Hello everyone,
It's May now and time is flying. Do you get that feeling?
The last article was all about the public launch of WE Heart Impact (www.weheartimpact.com) and I want to thank everyone for all the sweet messages; it means the world to me.
I'm having so much fun building WE that I just want to appreciate and enjoy these early days and set the pace for constant experimentation and learning. WE is on a mission to reinvent the human relationship with work.
WE is now in contact with entrepreneurs who would like to join our Entrepreneur in Residence programme and eventually lead some of our missions. If you are looking for an amazing challenge to explore, here is the link. (Also, if you know someone, WE would appreciate your support!)
Today I want to share with you my top 10 articles from the last few weeks and hope you enjoy them.
With love,
DMS
p.s. Your likes and shares will help me spread the word. Thank you.
Top10 Articles
[THE VC FACTORY]
“Once seen as mavericks making crazy bets shoulder-to-shoulder with the entrepreneurs they backed, Venture Capitalists are increasingly railed for focusing more on the "Capital" part of the job (managing money) than the "Venture" aspect (taking risks). Why do VCs today seem to have less appetite for risky bets? Do cautious Investors perform better? How do elite VC firms leverage the power law to generate top-quartile returns consistently?
In this post, I dive into the relationship between VCs and risk, first exploring why contemporary VCs appear more conservative compared to their trailblazing predecessors and how this change affects the industry’s dynamics.”
[FIRST ROUND REVIEW]
“How Notion Does Marketing: A Deep-Dive Into its Community, Influencers & Growth Playbooks
We peel back the layers of Notion’s multifaceted marketing strategy, diving deep into three distinct channels that have helped power its meteoric rise: community, influencer marketing, and growth and analytics.”
[INDEX VENTURE]
SCALING THROUGH CHAOS
The Founder’s Guide to Building and Leading Teams from 0 to 1,000.
[BIG THINK ft ADAM GRANT]
”Psychologist and science journalist Adam Grant pinpoints one of the most critical and over-arching for today’s turbulent times — strategic problem-solving.According to Grant, “Often our highest potential people are the ones who can diagnose a problem that nobody else has seen and then figure out how to tackle it.” The challenge is to recognize the potential for that capability when assessing future leadership talent.”
Read & Watch the full story here.
[FIRST ROUND CAPITAL]
”Todd Jackson is a Partner at First Round Capital. Before moving into venture capital, he played a crucial role as VP of Product and Design at Dropbox, guiding the company until its IPO in 2018. Prior to Dropbox, Todd led product management for Twitter’s Content and Discovery teams after selling his startup, Cover, to Twitter in 2014. Before Cover, Todd oversaw product development for Facebook’s Newsfeed, Photos, and Groups. He kickstarted his career at Google as an associate product manager and eventually led product for Gmail, witnessing its growth from beta to 200 million users.”[NFX]
“With traditional B2B SaaS, we augmented human work and services with software. Now, the software itself is doing the whole job.
AI is forcing a reversal of the SaaS acronym. From Software-as-a-Service to Service-as-a-Software.
The big picture: the rise of AI workers is creating a fusion of the software and labor market. This is going to create massive opportunities for Founders.
Labor and Software Are Becoming One Market”
Read the full story here.[SEQUOIA]
”Finding product-market fit is the central quest of every early-stage startup. As we have seen over years of partnering with companies before they reached PMF, there are many ways of thinking about and approaching this quest. We walk founders through the following framework during Arc, our company-building immersion for pre-seed and seed stage companies. Rather than diagnosing whether you have product-market fit, this framework outlines three distinct archetypes of PMF which help you understand your product’s place in the market and determine how your company operates.”
Read the full story here.[FIRST ROUND REVIEW]
”Navigating New Waters: 10 Tips for First-Time Founder SuccessTactical advice from seasoned founders like Thumbtack’s Marco Zappacosta and Dropbox’s Drew Houston about the biggest mistakes to avoid as a first-time startup founder.”
Read the full story here.[FJLABS + FABRICE GRINDA]
”For consumers, the Internet has made everything cheaper, better, and faster. We have extraordinary user experiences and infinite convenience. Digital penetration is above 20% in many categories. We can order almost anything online on Amazon and get it within a day or two. We can order food on Doordash and get it in 30 minutes. We can get a car on Uber to take us anywhere within minutes. We can book delightful stays on Airbnb and Booking.Such a revolution has not yet happened in the B2B world. In most industries we have digital penetration below 5%, and it’s often below 1%. In most categories, there is no online catalog. There is no online pricing. There is no connectivity to the factories to understand manufacturing capacity and availability. There is no online ordering. There is no online payment, no order tracking. Insurance and financing cannot be ordered online. Whether it’s at large enterprises or small businesses, much is still done via pen and paper.
The opportunity is large. B2B accounts for a large percentage of GDP. Many categories have trillions of dollars of annual GMV potential. Given the low penetration, it will take decades to digitize B2B supply chains, so this trend has a long runway ahead of it with the potential for hundreds of startups covering every vertical and geography.”
Read the full story here.[CLAIRE HUGHES JOHNSON]
Claire is the former COO of Stripe and the author of Scaling People, which I think is one of the best books on real entrepreneurship ever written. She speaks from the heart, bringing real cases and explaining the tactical work required to win the challenge and move on.
If you haven't read the book yet, grab a copy and immerse yourself in it.One of the things I have taken away and started to apply in my work with founders is Claire's guide to working with her. Basically, every time she took over a team or another part of the business, Claire had to step in and get things moving quickly. So she decided to create a document that she could share with these people and get them up to speed on how to work better with her.
This material was featured in Elad's amazing book High Growth Handbook (which I also highly recommend!) and here is the link to how Claire structured the document on how to work with her. Enjoy it.
If you don't want to pick up a copy of the book, or if you've already read it and want to learn more, I highly recommend Claire's conversation with Mr Tim Ferriss :-)Bonus Session
You all know how much I appreciate Adam Grant's work, and the more I get to explore his work, the more I'm inspired to pursue my curiosity.
So if you have the time and want to explore some amazing content, I highly recommend his conversation with the Diary of the CEO.
Enjoy it.
By the way, have you seen this video? It has been all over my feed for the last few days. I had no idea who this guy was and apparently he is the #1 content creator on product reviews.
A big shout out to all the amazing friends I got to see and spend a few hours with in London last week.
Hecho con Amor en Madrid.
Love,
Dan