19 October 2020
This week's additions focus on marketing, strategy, and founder stories, with new digests from Noah Kagan, Founders, and Joanna Wiebe. Highlights include Wrong prize kills sharing — target beyond your existing audience Walton invented nothing — he copied relentlessly and executed with fanaticism
Showing 11 digests for 19 October 2020.
How to run a giveaway to grow your YouTube channel
Noah Kagan
October 24, 2020
Growth hacking
9
Social media
6
Wrong prize kills sharing — target beyond your existing audience
Bonus-entry actions let you prioritise the growth metric you want
A YouTube video about the prize drove the biggest subscriber spike
Sam Walton: how obsession, frugality, and copying built Walmart
Founders
October 24, 2020
Origin stories
10
Business models
6
Walton invented nothing — he copied relentlessly and executed with fanaticism
Losing his first store to a landlord became the pivot that created Walmart
Kmart's 10-year blind spot gave Walmart the runway to become unstoppable
How to use content grouping in Google Analytics to analyse your site
Joanna Wiebe
October 24, 2020
Group 50,000 URLs into named buckets to answer stakeholder questions instantly.
Content groups work as secondary dimensions and audience segments too.
A Data Studio calculated field applies your grouping rules to historical data.
Five tools that helped grow a YouTube channel to 85K subscribers
Noah Kagan
October 22, 2020
Growth hacking
9
Automation & tools
7
Emailing your list after each upload can double your video views
Social Blade reveals what's working on competitor channels before you copy it
CTR and average view duration are the only two metrics that matter
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Habit tune-up: planning, home offices, and demanding jobs
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
October 22, 2020
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
8
Weekly planning reveals scheduling opportunities daily planning always misses.
A distinctive home office triggers a work mindset — invest boldly.
In finance, productivity systems build the career capital that eventually buys autonomy.
How Gather navigated the early COVID-19 pandemic as a bootstrapped SaaS
Startups For the Rest of Us
October 22, 2020
Case studies
9
Bootstrapping
8
Niche selection
6
Going upmarket before a recession saved them from mass churn
Pandemic paradoxically reduced personal anxiety about their cash crunch
Remote work wave turned a struggling pipeline into real enterprise deals
Five free Ahrefs SEO tools and how to use them together
Ahrefs
October 21, 2020
A five-tool workflow covering technical SEO to link building — all free.
Find featured snippet gaps using position filters inside Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
Turn a competitor's stale resource page into your own link-building opportunity.
Founder interviews
YouTube
Mark Grimes launched 31 startups in 31 days to find winners fast
Bill Gallagher
October 21, 2020
Founder interviews
10
Pivoting
7
Serial entrepreneur launched one startup per day throughout August 2020.
350-idea backlog plus pandemic downtime triggered the 31-in-31 experiment.
A 'launch' means idea is public and customer conversations have begun.
Profit sharing, stock options, and equity for bootstrapped startups
Startups For the Rest of Us
October 20, 2020
Bootstrapping
9
Equity & cap tables
7
Equity grants trigger tax bills and K-1s — scale poorly beyond co-founders.
Stock options only pay out at a liquidity event most bootstrappers never plan.
A 10–20% profit sharing pool aligns daily incentives without needing an exit.
Content marketing
YouTube
Five niche YouTube channels making full-time income
Noah Kagan
October 19, 2020
Content marketing
9
Growth hacking
7
Niche selection
6
The real money comes from email lists and sponsorships, not ads
Mundane jobs and hobbies can build six-figure YouTube businesses
Publish 100 videos before judging whether your channel is working
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Friction, flow, and finalization: navigating creative work and the deep life
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
October 19, 2020
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
8
Processes & SOPs
7
Friction isn't failure — it's the essential first stage of all creative work
Imposing your productivity system on others kills it; running it invisibly works
Tech companies can't be forced ethical — train users to deploy technology intentionally