find you the dream team? Talent fits culture, not just JDs. #HiringHype 💸 "Throw Money at It": Splurging won't turn you into a market leader overnight. Sustainable growth does. #MoneyPit 🌍 "Lawyers Will Expand Us": Expanding territories isn’t just about legal paperwork. It’s about understanding markets. #LegalLimits 🏁 "First = Winner": First to market doesn’t mean last to need improvement. Stay agile. #InnovateOrStagnate 👨💻 "Dev Dollars": A big dev budget doesn’t always mean a better product. Focus on what users need, not just what you want to build. #DevDelusions 🤑 "Big Investor, Big Success": A large investor isn’t a success guarantee. It's just more pressure to perform. #InvestorReality The Real Deal: The task to bring in clients, refine your product, and scale your business? That’s on you, founders. Hit the phones, pound the pavement, and make those connections yourself. You’ll achieve more with a direct call than any inflated strategy. 📞💥 Get dialing, start doing, and keep your business grounded in reality, not hot air. 🎯 #StartupLife #RealTalk #GetDialing #FounderFocus #NoHotAir

Twelve #markCuban Rules for Startups 1. Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you #love. 2. If you have an #exit strategy, it’s not an obsession. 3. #Hire people who you think will love working there. 4. #Sales Cure All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales. 5. Know your core #competencies and focus on being great at them. 6. Don't worry about #perks from the outset. 7.#Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up. 8. As far as #technology, go with what you know. 9. Keep the organization #flat. 10. #NEVER EVER EVER buy swag. 11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a #PR firm.(Public Relation) 12. Make the job fun for employees.(reward them) #learn