16 October 2023
This week's additions focus on marketing, strategy, and founder stories, with new digests from Rob Walling, TK Kader, and Joanna Wiebe. Highlights include A $4k MRR GitHub-based project tool sold for $128k at 3.5× SDE. Pitching before a growth inflection point makes you a stale deal.
Showing 33 digests for 16 October 2023.
When to leave your late-stage unicorn startup
Y Combinator
October 19, 2023
Valuation
8
Long-term planning
6
Two-thirds of unicorns won't IPO — your options may be worthless
Product analytics visible to employees beat any press signal
Early-stage company with same revenue, lower valuation is a better trade
How to use Ahrefs' six core tools to grow organic traffic
Ahrefs
October 18, 2023
SEO
10
Content marketing
5
Reclaim wasted link equity from broken pages with one filter
Find competitor traffic goldmines by analysing site subfolder structure
Unlinked brand mentions are the easiest backlinks you're not getting
Hiring & recruitment
YouTube
The COO role: what it is and how to hire for it
Cameron Herold
October 18, 2023
Hiring & recruitment
9
Management
8
Processes & SOPs
6
The right COO is defined entirely by the CEO's gaps and profile.
A COO grows people and systems — not fixes problems directly.
Pushing a COO into firefighting destroys the two-in-a-box leverage.
How to use Semrush to grow your online visibility
Semrush
October 18, 2023
SEO
9
Content marketing
7
Automation & tools
5
Filter page-2 keywords by difficulty to find the fastest ranking wins
Keyword intent determines whether traffic you attract will actually buy
One platform covers SEO, content, backlinks, technical audits, and social
How two friends built a $2M agency to fund their content dreams
Starter Story
October 18, 2023
Case studies
9
Content marketing
7
Prospecting & outreach
6
Build a profitable agency first, invest everything into your real dream
Story is the only viral formula that has worked for 50,000 years
Hire only people who make your jaw drop — gut instinct, no exceptions
Productivity & habits
YouTube
Four PM growth lessons from a Silicon Valley mentor
EO
October 18, 2023
Judge yourself by what you choose to do, not what you can do.
Go straight at the hardest thing you've been avoiding.
Small deliberate tweaks to your calendar beat a career change for burnout.
AI strategy & adoption
Podcast
Four ways AI can accelerate your personal scale as a leader
Masters of Scale
October 17, 2023
AI strategy & adoption
9
Communication
6
Deep work & focus
5
AlphaGo's move no human would attempt advanced Go expertise worldwide
Human plus AI is still the strongest combination, not a replacement
AI frees time from admin to deepen real human relationships
What first class passengers actually do for a living
Noah Kagan
October 17, 2023
Case studies
10
Business models
6
First class wealth comes from franchises, trades, and unglamorous family businesses.
Dog breeder made $65,000 from a single litter alongside three other income streams.
Approaching strangers yields far less rejection than your mental narrative predicts.
Starting a newsletter business with zero upfront cost
Brett Malinowski
October 17, 2023
Growth hacking
9
Business models
8
Pricing strategy
7
Highly engaged small lists earn more than large passive ones
Beehive automates sponsorships — no cold outreach needed
Reddit and lead magnets can grow your list for free
Equity & cap tables
Podcast
Bringing on a partner, trade shows, pricing, and equity: listener Q&A
Startups For the Rest of Us
October 17, 2023
Equity & cap tables
8
Pricing strategy
7
Product-market fit
6
Low churn means stop building — a mature product is a luxury.
Giving a partner 30% equity demands full-time work and a proven track record.
Add value instead of discounting; discounts are the easy, lazy path.
Founder interviews
YouTube
How Alan Chikin Chow grew to 30 billion views by going all in on YouTube Shorts
GaryVee
October 17, 2023
Founder interviews
9
Niche selection
7
Content marketing
6
Self-awareness about what you're not best at beats raw talent.
Dialogue-free content unlocks instant global reach across languages.
Creators move product better than Hollywood celebrities — by far.
Contracts & agreements
YouTube
What a notice of separation is and when to use one
HR Party of One
October 17, 2023
Required for both voluntary and involuntary separations, not just firings
Missing a notice can result in approved unemployment claims you could have contested
State deadlines vary from 24 hours to 30 days after separation
Founder interviews
Podcast
Jensen Huang on building NVIDIA from near-death to AI dominance
Acquired
October 16, 2023
Founder interviews
9
Business models
8
AI strategy & adoption
6
How NVIDIA bet everything on one unprototyped chip — and survived
Targeting zero-billion-dollar markets a decade before they exist
Why the Mellanox acquisition redefined NVIDIA as a data centre company
Deep work & focus
Podcast
How music shapes productivity, mood, and time perception
Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life
October 16, 2023
Deep work & focus
8
Productivity & habits
7
Music physically alters time perception — the same hours feel shorter
Self-awareness of your current state determines which music to pick
BrainFM uses neural phase locking to lock your brain into focus mode
Paid media is getting harder, not easier — creative is the edge
Neil Patel
October 16, 2023
Privacy changes killed targeting data — paid ROI is harder than ever.
Platform AI optimises for its own revenue, not yours.
Creative strategy is the only edge automation cannot commoditise.