1 February 2021
This week's additions focus on finance, founder stories, and strategy, with new digests from Cameron Herold, Silicon Valley Girl, and Noah Kagan. Highlights include Raise prices at least 2–3% every year, minimum. Business content CPMs run 3x higher than language-learning channels
Showing 16 digests for 1 February 2021.
How to consistently increase gross margins in your business
Cameron Herold
February 7, 2021
Pricing strategy
9
Unit economics
7
Processes & SOPs
5
Raise prices at least 2–3% every year, minimum.
Renegotiate supplier costs every six to twelve months — just ask.
Inventory businesses need gross margin × turns to hit 240 or above.
YouTube ad revenue across three channels and 4M subscribers in 2020
Silicon Valley Girl
February 7, 2021
Unit economics
9
Business models
6
Business content CPMs run 3x higher than language-learning channels
Evergreen videos from prior years compound into significant ongoing income
Subscribers don't pay — viewer geography and topic determine your earnings
How Dude Perfect earns $22 million a year from seven income streams
Noah Kagan
February 6, 2021
Unit economics
9
Branding
8
Business models
7
Live events — not YouTube ads — are their single biggest earner at $7.5M
Every product stream follows one model: they market, partners handle operations
54M subscribers turns even a 1-in-1,000 conversion rate into millions
Website closings: the most underrated part of web copy
Joanna Wiebe
February 5, 2021
Copywriting
9
Closing techniques
6
Most websites build desire then end with zero close.
Two-list framework: propellants push yes, repellents remove no.
Temporal discounting: prospects heavily discount future value over immediate.
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Practical habit tune-up: time blocking, phone use, and the two-role work model
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
February 4, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
8
Treat admin and deep work as two separate part-time jobs.
Physical separation from your phone beats any app restriction.
A plain text 'working memory' file clears inboxes faster than any system.
Google ranking factors: what actually matters for SEO
Ahrefs
February 3, 2021
SEO
9
Iteration & feedback loops
5
Search intent is the most overlooked ranking factor — match it or fail.
Topical authority beats domain power for niche queries.
Page speed and HTTPS matter far less than most SEOs think.
Deep work & focus
YouTube
Focus as a Learnable Habit: Systems Over Willpower
Bill Gallagher
February 3, 2021
Deep work & focus
10
Productivity & habits
8
Resilience & grit
6
Focus is learnable via purpose, process, and progress — not willpower.
Saying no to almost everything is the top system of high performers.
Setbacks reframed as happening for you, not to you, unlock growth.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Stewarding AI responsibly: lessons from Affectiva's Rana el Kaliouby
Masters of Scale
February 2, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Business models
6
Culture building
5
Turning down $40M to stay true to your founding ethics
Consent and on-device processing as non-negotiable privacy defaults
Stewardship scales when competitors and ethicists share the responsibility
How to make better decisions by dismantling hidden cognitive biases
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
February 2, 2021
Goal setting
8
Communication
6
Processes & SOPs
5
Good outcomes don't mean good decisions — luck distorts everything
Asynchronous independent elicitation beats group meetings for decisions
Quitting and grit are complements; calibrate between them, don't pick one
Unlocking team performance by understanding what people want
Bill Gallagher
February 2, 2021
Management
8
Culture building
5
Not knowing your team's personal goals is the core engagement problem
Connecting daily work to personal ambitions drives performance without new hires
A one-page personal plan, reviewed monthly, keeps alignment current
How Joe Rogan built $110 million in annual revenue across four streams
Noah Kagan
February 2, 2021
Case studies
9
Unit economics
7
Spotify is less than 30% of Rogan's income — the rest predates the deal.
Podcast sponsors alone generate ~$48M/year from 200M monthly downloads.
Same content triple-dips: Spotify fee, sponsor CPM, and YouTube ad revenue.
Founder interviews
Podcast
A $4M Exit with Josh Pigford of Baremetrics
Startups For the Rest of Us
February 2, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Exit strategy
8
Bootstrapping
5
Founder leverages QSBS to exit with $3.7M and zero federal capital gains tax.
How technical debt rewrites and product improvements broke a 17-month growth plateau.
Post-exit life shift: fired laser cutter, not another SaaS company.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Sequoia Capital identifies and builds legendary companies
Acquired
February 1, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Vision & mission
6
Sequoia builds 'prepared minds' on markets before founders ever pitch them.
The core investment test: why does this idea work now when it failed before?
Holding through compounding beats distributing early — as-held multiples prove it.
Founder interviews
Podcast
How Tim Harford left academia to build a career writing about economics
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
February 1, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Business models
7
Productivity & habits
6
An Oxford advisor's blunt honesty redirected Harford's entire career.
Portfolio income — FT, BBC, books, podcast — absorbed COVID's speaking fee collapse.
Most numeracy errors are failures of context and definition, not maths.
William Shockley: genius, poor people skills, squandered legacy
Founders
February 1, 2021
Post-mortems
9
Culture building
7
Management
5
Shockley seeded Silicon Valley but never earned a dollar from it
Refusing to take ideas from employees destroyed his company in 18 months
The Traitorous Eight did the opposite of Shockley and built Intel