20 April 2020
This week's additions focus on founder stories, leadership, and operations, with new digests from Founders, Masters of Scale, and Bill Gallagher. Highlights include Sloan turned Durant's chaotic GM into a disciplined enterprise through decentralization and financial controls. Holiday-level demand arrived unannounced — with no playbook to follow
Showing 11 digests for 20 April 2020.
How Alfred Sloan perfected General Motors' strategy
Founders
April 26, 2020
Case studies
9
Competitive analysis
8
Cash flow management
6
Sloan turned Durant's chaotic GM into a disciplined enterprise through decentralization and financial controls.
Built Chevrolet as a strategic wedge above Ford's Model T to capture the growing middle market.
Stayed profitable through 72% Depression sales collapse by controlling cash, avoiding debt, and adapting to consumer preference shifts.
Scaling infrastructure
Podcast
How Chewy scaled operations and trust during COVID-19
Masters of Scale
April 25, 2020
Scaling infrastructure
9
Communication
8
Case studies
6
Holiday-level demand arrived unannounced — with no playbook to follow
Infrared sensors and a daily SWAT team kept 13,000-person operations running
Seven repeat purchases needed to turn pandemic shoppers into permanent customers
Remote work, crisis pivots, and funding strategy for scaling businesses
Bill Gallagher
April 25, 2020
Pivoting
8
Fundraising & VC
7
Processes & SOPs
6
Businesses that ask 'how can I be indispensable?' outpace those waiting for normal.
PPP forgiveness obsession caused most owners to miss a low-cost million-dollar growth loan.
Breakout rooms, 90-minute limits, and directional mics fix the biggest remote-meeting failures.
How Nextdoor mobilised neighbourhoods during COVID-19
Masters of Scale
April 24, 2020
Case studies
9
Iteration & feedback loops
6
Nextdoor saw help conversations surge 262% in weeks
A kindness nudge caused 25% of flagged posts to be rewritten
Local businesses gain more reach on Nextdoor than Instagram
How to grow a YouTube channel: a live audit and optimization walkthrough
Noah Kagan
April 24, 2020
Growth hacking
9
Content marketing
8
85–89% of subscribers come from video watch pages, not the channel page
Native uploads to LinkedIn and Instagram massively outperform shared YouTube links
Watch time beats views — optimise for it, not view counts
How core values shape hiring, decisions, and brand identity
Rick Fawcett - Expert EOS Implementer
April 24, 2020
Culture building
8
Business operating systems
5
Your brand becomes whatever value you consistently hire against
Core values make delegation safer by aligning decisions automatically
EOS helps you identify the values already driving your best people
Founder interviews
Podcast
How US Digital Response mobilised 4,000 tech volunteers to fix government infrastructure
Masters of Scale
April 23, 2020
Founder interviews
9
Business models
8
Processes & SOPs
7
A Google Form launched in 48 hours; 1,000 volunteers signed up within days.
Governments can stand up digital services in a day during crisis — so why years in peacetime?
Mobile-first benefit forms cut application time from an hour to seven minutes.
Crisis leadership
YouTube
Leading through crisis: purpose, values, and adapting to a new normal
Bill Gallagher
April 22, 2020
Crisis leadership
9
Resilience & grit
7
Humans adapt to sustained adversity — shock gives way to action.
False promises destroy credibility faster than bad news ever will.
Crisis is when values-aligned decisions from the past pay off.
How Andrew Barnes made a four-day work week work at scale
How I Work
April 22, 2020
Processes & SOPs
9
Deep work & focus
7
Management
5
Time scarcity, not management pressure, is what cuts workplace waste
Open-plan offices cost 22 minutes of recovery for every 11-minute interruption
Team-based accountability makes wasting colleagues' time a shared risk
How to build and run an eight-figure business from scratch
Noah Kagan
April 21, 2020
Processes & SOPs
10
Productivity & habits
7
Hiring & recruitment
6
A 'figure filter' forces you to stop wasting time on small opportunities.
10x the one channel already working before starting anything new.
Expect ten years of hard work — pick a tidal wave market to make them count.
11 New Jobs Created by the Shift to Remote Work
Noah Kagan
April 20, 2020
Business models
8
Case studies
6
Behaviour change creates immediate service gaps anyone can monetise first.
Virtual graduation coordinators earn ~$5,000 per ceremony for technical setup.
Digital products on Gumroad and AppSumo need no inventory or shipping.