Early stage VC backed SaaS companies have to get to larger and larger customers faster then ever before in order to grow into their recent valuations. This opens up opportunities for pre-seed and seed stage companies to double down on freemium while maintaining a low burn rate. If you’re early with low burn, I would recommend figuring out if you have a viable freemium strategy. A free forever product that can have high retention is what you’re aiming for.

goblintown.wtf

Going to be an #xpunk for the rest of the day to support the movement. twitter.com/i/spaces/1gqxv…

I commissioned 1:1 derivatives of several NFTs that I’m planning on holding. I wanted to support these artists and also own a collection frozen in time that represents these early days of jpeg ownership. First up, my Lazy Lion profile pic was made into 3d by @Futuredesigns01

Here's the headline...

"55% of Americans plan on finding a new job in the next 12 months" @bankrate

Or…

"4mm quit their jobs in April... In tech, resignations increased by 4.5%" @HarvardBiz

Now forget about the career angle and think about what this means... From our own research, just under half (45%) of employees have taken documents with them after they've left the company.

Another 35% say they can still access Google Drive / Box / Dropbox after they leave.

Materials may range from mundane to highly sensitive...

Every single company, no matter what size, has document access-risks that they don't know about. Why?

Because it’s so easy for any employee or vendor to share company information.

Let me explain… Over half (52%) of the people we’ve surveyed have added their own or a coworker’s personal email to company documents.

This problem is so widespread that the average 1,000+ employee company has tens of thousands of personal email accounts that have access to company documents.

NFT projects I like. A continuous thread. First things first. Here’s why my profile pic (pfp) is an NFT that I own. @LazyLionsNFT.

https://twitter.com/hnshah/status/1432536122752581635

Building a business is not the same as founding a startup. Most startups don’t get to the phase of building the business. Because they don’t create a product worth building a business around. This is why finding product/market fit is the #1 goal for every new startup. This idea that a startup is not a business might sound obvious, but it’s not when you’ve got infinite choices about what to focus on and are just starting out. If you chase product/market fit, you’ll find a business eventually in time. If you don’t, luck is all you’ve got.

A thread of threads on startups.

https://twitter.com/romeensheth/status/1406377037355524099

Do you know your enneagram type? crystalknows.com/enneagram-test

It’s time for a thread about startup pivots...

Last week, for my startup, we announced our pivot from a document search tool called FYI to a security product called Nira (@niradotcom).

Here are answers to the most common questions people have asked me about pivoting a startup. What made it necessary to pivot?
People assume companies pivot out of necessity because something isn’t working. When you pivot, you’re making a critical change to your business rooted in customer learnings.

With FYI, it wasn’t exactly necessary for us to pivot.

Ten Rules for Web Startups by @ev (2005)
1: Be Narrow
2: Be Different
3: Be Casual
4: Be Picky
5: Be User-Centric
6: Be Self-Centered
7: Be Greedy
8: Be Tiny
9: Be Agile
10: Be Balanced
11 (bonus!): Be Wary Source: web.archive.org/web/2006040809…

At my startup, @usefyi we have pivoted from a document search tool for everyone to a security product used by IT people. We've also changed our name to Nira (@niradotcom).

The pivot got kick-started when someone used our product in an unexpected way. Here's the story… My co-founder (@marieprokopets) and I were at the office of a 50-person startup in SF to meet with the CEO, who was using our document search product.

We were prepared for a typical user research session where we’d watch him use our product.

That’s not quite what happened.

Start new products and features with the ultimate customer experience in mind. @Tesla

Timing is everything at a startup. I say this based on my personal experiences starting businesses and talking to countless founders.

If you can set aside your opinion about what Facebook is today and watch this interview you’ll see an example of a founder with a growth mindset. In particular, @finkd’s comments at the end about focusing intensely on customer experience are instructive. Strategy is critical at the earliest stages of a business. The three tasks that @joulee recommends to do more of describes exactly what an early stage startup team should be doing to be strategic. medium.com/the-year-of-th…

Also, her book on management is 🔥 amzn.to/2PRwCyW

This is a never ending thread of the very best online content and resources for early stage startups.

Relevant for both self-funded/bootstrapped and venture backed pre-seed/seed stage companies. The blog posts from 2008 on @ericries’ blog are a must-read for startup founders. They describe the basics for building online businesses. Timeless and useful content, regardless of your opinion about lean startup. startuplessonslearned.com/2008/

Building a product means saying no to your own desires and prioritizing customer needs instead. Even if you are the customer of your product, you won’t get too far if you just build for yourself.

Always make sure that customer needs come first.

If you don’t know what they need, go find out. If you talked to them and still don’t know, ask different questions.

Future of work question:

Is remote work going to eat the office? Before shelter in place, I spoke to a few marketers at fast growing startups who had an office.

Every single one of them told me that they leave the office to write content.

Their offices were full of distractions and unavoidable noise.

Startup life can be summed up in three steps:

1. Find problem
2. Fix problem
3. Go back to step 1

Works for every thing you need to do in a startup.

Growth is determined by a combination of how fast you can go through the steps successfully and how long you can keep at it. Finding the right problem to solve starts with understanding your customers.

Nobody says I wish I talked to less customers.

There aren’t any hacks or shortcuts to this.

Go talk to your customers.

How do you deal with the ups and downs of founder life? There are a *lot* more founders out there today compare to when I got out of college 16 years ago and started my first online business.

Back then, the discussions were oriented around how to start and grow a business.

Tactical nitty gritty details that weren’t freely available.