Productized services as a foot-in-the-door with SaaS clients

Joanna Wiebe July 13, 2023

• SaaS companies actively buy productized services — fast starts beat long retainers
• A $9.97 audit almost always converts to a much bigger project
• Keep scope narrow: website audit or async email strategy session

Will OpenAI kill all startups? Why the answer is no

Y Combinator July 13, 2023

• Every major tech shift created more startups than it destroyed.
• OpenAI's goal is AGI — the gap below that is your opportunity.
• Second-order effects, not obvious wrappers, are where big companies emerge.

Toast: how a restaurant-only operating system beat Square

Business Breakdowns July 12, 2023

• Why owning the POS makes payments stickier than payments alone
• Toast targets only restaurants doing $500K+/year — deliberately
• Three founding lessons: vertical focus, scrappy distribution, hard problems

Save time on marketing reports with SEMrush automation

Semrush July 12, 2023

• 43% of marketers hate reporting — SEMrush fixes that.
• Build once, schedule forever with automated report delivery.
• White-label and customise reports for clients or teams.

James Cameron: filmmaker, explorer, and relentless pursuer of the hard path

Founders July 12, 2023

• Choosing hard problems eliminates competition — Cameron built his career on this.
• Self-taught from library dissertations while driving a truck; no film school needed.
• Walked away from Hollywood at its peak to dive the deepest point on Earth solo.

How to Write a Lead Nurturing Email in 5 Steps - Copyhackers

Joanna Wiebe July 12, 2023

Building company culture like a product: HubSpot's iterative approach

Masters of Scale July 11, 2023

• Treating culture as code: define narrowly, ship early, iterate on feedback.
• HubSpot made every employee a designated insider at IPO to preserve transparency.
• Hiring for 'culture fit' without a written culture defaults to hiring clones.

How to build a six-figure newsletter business from scratch

Starter Story July 11, 2023

• At 10,000 subscribers you can charge $1,000+ per sponsorship
• Hand-to-hand outreach beats paid ads at the start
• Newsletters are top-of-funnel for any business you want to build

Bootstrapping a SaaS to exit: ten years of lessons from Rick Heimansson

Startups For the Rest of Us July 11, 2023

• Five years nights-and-weekends before quitting a $200K consulting income
• A two-week IP snag almost killed a multi-million dollar acquisition
• Charge customers to build features — it filters real demand from promises

How to write copy using Amazon review mining

Joanna Wiebe July 11, 2023

• Mine competitor book reviews, not your own product, to find real copy
• PAS framework shapes what to look for before you open a single review
• 20 minutes of scanning beats a boardroom brainstorm every time

Doing to Done: A simple productivity system for overwhelmed people

Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life July 10, 2023

• One next action eliminates procrastination better than motivation or willpower.
• Organise commitments by life roles to make every agreement visible.
• Work beats: timed micro-agreements that build confidence through kept promises.

Why BuzzFeed and Vice failed: build an audience, sell your own product

Neil Patel July 10, 2023

• Ad-dependent media can't compete with Google and Meta on margins.
• Media is the distribution channel — own the product you sell into it.
• A small high-value niche beats millions of low-monetisation followers.

How to find, hire, and partner with the right second-in-command

Cameron Herold July 10, 2023

• Great COOs aren't job hunting — you have to poach them.
• The integrator tiebreaker model breaks down past 50 employees.
• Define yourself first; your gaps become the COO job spec.

Eight years to 100K: what consistent content creation actually takes

Dan Martell July 10, 2023

• Building YouTube audience took longer than selling three companies.
• A dying friend's legacy videos sparked the channel's creation.
• A decade of showing up beats talent, gear, or strategy.

Why discipline comes before values in building a deep life

Deep Questions with Cal Newport July 10, 2023

• Values built on a reactive mindset are warped from the start
• Two to three daily disciplines shift your identity more than any goal-setting
• Slow, internally powered consistency beats motivation-fuelled sprints every time