25 January 2021
This week's additions focus on mindset, founder stories, and leadership, with new digests from Noah Kagan, Silicon Valley Girl, and Joanna Wiebe. Highlights include Soylent's polarising name was advice ignored — and worth hundreds of millions. Printed posters sell for $100+ while costing a fraction to produce
Showing 17 digests for 25 January 2021.
Garry Tan on finding product-market fit and what early YC founders got right
Noah Kagan
January 30, 2021
Case studies
10
Product-market fit
7
Soylent's polarising name was advice ignored — and worth hundreds of millions.
Instacart got into YC mid-batch by delivering beer via its own live app.
Most startup success hides a decade of near-death before the pedestal moment.
Eight high-paying remote jobs you can start with no degree
Silicon Valley Girl
January 30, 2021
Business models
9
Pricing strategy
7
Motivation
5
Printed posters sell for $100+ while costing a fraction to produce
Most platforms handle fulfilment — your only job is the skill output
Start consulting your existing expertise at $50,000/month potential
How to write a lead nurturing email using the Hard Thing template
Joanna Wiebe
January 29, 2021
Email marketing
9
Prospecting & outreach
7
Write the bottom of the email first — start with the destination
Move leads from problem aware to product aware in one email
A question subject line structures the whole email's logic
How Sunrun became the US residential solar market leader
Masters of Scale
January 28, 2021
Case studies
10
Business models
9
Culture building
6
Solar adoption is a friction problem, not a demand problem
Sunrun closed its first bank deal the day Lehman Brothers went bankrupt
Customers don't need to care about climate — solar just saves money
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Bullet journaling vs Trello: building a hybrid productivity system
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
January 28, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
7
Processes & SOPs
5
Why your daily time blocking probably takes twice as long as it should
Analog vs digital task tools: match complexity to the right system
Difficulty in creative work is a signal to continue, not stop
Building and sustaining intentional company culture in a remote world
Bill Gallagher
January 27, 2021
Culture building
10
Management
6
Values only work when paired with defined expected behaviors and enforcement.
Remote work broke osmosis-based culture; nine best practices from remote-native companies fill the gap.
Deliberate social connection, well-being rituals, and repetition replace what offices provided passively.
How I accidentally became a Bitcoin millionaire through dollar cost averaging
Noah Kagan
January 27, 2021
Origin stories
10
Bootstrapping
7
$500/month auto-buy, not market timing, built a million-dollar position
Only invest what you can lose — risky assets capped at 10–15% of net worth
Don't invest to escape poverty; focus on income you can control
Resilience & grit
Podcast
How to master your emotions with Sam Harris
Masters of Scale
January 26, 2021
Resilience & grit
9
Productivity & habits
7
Your mind is the toolbox — every leadership tool depends on it.
Meditation trains you to witness thoughts without being controlled by them.
Failing fast and beginning again are the same mental skill.
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Writing as a clarity tool: how expressive writing unlocks focus and purpose
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
January 26, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
8
Identity & self-belief
6
20 minutes of writing returns hours by clarifying what actually matters.
Writer's block is life block — stuck on the page means stuck in life.
Start with 30 seconds; the habit builds itself once you feel the benefit.
Using a quarterly theme to focus a team on one priority
Bill Gallagher
January 26, 2021
Management
7
Long-term planning
5
Too many priorities scatter teams — pick just one number one thing
A rallying cry keeps the top priority visible across the whole company
Apollo 13's 'failure is not an option' shows one crisis, one focus, one phrase
Resilience & grit
YouTube
The emotional roller coaster of being a CEO and how to ride it
Cameron Herold
January 26, 2021
Resilience & grit
9
Management
6
Entrepreneurial traits are clinically identical to bipolar disorder symptoms
Each roller coaster stage demands different actions — and forbids others
Crisis of meaning requires unplugging, not pushing through
Work-life balance
Podcast
Life profitability: building a business that serves your life
Startups For the Rest of Us
January 26, 2021
Work-life balance
9
Founder interviews
7
Identity & self-belief
6
Every business decision has a life cost most founders never account for
Burnout hits when meaning drains from structures you've heavily invested in
No universal blueprint exists — your values define your success metrics
How Logan Paul built six income streams making $23M a year
Noah Kagan
January 25, 2021
Business models
9
Branding
8
Case studies
7
A paid fan club alone generates $5.4M in recurring annual revenue.
Boxing provides $1M+ windfalls plus free press that lifts every other stream.
A large YouTube audience is a platform — merch and memberships dwarf ad income.
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Productivity is good — if you optimise the function, not the input
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
January 25, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Work-life balance
8
Deep work & focus
7
Productivity critics attack overwork, not the real goal: better conversion of effort to output.
Career passion follows competence — rare skills are the currency that buys autonomy.
Interview experts for their story, not their advice, to avoid the colour folder effect.
Robert Goddard: the obsessive persistence behind modern rocketry
Founders
January 25, 2021
Origin stories
9
Resilience & grit
7
Pitching investors
5
46 years from a childhood daydream to the first liquid-fuelled rocket
Chronic inability to sell his work starved the program of funding
Bezos studied Goddard and deliberately solved every problem Goddard couldn't