6 September 2021
This week's additions focus on mindset, strategy, and founder stories, with new digests from Silicon Valley Girl, Noah Kagan, and Deep Questions with Cal Newport. Highlights include Short-form video editing has far more demand than supply right now. Three structural shifts took AppSumo from $300K to $100M+
Showing 14 digests for 6 September 2021.
Prospecting & outreach
YouTube
Six ways to earn money as a student with no experience
Silicon Valley Girl
September 11, 2021
Prospecting & outreach
8
Business models
7
MVP & prototyping
5
Short-form video editing has far more demand than supply right now.
Selling neighbors' clutter for a 20–30% cut requires zero skills.
Every failed money experiment reveals what you actually want to do.
How AppSumo grew from $300K to $100M and what comes next
Noah Kagan
September 9, 2021
Case studies
10
Business models
9
Processes & SOPs
7
Three structural shifts took AppSumo from $300K to $100M+
Stop building new products — exhaust what already has traction
Culture only matters once communication breaks at 100 people
Productivity & habits
Podcast
Saying no, book retention, and building for deep work
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
September 9, 2021
Productivity & habits
9
Deep work & focus
8
Processes & SOPs
5
You already say no constantly — just do it 20% sooner.
Lightweight page-marking beats Zettelkasten for most readers.
Hub-and-spoke architecture drove Bell Labs' greatest breakthroughs.
Six local link building tactics to rank your business higher in Google
Ahrefs
September 8, 2021
Local links need both contextual and geographic relevance to move rankings
Resource pages, list posts, and guest posts beat directory links for authority
Steal proven link targets by running competitors through a link intersect tool
Founder interviews
YouTube
How to find and sustain your personal vision as a founder
Bill Gallagher
September 8, 2021
Founder interviews
9
Identity & self-belief
7
Fear of judgment — not lack of ideas — keeps vision vague.
Accountability to a group converts private intention into real action.
Knowing your core values is the filter that blocks bad opportunities.
Datadog: how unified observability built a $40B monitoring platform
Business Breakdowns
September 8, 2021
Case studies
9
Business models
8
Unit economics
6
Three monitoring tools into one eliminated the root cause of DevOps friction.
Growing 60% yearly while profitable — land-and-expand with 130% net retention.
Web3 and blockchain may shift the delivery paradigm Datadog depends on.
How to manage three jobs in a normal work week
Noah Kagan
September 8, 2021
Time management
9
Delegation
8
Deep work & focus
7
Productivity is about goal alignment, not doing more things
A colour-coded calendar SOP makes misaligned weeks impossible to ignore
Hire a dedicated head of staff for each major priority you run
Georges Doriot and the founding of the venture capital industry
Founders
September 8, 2021
Origin stories
10
Fundraising & VC
7
The riskiest early-stage bets proved more rewarding than safe ones
ARD's public structure crippled compensation and killed its best talent
A 70,000% return on DEC validated 25 years of patient, misunderstood investing
How TSMC built an unassailable monopoly in semiconductor manufacturing
Acquired
September 7, 2021
Origin stories
9
Business models
7
Competitive analysis
5
Founded at 56 with no equity, Morris Chang invented an industry that didn't yet exist
TSMC's flywheel turned cheap manufacturing into a monopoly no government can replicate
Every iPhone, Nvidia GPU, and AI chip depends on one company on a contested island
Identity & self-belief
YouTube
Flip the script: use Be-Do-Have to break through stuck areas
Bill Gallagher
September 7, 2021
You have the order backwards: Be first, then Do, then Have.
Your target identity is available right now — no conditions required.
One identity shift led to 45 triathlons over 11 years.
Bootstrapped to venture backed: lessons from nine years and a pivot
Startups For the Rest of Us
September 7, 2021
Bootstrapping
9
Fundraising & VC
7
Business models
5
Raising on a SAFE gives you capital without giving up board control
Anti-funding bias made sense 15 years ago — the terms have fundamentally changed
A part-time chief of staff handles the processes founders are terrible at
Business operating systems
Podcast
Reinventing how organisations work: the operating system model
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
September 6, 2021
Business operating systems
9
Management
6
Your org runs on 100-year-old factory assumptions — and it's killing performance
Roundabouts beat traffic lights: trust outperforms compliance every time
Distribute authority with a decision stack; reversibility is the key test
Deep work & focus
YouTube
How to learn any skill faster with a structured approach
Noah Kagan
September 6, 2021
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
7
Practicing a skill and playing it are completely different activities
Your why must be personal enough to pull you through the grunt work
Find someone already at your destination and shortcut their experience
Work-life balance
Podcast
Does productivity diminish leisure? Finding groundedness in a frantic world
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
September 6, 2021
Work-life balance
9
Productivity & habits
8
Deep work & focus
6
Grounded performance comes from strong foundations, not constant optimization for more.
Six practices—acceptance, presence, patience, vulnerability, community, embodiment—enable sustainable ambition.
Feeling good enough paradoxically makes you perform better and enter flow more easily.