Intuitions for Building Startups

Why Read: Concise, practical advice on key startup strategies, from product focus to risk management, helping founders navigate critical early-stage decisions.

Featuring: Gordon Brander (@gordonbrander), Co-Founder at Common Tools

Link to Article: Raw Intuitions About Startups

Key Concepts and Tactics:

1. Prioritize Product Over Technology:

   • Point: Focus on developing the product and finding product-market fit before investing heavily in novel technology.

   • "Start with product and work backwards to technology... Prioritizing tech before product turns good problems to have into bad problems to have. You want to start with product, and work back to technology, taking the shortest path to market by doing things that don't scale. This lets you iterate toward something that people actually want."

2. Identify and Pursue Future Trends:

   • Point: Develop an intuition for spotting future trends and work quickly to bring them to market.

   • "A startup's job is to spot a thing from the future, then pull it into the present as quickly as possible... The sweet spot for startups is seeing 24 months into the future. This is a stone's throw into the adjacent possible. It's far-out enough to be asymmetric, familiar enough to be pitchable, and time enough to build."

3. Leverage Existing Ecosystems:

   • Point: Use established technologies and platforms to benefit from ecosystem momentum.

   • "Draft off of ecosystem tailwinds... Sail with the prevailing winds of the ecosystem, and not against them. Every tech choice should be bog standard, except the one thing that gives you an asymmetric advantage."

4. Focus on One Innovation at a Time:

   • Point: Limit innovation to either product category or technology, not both simultaneously.

   • "A seed-stage startup gets to spend one risk token... During the seed stage, you probably have runway for just one innovation token. You must spend that innovation token unlocking your asymmetric advantage."

5. Approach Decentralized Protocols Strategically:

   • Point: Recognize the challenges of decentralized protocols and choose an approach that aligns with market realities.

   • "Decentralized protocols are hard... Build centralized-yet-decentralizable SaaS. Do as much as you can using the traditional web stack, changing as little as possible, and only where it changes the power relationship to the server."

6. Implement Recursive De-risking:

   • Point: Continuously identify and address the most significant risks or unknowns in your startup.

   • "Recursively de-risk... Sketch out the idea as quickly as possible, Identify the top risk, blocker, or unknown, Do the cheapest thing to de-risk it, Go to 2"

7. Understand Software Economics:

   • Point: Recognize the unique economic characteristics of networked software and align your strategy accordingly.

   • "Software economics is a barbell... The most effective software economics are squished toward the extremes, like a barbell: Open source projects lean into the fact that software is zero-marginal cost to copy... Venture-funded startups accept that labor will be the dominant cost up front, but marginal in the long run as network effects and zero marginal cost take over."

8. Adopt an R-selected Strategy:

   • Point: Embrace rapid exploration and iteration, focusing on finding new niches rather than competing in crowded markets.

   • "Startups are R-selected... R-selected species are explorers. They rapidly colonize new spaces... Move fast, take risks, be opportunistic. Don't get precious. Try a lot of things, and don't be afraid to die."

Content Marketing for SaaS Companies

Why Read: Learn effective content marketing strategies for B2B SaaS, from establishing product marketing foundations to leveraging AI tools, crucial for early-stage growth and customer acquisition.

Featuring: Alexander Estner (@AlexanderEstner), Founder | GTM advisor for B2B SaaS startups at Alex Estner & Matteo Tittarelli (@matteo_titta), Founder & Director at Genesys Growth

Link: The Ultimate Content Marketing Programs Guide for SaaS

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Prioritizing Content Marketing for Early-Stage SaaS:

  • Point: Recognize the importance of content marketing as a primary channel for early-stage B2B SaaS companies.

  • "Content marketing is an indiscussible channel for early-stage B2B startups. It can drive results across the whole funnel — brand awareness, acquire leads, revenue, and even expansion — while making acquisition organic and scalable, which is what every VC seeks."

• Investing in Product Marketing Before Content:

  • Point: Establish a strong product marketing foundation before diving into content creation.

  • "Before writing content, you must invest in product marketing. Product marketing is the strategic foundation that defines your TAM and target personas (aka. Ideal Customer Profile), analyzes their goals, the alternatives/competitors they're using to achieve them, and the problems arising from them; helping you "message" and "position" your company as a compelling solution."

• Mapping Stages of Awareness:

  • Point: Understand and map out the different stages of awareness your potential customers go through.

  • "Now that you've set your product marketing foundation and are ready to confidently articulate your value proposition in a language relatable to your ICP, you need to map your awareness stages. The Stages of Awareness is a framework built by Anthony Pierri that helps you understand the level of awareness your customers have towards the outcome they're trying to achieve with your product."

• Choosing the Right Awareness Stage to Start Content Creation:

  • Point: Determine the most appropriate awareness stage to begin your content marketing efforts based on market maturity.

  • "Mature market 👉 start from Product Awareness. If you're in an established market with multiple competitors, you need to convince your market your product is the best in your category.

  • Emerging market 👉 start from Product Category Awareness. If you're in an emerging market and your product category is rising as a better way to reach an outcome, you need to convince your market your product category is the go-to alternative.

  • New market 👉 start from Use Case Awareness. If you're building an innovative product or starting a new market, there might be no direct competitor and you might be battling against "the old way of doing things"."

• Developing Content Programs:

  • Point: Focus on creating series of content pieces rather than individual posts.

  • "Successful content requires consistency. A single post on each stage or topic won't get you far, as prospects need to repeat the same thing over and over and across multiple angles and touchpoints. When approaching your first content production, you need to think in terms of series or programs vs. single pieces."

• Leveraging AI Tools for Content Creation:

  • Point: Utilize AI tools to enhance content production while maintaining a balance with human input.

  • "AI tools can be very powerful for your content marketing. Some rules of thumb Matteo recommends when using AI:

    • The closer to purchase you are in the awareness stage, the more the percentage of human writing is needed to capture technical nuances and details.

    • The newer your market is and the less existing content has been written about it, the more human writing you'll need to bootstrap existing content."