1 March 2021
This week's additions focus on marketing, founder stories, and strategy, with new digests from Bill Gallagher, Noah Kagan, and Silicon Valley Girl. Highlights include Son's suicide note sparked a teen mental health charity Christian meditation apps grew 300% — religion is a wide-open niche
Showing 17 digests for 1 March 2021.
Founder interviews
YouTube
How adversity, loss, and family shaped a financial entrepreneur
Bill Gallagher
March 7, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Customer experience
5
Son's suicide note sparked a teen mental health charity
Trust — not returns — is what keeps financial clients
Chasing quick income over passion cost years of career regret
Five data-backed business ideas to start in 2021
Noah Kagan
March 6, 2021
Niche selection
9
MVP & prototyping
7
Christian meditation apps grew 300% — religion is a wide-open niche
Spike ball turned a dead 90s game into an eight-figure brand
Validate with one paying customer before building anything
Deep work & focus
YouTube
How to stop Silicon Valley anxiety killing your focus
Silicon Valley Girl
March 6, 2021
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
6
FOMO is really fear of irrelevance, not genuine opportunity
Chasing trends fragments the focus that built your results
Absorb new ideas by folding them into your existing work
How to assess keyword ranking difficulty before targeting
Ahrefs
March 5, 2021
A weak SERP — mixed intent, low backlinks — signals an opportunity to exploit.
Your DR needs to match at least one top-ranking site, not all of them.
A specialist site routinely outranks high-DR generalists on topical queries.
How to find keywords for your website using seed keywords and competitors
Ahrefs
March 4, 2021
SEO
9
Content marketing
5
Keyword modifiers reveal search intent and cut 125k results to 30
Competitor top pages surface high-traffic topics your seeds never find
Traffic potential beats search volume as the metric worth optimising for
Community building
Podcast
How FIGS built fierce loyalty among healthcare workers
Masters of Scale
March 4, 2021
Community building
10
Case studies
9
Branding
7
Ignored by Nike and Lululemon, healthcare workers needed a premium brand
Donating 70,000 units of gear during COVID deepened loyalty, not just goodwill
Co-CEO model works when both founders share destination, not just direction
Buying a $9,500 niche website and giving it to a subscriber
Noah Kagan
March 4, 2021
Business models
8
Content marketing
6
Case studies
6
Boring, untouched niche sites can be the best acquisition targets
A 90-day plan doubled revenue by adding affiliates and Pinterest posts
Chasing uninteresting opportunities leads to failure — and relief
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Managing WhatsApp, quarterly plans, and deep work schedules
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
March 4, 2021
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
7
Processes & SOPs
6
WhatsApp group chats are cognitively incompatible with focused work.
Strategic plans are for big-rock projects — not tasks or experiments.
Pure deep work periods need far fewer hours than most people assume.
Understanding search intent with the 3 C's formula
Ahrefs
March 3, 2021
SEO
9
Content marketing
5
Top-ranking results are the best proxy for true searcher intent.
Three dimensions — type, format, angle — decode any SERP fast.
A mixed SERP signals unclear intent; don't create content until resolved.
Business operating systems
YouTube
Scaling Up Insights: Growth, Leadership, and the Hybrid Workplace
Bill Gallagher
March 3, 2021
Business operating systems
9
Culture building
8
Cash flow management
6
Pivot to wind energy doubled a Kansas firm's revenue using existing skills.
Daily huddles are the highest-ROI 15 minutes a company can spend.
Empowerment over ego: culture-first CEOs consistently outperform peers.
How Bob Iger turned Disney acquisitions into a lasting brand ecosystem
Masters of Scale
March 2, 2021
Business models
9
Case studies
7
Culture building
5
Protect what made each acquisition special — double the sandbox, don't change the name
Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm: each pitched with autonomy, not absorption
Consumers distinguish brands; Disney stamping its name on everything destroys value
How to choose SEO keywords using a four-point checklist
Ahrefs
March 2, 2021
Search volume alone is misleading — traffic potential is the reliable metric
Score keywords 1–3 by business value before committing to any topic
Mismatched searcher intent blocks rankings regardless of all other metrics
How committing fully — killing off options — drives decisive action
Bill Gallagher
March 2, 2021
Goal setting
8
Management
6
To decide literally means to kill off alternatives — not preserve them
A CEO's 'more is more' instinct was silently stalling his team
Throw your hat over the fence: remove the exit to force commitment
Tech stack & software
YouTube
What NFTs are, who's making money, and how to create one
Noah Kagan
March 2, 2021
Tech stack & software
7
Branding
6
Unit economics
5
Blockchain ownership turns freely copyable digital files into scarce assets
Beeple made $3.5M on his first NFT drop after 13 years posting daily art
Secondary prices can crash fast — buyer-beware applies here too
When to sunset products and handle enterprise security assessments
Startups For the Rest of Us
March 2, 2021
Business models
8
B2B sales
7
Intellectual property
6
Kill products generating 3x less revenue than newer competitors—focus wins markets.
Price tiers separately: $50/month self-serve and $500/month enterprise, not two brands.
Enterprise security assessments require SOC 2 or minimum $20K ARR contracts.