How to build a sustainable startup without running out of runway Photo by Daniela Araya on Unsplash What is the number one reason Product-Market Fit (PMF) work gets deprioritised? Because of the pressures to grow. In a growth role at a startup, you feel a lot of pressure to grow and to perform. Whether this is from investors, your founder or the fact that you know you have a limited runway. Whenever you aren’t working on that growth problem, it feels like you are wasting time and not making progress. Sure, ideally, you’d have joined after there was PMF, but that is not always ho ..read more

After launching nearly 300 creative campaigns, here’s why this is true. Image created from Microsoft Designer If you’ve ever asked yourself: “Will it pay off?” “Will all the time I’m putting into this project be worth it?” “Will this marketing campaign really grow my business?” If you have, you’re not alone. I’ve asked myself these questions numerous times while I’m ideating or building campaigns. These, unfortunately, tend to be the questions that stopped me. For those seeking perfection, these are the questions that rear their ugly head in to cripple and paralyze you. As it di ..read more

Is it the American Dream? Or is there something else at play? Image by Midjourney Breaking news: The US is still the best place for startups to fundraise. In other shocking news: Grass is green. Water is wet. And wood comes from trees. After all… In the world of startup fundraising, there’s the U.S., and then there’s… well, does it matter? As a startup founder, you might have the best product in the world. But without cash, you probably won’t be able to accelerate its growth properly. Unless you’re sitting on a decent chunk of money, you’ll probably need to raise funds for your ..read more

If this topic fills you with dread, your tracking infrastructure is likely broken somewhere I would argue that 99% of companies that are good at developing tech products do these three things: They have clearly defined metrics that they are trying to move They review those metrics regularly They try to determine the link between the work that they release and how those metrics move. Let me also acknowledge that I have never seen a company with 100% of its tracking set up correctly. Something is always broken, out of date, or missing. It’s just the reality of tech products, un ..read more

99.9% of business gurus today are omitting the most crucial factor in your startup’s success — and it’s causing massive failure. Photo by Grzegorz Walczak on Unsplash My eyes widened and my ears perked up as a well-known “business guru” quickly glossed over the most valuable topic that didn’t quite make his bullet list for this founder mastermind. That’s when I realized — despite this person’s financial success, his growing cult of devout followers, and his digital fan base, he was unknowingly — or inadvertently — leading them astray. This wasn’t a room full of future founders; it wa ..read more

A single conversation can inspire entrepreneurs to build amazing things or trick them into making huge mistakes. Image courtesy Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels I suppose I don’t know for sure my startup was worth $10 million. It’s not like someone wrote a $10 million check and handed it to me in exchange for my company. However, at the time of the story I’m about to share, I’d already successfully raised a seven-figure seed round, my company was growing fast, and I was preparing to raise a Series A that valued the business at $10 million. Yes, I realize preparing to raise a round isn’t ..read more

During the Christmas break, I discovered that we were in the top 5% of all newsletters, possibly even 1%. During the Christmas break, I discovered our newsletter, The Automated, was in the top 5% of all newsletters, possibly even 1%. Why? Because we had published more than 21 posts. Far more. We wrote over 47K words, served over 131 daily posts, which is essentially half of the 2023 working year, and served almost 1 million impressions in the process! Not only that — we scaled to OVER 18k subscribers from 0! How did we get there, starting from 0 subscribers? There have be ..read more

How to unlock your full potential in the New Year Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash I first learned about the 20-hour rule a year ago and thought it was rubbish. I couldn’t believe it was that simple: you could learn any new skill by practicing for just 20 hours. Only after trying it myself I changed my views drastically, and now I believe this can be a game changer for anyone. Acquiring new skills can change the way you see yourself and also how you interact with the world. If you are feeling stuck along your journey, it may be a new skill you need to learn to reach the ..read more

Today, I’m sharing an adventure close to my heart — selling my first side project, Opengraph.xyz. Before this happened, I thought a side project with 0 MRR was worth nothing. But now that I’ve seen what can happen when you put in the work and take risks, my perspective has changed completely! Trust me, it was a ride filled with significant lessons, a handful of mistakes, and an array of unique experiences. How It All Started It all started when I found out opengraph.xyz domain was available at the end of 2019. At the time, Hey Meta and Meta Tags are the go-to tools to check social m ..read more

289 days ago, 3 of us created a no-code custom chatbot building platform in 4 days — and launched it on ProductHunt. Fast forward to this month: Our startup, CustomGPT, was named to “Top 10 Emerging Leaders in Generative AI” along with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks, A121 Labs and Aleph Alpha — by GAI Insights, an analyst firm focussed on Generative AI. That is some serious company there! Now, this is the first time in nine months that I’ve had the chance to come up for air, and I thought I’d share some of my lessons from the front lines. These are ..read more