28 June 2021
This week's additions focus on founder stories, strategy, and mindset, with new digests from Silicon Valley Girl, Deep Questions with Cal Newport, and Ahrefs. Highlights include Baby delivered in one push before doctors even entered the room. Sustain deep work by setting boundaries from organizational strength, not avoidance
Showing 12 digests for 28 June 2021.
Physical health & longevity
YouTube
Natural second birth: preparation, hypnobirthing, and mindset
Silicon Valley Girl
July 3, 2021
Physical health & longevity
7
Baby delivered in one push before doctors even entered the room.
Squatting instead of lying down cut labour time significantly.
Hypnobirthing turned a one-hour car ride into a euphoric experience.
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Making the Deep Life Happen Through Listener Calls
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
July 1, 2021
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
8
Work-life balance
5
Sustain deep work by setting boundaries from organizational strength, not avoidance
Replace social media minutes with reading to build the intellectual life
Connect semester goals to daily actions through time blocks and weekly reviews
Content marketing
YouTube
Content Marketing for Beginners: A Complete Practical Guide
Ahrefs
June 30, 2021
Content marketing
10
SEO
8
Growth hacking
6
SEO and YouTube beat social media for consistent, compounding content traffic.
Match content format to search intent before writing a single word.
Start inside-out: own channels first, then communities, then backlink outreach.
Business operating systems
YouTube
Scaling Up coaching panel: people, pricing, and culture in practice
Bill Gallagher
June 30, 2021
Business operating systems
9
Management
8
Processes & SOPs
6
Raising prices 50% saved a failing business — almost no clients left.
Face-to-face 360s unlock honest feedback that anonymous forms never surface.
Sevens — just-good-enough employees — kill companies more than clear underperformers.
Three entrepreneurs who built multi-million dollar businesses before 21
Noah Kagan
June 30, 2021
Case studies
9
Growth hacking
6
MVP & prototyping
5
Every founder here failed first — prior businesses were the real education.
Gymshark scaled to $500M by targeting an ignored niche with influencer marketing before it was mainstream.
Validate demand with pre-orders and pilots before spending time or money on production.
How Facebook built and sustains its $100 billion advertising business
Business Breakdowns
June 30, 2021
Business models
9
Paid ads
7
Competitive analysis
6
Facebook's self-reinforcing flywheel: data → targeting → ad spend → more data
Only Google and Facebook can deliver scale, cost, and customer quality together
The next platform shift after mobile is Facebook's deepest existential risk
Founder interviews
Podcast
Asking the uncomfortable questions with Michael Seibel
Masters of Scale
June 29, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Pivoting
7
Product-market fit
6
The right questions at critical moments reveal what strategies and investors cannot.
Founders often fear scaling late, but scaling early is the true killer.
Personal problems and irrational ties create lasting motivation through hard times.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Zero to $26K MRR as solo founder of Rails Autoscale
Startups For the Rest of Us
June 29, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Bootstrapping
8
Business models
6
Solo founder grew Rails Autoscale to $26K MRR on Heroku's marketplace with minimal marketing
Freemium launch shifts focus from cost savings to peace of mind and safety
Platform risk drives exploration of expanding beyond Rails or Heroku
Founder interviews
YouTube
Ten years of failures before AppSumo: Noah Kagan's entrepreneur journey
Noah Kagan
June 28, 2021
Founder interviews
10
Resilience & grit
6
Taking action on bad ideas builds skills that compound over a decade
Getting fired from Facebook with no equity was a turning point
AppSumo emerged from three unrelated observations, not a single insight
Productivity & habits
Podcast
How Much Reading Should You Do?
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
June 28, 2021
Five books monthly or two chapters daily builds compounding intellectual depth over time.
Make reading your default activity during downtime instead of defaulting to digital distractions.
Specific reading metrics feel slightly contrived but generate significantly more reading than intuition alone.
How Joe Coulombe Built Trader Joe's by Breaking Every Rule
Founders
June 28, 2021
Origin stories
10
Business models
7
Hiring & recruitment
5
Paying the highest wages possible is an asset, not a cost.
Radical differentiation — products no competitor can match — beats price wars.
Selling your life's work almost always ends in regret.
A simple strategy for making better decisions: the Iceberg Yes
How I Work
June 28, 2021
Saying yes to anything means saying yes to the full iceberg
We overweight exciting outcomes and underweight hidden effort
One question reframes every decision: what's below the surface?