29 May 2023
This week's additions focus on strategy, mindset, and marketing, with new digests from Lenny's Podcast Product Career Growth, Rob Walling, and TK Kader. Highlights include Why designing for the hardest use case first beats MVPs Hackers exploited a missing account-disable feature to send phishing emails
Showing 30 digests for 29 May 2023.
How MarqVision landed LVMH as a customer within three months of launch
EO
May 31, 2023
Case studies
9
Prospecting & outreach
8
Niche selection
6
Counterfeits are a $3T problem traditional legal firms can't solve fast enough
First LVMH brand signed within three months of product launch
One reframe turned a $5B pitch into a $100B IP infrastructure vision
Saving, investing, and self-awareness: GaryVee Q&A with high school entrepreneurs
GaryVee
May 31, 2023
Bootstrapping
9
Identity & self-belief
8
Long-term planning
6
Saving on a $50k salary funded early bets on Facebook and Twitter.
Blockchain's real value is proving what's real in a deepfake world.
Self-awareness beats college, social media, and entrepreneurship pressure.
Lockheed Martin: Skunk Works, Silicon Valley, and the cold war secret space program
Acquired
May 30, 2023
Origin stories
9
Culture building
7
Business models
5
A secret satellite program made the U-2 spy plane obsolete within months
Lockheed built Silicon Valley: 30,000 employees, Jerry Wozniak included
Kelly Johnson's 14 rules produced world-changing hardware with tiny teams
Identity & self-belief
Podcast
Seth Godin on significance, agency, and the future of work
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
May 30, 2023
Identity & self-belief
9
Motivation
7
Culture building
6
AI makes every job built on industrial efficiency obsolete
Workers want agency and dignity — not pay and ease
Tension fuels creative work; stress is what kills it
AI strategy & adoption
Podcast
Five AI insights every SaaS founder needs to act on now
Startups For the Rest of Us
May 30, 2023
AI strategy & adoption
9
Business models
6
Adding obvious AI features is table stakes, not a competitive moat.
Big horizontal AI plays will be won by Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft.
Founders with manual text-heavy moats should treat them as eroding now.
How to build an email list without a freebie: 6 steps for course creators
Sunny Lenarduzzi
May 30, 2023
Email marketing
9
Customer discovery
6
Content marketing
5
61 targeted subscribers generated over $100,000 in two and a half weeks
Open rates and domain reputation collapse when you attract the wrong subscribers
1:1 research interviews beat surveys — and build your first list organically
Resilience & grit
YouTube
Accountability and gratitude as the path to happiness
GaryVee
May 30, 2023
Resilience & grit
9
Identity & self-belief
8
Blaming others keeps you powerless — accountability is the only lever you control
Billions lack clean water; most complaints reflect a perspective problem, not a real one
The odds of being alive at all are 400 trillion to one — act accordingly
Copywriting tips from seasoned pros: a whiskey faces reaction video
Joanna Wiebe
May 30, 2023
Copywriting
9
Processes & SOPs
5
Never stop asking 'so what?' — until you can't answer it
Find your hook first; it tells you which framework to use
Bad clients usually mean bad systems, not bad people
Business operating systems
YouTube
How playbooks help founders balance vision and execution
KeyPersonOfInfluence
May 30, 2023
Business operating systems
8
Growth hacking
6
Knee-jerk reactions fail; a playbook keeps execution consistent under stress.
A recognisable name in the business is a non-negotiable growth lever.
Running a team comes down to five A's: align, aware, assign, activities, assets.
How generosity and value-giving build lasting tech companies
Y Combinator
May 30, 2023
Business models
8
Customer discovery
7
Prospecting & outreach
5
Fear of consulting early stops founders learning what customers actually need.
Linux, Google, Excel all succeeded by giving more value than they charged.
Give value upfront in outreach — before asking for a single minute.
Marketing opportunities in 2023: podcasting, omnichannel, and aligned influencers
Neil Patel
May 29, 2023
Growth hacking
9
Influencer & partnerships
8
AI tools & automation
5
Podcasting has 1,000x fewer creators than blogging — still wide open
TikTok ads run 40-50% cheaper than Facebook for many advertisers
Micro-influencers with niche audiences beat celebrity endorsements every time
Five-step system for setting and achieving goals reliably
Dan Martell
May 29, 2023
Goal setting
9
Productivity & habits
8
Motivation
6
Daily standards — not motivation — make goals inevitable
Commit money and public accountability to lock in execution
Defer rewards you already want and tie them to milestones
Deep work & focus
Podcast
In defense of thinking: why original cognition is worth reclaiming
Deep Questions with Cal Newport
May 29, 2023
Deep work & focus
9
Productivity & habits
7
Knowledge work quietly replaced thinkers with computation custodians
Raising your thinking baseline makes depth the default, not a peak state
Second brains are useful appendices, not substitutes for the first brain
Founder interviews
Podcast
Robert Caro on power, obsession, and the relentless pursuit of craft
Founders
May 29, 2023
Founder interviews
9
Resilience & grit
8
Identity & self-belief
6
Your greatest talent often grows from your deepest childhood wound
Real power operates at a ruthlessness most people never conceive of
Turning every page — not skipping — is what separates good from great
How to become the go-to brand in your industry and get oversubscribed
KeyPersonOfInfluence
May 29, 2023
Vision & mission
9
Branding
8
Prospecting & outreach
6
Own a 'destination' idea your competitors can't copy or commoditise
All business friction traces back to a missing asset, not a sales problem
The magic triangle: borrow trust, value, and reach from strategic partners